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application of a policy mechanism; an interaction seeking affirmation from a trusted third party. Prayer in general, and this one in particular, seeks the intercession of the ultimate trust authority within the specific religion. It seeks assistance in defining and conveying the ideas of the supplicant (the one expressing the prayer) to the reader. Through this prayer, the supplicant also seeks to establish an identity within the trust infrastructure such that the reader might ascribe some positive degree of trust to the ideas presented.

Perhaps, the most intuitive aspect of this prayer is contained in its opening line: “May my speech be based on the mind; may my mind be based on speech.” The complementary concepts of speech and mind engender an appreciation for the physiological processes that have been discovered in the electro-chemical workings of the human brain, areas that we’ll consider in some detail in Chapters 4 and 8. As preface to those discussions, it is timely to suggest that speech is indeed a remarkable mechanism derived from the cognitive facilities of the brain of modern humans. It is possible that an extension of the brain made it able to support language and marked a milestone in the emergence of modern man from the precursor hominids. Similarly, it is reasonable to conjecture that the ability of speech to extend influence at both a cognitive as well as emotional level from one person to another forms the foundation of large grouping systems. Principal among such systems are religions.

The Book of Revelation found in the Christian Bible is an icon of apocalyptic prophesies and as such it suggests a fitting approach through which to establish the context for Chapter 11, correspondingly entitled Revelation. Following from the Book of Revelation, the final chapter expresses the evolutionary pathway that encompasses the blending of the Internet, the World Wide Web and human social systems. Earlier in this first chapter, we suggested that art in general is a mechanism through which trust can be directly conveyed via the purveyor to the receiver. In the last chapter, we will build upon this concept by using distinct forms of the art of theatre as expressions of three distinct stages of this pathway. Through allusion to the scripted play, we will examine the role of the transcendent personal device as it might function in today’s world of extremely constrained interaction protocols. In the near future, the device might be expected to exhibit a bit more creativity in the conduct of relatively standardized interactions, a process that we will examine through the form of Commedia dell’Arte. Finally, in the longer term, we anticipate that the device will be required to engage in inductive activity; essentially to learn how to establish a trusted interaction environment or, perhaps as important, how to recognize and avoid an untrusted environment. This future process we find startlingly revealed by the art form of improvisational theatre. These three stages of evolutionary melding of human social orders and computer networks lead us finally to a recognition of the continuity of the development of human social order from the emergence of the species to some future day; a continuum that we discuss in our final section Laying-on of Hands.

So our theme is set. Our first step has now been taken. In the end, we should see a justification of the observations and assertions that we’ve made in this initial chapter. Of course, in religion and technology, as in most endeavors, the devil, quite literally as well as metaphorically, is in the details. As we wind our way through the technological progression of the last few decades we see the recurrent application of evolutionary principles. Some technologies were quickly obsolete and became effectively extinct. Others prevailed and may find their way, through evolutionary principles, well into the future. The modern technical archaeologist has an interesting problem in that much technology has gone from the primeval ooze to the dustbin of history within a few short years. Consequently, we sometimes have difficulty extracting the details because the era went by too fast. Perhaps we can contribute a bit of perspective on the last few decades based on our experience in the trenches, where the details often stand out in stark relief. The relationship

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