enhance the ability of such computers to
further fulfill their analogous potential to emulate and facilitate human
interactions.
We were
initially drawn down this path by the observation that images passed to us from
prehistory to the modern era characterize mechanisms that are readily found in
the design and implementation strategies of personalized computers. This
suggested a continuum in concepts on which human cognition is grounded; a
continuum that stretches from the emergence of modern man to the current
incarnation of mankind’s most intimate tools. This elicited a curiosity on our
part in the human evolutionary process from both an individual and a group
viewpoint. Since much of pre- and proto-historical imagery and ongoing cultural
development is synonymous with religious environment and practice, this
appeared to be an interesting model through which to try to understand general
and specific computer developments.
If one starts
with a rudimentary view of living organisms, we recognize that they evolve in a
manner guided by changes over time in their basic chemical language defined structure.
Today, we know this basic chemical language as DNA. The DNA molecule found in
the cells of organisms comprises a book that details the design and operational
characteristics of the organism. Changes to the design are effected through
adaptation and mutation of the book and their efficacy is judged through
natural selection. Natural selection, in turn, functions through individual and
multi-level mechanisms, religion being a non-trivial example of the latter.
Over time, religious communities have grown and interacted, internally and
among each other. Within the context of these communities, the individual
members interact through special protocols. On a grander scale, entire
religious communities interact among themselves through special protocols as
well. Driven by theologically inspired stimuli, religions respond individually
and collectively to internal and external threats. We see in these processes great
parallels to the desired behavior of computer networks in which the facility
for human involvement across the full range of needs based stimuli extends from
networked personal electronic devices.
Computers have
evolved, just as have the distinct individuals of other species, as well as the
species themselves and the environments in which they interact; they all
continue to evolve. Computers were born as successful entities in and of themselves
through a series of mutations that found fertile ground among a variety of
concepts that, while certainly interesting in a mechanical world, actually
thrive in the electronic world. They have continued to evolve through invention
and the application of market pressures. Individual and multi-level selection is
effected in the marketplace, both economic and ideological, through a variety
of protocols reminiscent of religious practices. Devices with built-in security
substrates have recently emerged as a distinct strain of computer, the
harbingers of the new species we’ve suggested. In today’s highly networked
environment, these devices, be they labeled as, say, smart mobile phones or
personal assistants, are computer analogues of people. They attempt to address the
complex policy considerations of individual interactions throughout extended
technical and social communities. Within the electronic world, they become
people. Moreover, their operational capabilities require them to ponder their
position and orientation in the world in which they periodically find
themselves, and from this contemplation they must derive, in total isolation,
the manner in which they will choose to interact with their current
surroundings. It is this deeply contemplative state, coupled with the
derivation of trust in policy from it, that strikes us as growingly analogous
to an early stage of ecstasy that is a recurring theme in the religious
experience, expressed in meditation, and reflected in art and ritual.
Lest our
discussions appear too opaque, let us reiterate that the policy we’re talking
about involves us as individuals from the time we wake up in the morning until
we go to bed at night. Much of it
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