acceptable degree of trust can be established, a protocol can be enacted between multiple parties through which a transaction can take place, enabling the parties to negotiate to an agreed upon conclusion; to wit, in this case getting the door open.

“Well,” one might be considering at this point, “how does this consideration of trust and policy impact either on the reality presented by computers and computer networks or the social reality of religions and their guiding theologies? If there’s any substance to the book’s title then there ought to be some relationship, correct?” We respond that “Indeed, there is!” Correspondingly, this book is an attempt to relate the development and evolution of computer technology to the development and evolution of humans and their social environments, particularly as these environments are impacted on or defined by religious systems. Our review of the literature presented in the bibliography suggests to us that religions are paragons of human social organizations. Such organizations have their foundations in human physiology, including the genetically determined characteristics of the human brain. However, social organization, very specifically including religion, has impact beyond the physiological level through facilities derived from the evolution of the species. This evolution has given rise to means by which to satisfy an ascending hierarchy of needs. Based on a consideration of needs fulfillment versus social grouping, we will express a model for human social organizations that maps readily into the world of computers and computer networks.

Illustrating our methods for examining these relationships, the book presents an anthropomorphic view of computer systems vis-à-vis a consideration of human interactions, and observes a number of parallels in the development and use of computers. Based on these parallels, we suggest the emergence of a new species of truly personal, portable, trusted computers that forms a cognitive tool intimately associated with its bearer. Further, based on the current literature of evolutionary biology, psychology and sociology, as well as contemporary works of anthropology and cognitive science, we adopt the view that religion is an integral aspect of human evolution through the formulation of goals, social mores and mechanisms of self-actualization, transcendence and their derivative social interactions. In essence, we recognize that religion supports a multi-level selection facility within the general evolutionary framework of the human species. Religion comprises the archetypical template of social ecosystems through which all higher-order human interactions occur. We observe that a number of similar traits have arisen in the development of computer technology. These parallels are not grounded merely in the physical aspects of certain computer platforms. They are also based on the traits of trusted, portable and personalized computers akin to the human states of ecstasy and the rituals that underlie the essence of trust imbued by religious systems that form the foundation of our model of social organization. These traits, seemingly wrought from mysticism much like that which forms the basis of religious frameworks, differentiate the model from simple rule-based computational infrastructures.

We suggest that this emergent species of personal electronic devices will, through further evolution, be positioned as the dominant, portable individual computers. Encompassing cellular phones, digital assistants, electronic payment cards, key fobs, game and multimedia players, as well as all sorts of intelligent tags, they are not just computers that the person can use, but computers that embody the trust and policy formulation and utilization characteristics through which individuals can engage in the physical and electronic interactions of their daily lives. Specifically, these trusted computers are a means of injecting the person much more intimately into the increasingly complex interactions that characterize current society. They are destined to become, in fact, the personal deictic centers of the electronic world. Based on the parallels that we see between the current mechanisms of information technology and societal (centrally religious) development through history, we qualitatively project the future evolutionary developments that

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