century. This brings us then to a consideration of the establishment of higher-level groupings and the mechanisms that guide their formation and enable their successful operation. Continuing the corollary between human and computer based systems requires that we extend the parallels beyond physiological characteristics and include organizational and behavioral characteristics as well. This entails a somewhat detailed consideration of multi-level, among-group selection issues and the appearance of mechanisms of complex policy that we see as the most fertile ground for the explosive expansion of personal electronic devices. These topics are the focus of our next four chapters.

Chapter 5, Fabric of Society, centers on the description of a general model for social systems. A distinguishing characteristic of multi-entity constructs versus the individual entities themselves is the emergence of altruistic behavior. Natural selection applied to individual entities would seem to minimize if not eliminate behavior that is detrimental to the individual. Nonetheless, within social orders, altruistic behavior on the part of individuals forms a basic manifestation of successful systems. The model suggests that the overarching characteristic of social order is a trust infrastructure that enables group-wide correlation of effective policy application. We suggest that this model of social grouping has evolved from the development of the human species that has subsequently been reflected in the progression of successive grouping mechanisms. Within this model, the most basic articulation between religious social orders and secular social orders is the source of trust on which the social system is based. We note that theistic religions are grounded in supernatural causality while secular governments are subsequently grounded in trusted processes derived from foundational policy specifications. This leads us then to consider in the next three chapters the primary aspects of interactions within social orders: content, causality and process.

Human interactions serve to satisfy appetites through the acquisition of or access to content. In Chapter 6, The Shrine of Content, we take a detailed look at the concept of content as it ranges across the full spectrum of the needs hierarchy. Content can be as basic as the air we breathe and the food we eat or it can be as complex as the drive to excel at a particular task. Following the needs hierarchy, content builds in a recursive fashion so as to sate higher order appetites through successive fulfillment of those of the lower orders. Within this chapter, we take a rather detailed look at both content and the projection of content within computer systems and computer networks. We extend the social ecosystem model introduced in the previous chapter into the cyberspace world of the Internet and the World Wide Web. This requires that we consider not only content per se, but also associated characteristics such as ownership and value. Central to this extension is the derivation of trust inherent in content aimed at various needs. This then provides the impetus for a much more detailed look at the establishment and conveyance of trust; the subjects of the next two chapters.

Chapter 7, In His Own Image, considers causality as a seminal source of trust. Here, we present the iconic example of the establishment of trust within the human mind through the ecstatic affirmation of supernatural sources. We perceive this ecstatic state as the culmination of the progression of causality chains that is foundational to the establishment and conveyance of trust within the scientific world. We consider that the primary distinction between religion-based and science-secular oriented social systems is found in the terminus of the causality chains of their respective trust infrastructures. Within this chapter, we expose the establishment of trust within computer networks which then leads us to the consideration of trust based on recursive processes. This is the topic of the next chapter.

In Chapter 8, In Search of Enlightenment, we consider the establishment and conveyance of trust through the inevitability of process. This approach is foundational to science-oriented systems

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