Fire in a Wire: Electricity Empowers Human Evolution Beyond Homo Sapiens

Fire tells the story Sapiens missed, about the most momentous development in recent human history: using electricity. Just as fire enabled the evolution of our prehistoric ancestors, electricity is enabling our ongoing evolution now. Electricity is the new fire. Fire in a wire.

Many archaic humans arose and went extinct, like the Neanderthals. Conventional wisdom says Homo sapiens is the sole surviving species of human. Steven Reed Nelson disagrees. He writes that evolution does not end with sapiens. A dynamic new species is emerging, not in some imagined future but living among us today: Homo electric.

The electrified world is our natural habitat. We use electricity for everything: from providing food to medical care to artificial intelligence to sex. We can't live without it. It is fundamentally changing who we are. We can see things, hear things, do things, know things and imagine things not possible before electricity.

We no longer live in the natural world observed by Charles Darwin and governed by "the survival of the fittest." We can override natural selection. We can alter our DNA. We are taking control of our own evolution. We can, and we must, if we are to survive threats like climate change.

Nelson's journey of discovery about electricity and evolution began in the Peruvian Andes, where he lived without electricity among descendants of the Incas. It took him through ventures in cutting-edge applications of electricity - solar energy, computer software, rock concerts, video production and fiber-optic internet - leading to a flash of insight resulting in this book.

If you are curious about who we were, who we are and who we yet might be, read Fire in a Wire. It will challenge you to rethink who you are and who you are becoming as a human being in the Electric Age.