In common language the notion of an operating system refers to the basic set of programmes that manages the hardware resources and facilitates the software applications of our personal computers. It is the basic infrastructure that makes the enclosed entity of the computer function efficiently. But ever since the publication of Vannevar Bush’s article “As We May Think” (1945) computers have been conceived and developed in continuation of the human mind, and with the intensification of computer use is it not necessary to expand the notion and say that the operating system also affects, or rather controls, the hardware and software of our brain? And what if the operating system turns out not to function as intended, if its processors overheat or it gets infected by a virus? After a decade of dot.com success, media hacks that were discussed on CNN, a Golden Nica award, and the drug infused partying that was part of the net art jet-set, in 2002 Hans Bernhard of UBERMORGEN.COM experienced a manic attack. He was hospitalised and embarked on a quite different journey into the landscape of digital utopias, where the sky is not “Windows blue.”

Image: No© UBERMORGEN.COM, Photo Oliver Jiszda; Courtesy Fabio Paris Brescia, [DAM] Berlin and Carroll/Fletcher London