I'm Having an Identity Crisis

It's Earth Day today, and I was going to blog about my special Earth Day lunchtime work presentation of Shai Agassi's ambitious electric car plans. I am taking a special interest in these plans for two reasons. Firstly, Shai is a former SAP executive -- in fact, he was next in line for the SAP throne before quitting and launching his new adventure -- and it somehow gives me hope to know that a senior SAP executive could be so, well, cool. Secondly, our van is seriously falling apart. The interior lights no longer work, and you have to enter from the passenger's side since the driver's side door no longer opens from the outside. We would very much like to buy a different vehicle, but both my wife and I are determined to get a vehicle capable of at least short distances on electric power only. Shai seems to offer the best hope we have of owning an electric car in the near future.

But I'm not going to tell you all about that, as cool as it is. You can read all about it in the New York Times.

What I am going to talk to you about is my identity crisis. On my way home from work today, I discovered that I am not nearly as human as I think I am. In fact, I am only somewhere between 1 and 10% human. The other 90-99% of me (depending on how you count it) is, in fact, single-cell bacteria. The same goes for all of you.

That's right -- although there are a trillion human cells in the average human body, there are over 10 trillion bacteria. And though there are 30 thousand genes in the human genome, the genetic catalog of bacteria riding in or on each human body numbers 3 million genes. This incredible fact means that you are merely the coral shell of an immensely complex and rich bacterial reef system. What's more, it has recently been discovered that the bacteria within this system are all communicating with each other through chemical messengers, much like our own cells respond to hormones. In essence, there is a completely separate "body" living within your body, and it's at least 10 times more complex than you are. Incredibly, you are completely dependent on this invisible entity of entities. Without the bacteria, you would quickly die.

The other end of the scale is one which you are probably familiar with, but which is no less mind boggling (or at least mind-blogging) if you sit down and think about it. You are just one person in a collection of 6.7 billion people. All of these people are interacting with each other in a wildly unpredictable fashion; which, strangely enough, produces wonderfully rich and complex artifacts. Millions of individuals were likely involved in the production of the experience I'm having this very moment: from the people who built the computer I'm using to type this on, to the people who created the Internet system I'm using, to the people who produced the music I'm currently enjoying. Yet very few of them actually know each other directly.

So here I am. Sandwiched between an invisible mass of bacteria and an incomprehensible mass of humans. What's a person to do? I'll hit "publish post" and see what happens...