Digitalionary Development: From Homo Digitalis to Fomo sapiens

This paper introduces the model of Digitalionary Development, a structural transfer of the biological theory of evolution onto the development of the digital user. The origin of the genus Homo Digitalis is set on 29 October 1969, the day the first message was transmitted over the ARPANET. Along the classical evolutionary factors (mutation, recombination, selection, genetic drift), it describes how the early network user evolved through several intermediate stages into today’s Fomo sapiens. The text is explicitly conceived as an analogical thought experiment with satirical elements and not as an empirical study. Its structure deliberately follows the Wikipedia article “Evolution” (de.wikipedia.org). Keywords: Digitalionary Development, digitization, evolution, analogy, social media, FOMO, attention economy, ARPANET, satire "1969, Homo Digitalis was switched on. The first word was a mistake, the result a new species. This wasn't an evolutionary development, this was a DIGITALIONARY DEVELOPMENT." - Gordon Bergmann