between religion and science is one of considerable asymmetry, a characteristic of interactions that we have mentioned from time to time and which we will consider in a bit more detail below. In this case, the asymmetry manifests from significant acrimony on the part of some religious devotees and studied dismissal on the part of many in the scientific community. Yet, given the evolutionary success that religion has wrought in the ages-long struggle for supremacy of the human species, to ignore its concepts and mechanisms is tantamount to ignoring the impact of bipedal versus quadrupedal locomotion in primates or excluding consideration of the electromagnetic spectrum in the millimeter range when we attempt to observe the world around us.

In the subtitle for this book, we allude to the concept of intelligent design in relation to the World Wide Web. So, one might wonder whether we are trying to assert the necessity of discourse between the concepts of intelligent design and evolution? Well, our answer is, “certainly not...” at least, not as intelligent design is currently portrayed. At the moment, the asymmetry present in the conversation is perhaps too great to allow for an interaction with any type of resolution. Rather, what we’ve attempted to do in the course of this book is to suggest a model rooted in human physiological characteristics that encompasses social ecosystems of interactions in both human and computer networks. Concordantly, we’ve noted that the design process of a complex technical system such as the World Wide Web displays many of the same characteristics as the evolutionary processes that have given rise to the human species. This approach, it would seem, has the tendency to place the concepts of intelligent design and evolution on a more common footing. Perhaps from there, one might actually have a discourse should one be so inclined.

When viewed as systems that derived from evolutionary principles, it seems clear that we are still in the midst of the emergence of the Internet and the World Wide Web as social collectives of a variety of computer based species. If we view these technical entities according to their parallels with biological entities, then we would presume that we are actually in the initial evolutionary evaluation which will most surely result in further adaptation of both the Internet and the Web. Further, we can readily discern a number of differences between the currently availed mechanisms within the technical systems versus those of the social systems derived from biological entities. So, we’ve tried to consider the likely direction of technical development if a consistent parallel with social systems is to be observed. If similar human-borne market and social pressures apply on biological and technical systems, then what are some of the resulting technical adaptations we’d expect to see?

The ascendance of Homo sapiens to dominance within the physical ecosystem was largely based on the human mind’s ability to deal extensively with symbols rather than concrete objects, while manipulating these symbols through metaphoric reasoning rather than relying purely on episodic comprehension. The emergence of these capabilities gave rise to language and to the transcendent extension of the species through social ecosystems. Through the ages, religion has been a consistent manifestation of this ability to manipulate symbols and to reason through metaphoric constructs. In the first Paleolithic era paintings we find on the walls of ancient caves, we see religious imagery, following in that the powerful demonstration of David Lewis-Williams in The Mind in the Cave, where he compares parietal art found in 30,000 years old European caves to similar Southern African San rock art of the XIX^th century, in association with contemporary live testimony of corresponding religious events. When humans discovered new materials, it led them to create artifacts whose religious signification is both unavoidable and related to the paradigm illustrated by Davis Lewis-William. In El Diseño Indigena Argentino (Argentinean Indigenous Design), South-American pots, whose symbolism Alejandro Fiadone analyzes in regards to historical progression and contemporary recordings, are shown to present shamanistic displays

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