two decision lends credence to this interpretation. The fact that the decision was not unanimous suggests the variable nature of metaphorical understanding.

Prior to the decision, the law of the land allowed government to arbitrarily limit a woman’s access to abortion services. People were sanctioned under the precepts of such law and individuals suffered life altering consequences from either following or not following these precepts. After the ruling, such access was deemed a right of women under the Constitution; and, this access could be limited in only extenuating situations. New precepts followed the installation of a new law of the land. People were sanctioned under these new precepts and individuals suffered life altering consequences from either following or not following them. Neither the precepts nor the consequences required further involvement from the Congress or the President. Hence, it seems fair to say that the rules of the policy infrastructure were changed in an extraordinary way. Petitionary prayer is an excellent model for this sequence of events viewed as a social ecosystem interaction. So, perhaps it is worthwhile to consider some of the processes that prayer suggests to us as we consider the evolutionary progression of computer based social ecosystems. It is also worthwhile to consider why it is worthwhile: we’re always looking for ways to handicap the trust equation of transactions. We create social ecosystems in order to even out the very sharp edges of the physical ecosystem. We build structure within the interactions of our social ecosystems for much the same reason. Prayer offers agency in the search for that structure.

Within Christianity, the prayer shown below, termed the Lord’s Prayer, is offered by Jesus as a model of the genre. It is, according to the Christian Bible, Jesus’ response to the question of “How should we pray?” It is a mild form of petitionary prayer; it voices requests from the supplicant that God might actually be inclined to grant. We must note that we are using a version of the prayer from a King James translation from ancient manuscripts from which the Christian Bible derives. There are many such translations across the ages, each with its own subtle nuances and distinctions that make one slightly or significantly different from the others. Hopefully the meaning that we draw from the prayer is not adversely impacted by the specific rendition that we select for our cursory analysis.

We will now study this prayer from the perspective of the computer scientist, which in this case means that we are going to study it as a multi-step protocol through which is effected a transaction. From a computer perspective then, we might refer in technical jargon to this prayer as a template or perhaps even a specification. Saint Augustine, in his letter CXXX, translated as follows in volume I of A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, has actually offered that very suggestion: “For whatever other words we may say, -- whether the desire of the person praying go before the words, and employ them in order to give definite form to its requests, or come after them, and concentrate attention upon them, that it may increase in fervor, -- if we pray rightly, and as becomes our wants, we say nothing but what is already contained in the Lord’s Prayer.” Viewed in even more detail from a technical standpoint, this template proffers a moderately complete specification of a transaction protocol. Consider some of its elements (Christian Bible, Matthew 6: 9-13):

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