Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end: then stop.

The King in Alice in Wonderland
by Lewis Carroll

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

From the Declaration of Independence

These seminal words of the social order of the United States of America provide a rare direct illustration of an evolutionary event known as speciation; the creation of new species from old. From these words, we can begin to draw parallels between biological processes and social order. The Declaration of Independence is grounded in the metaphorical understanding from which is derived context sensitive communication. Consider that a mere 15 years after it was published, a subsequent defining document of the social order, the Constitution of the United States of America prescribed that men were significantly superior to women and that black men or women were distinctly less than equal to either white men or women. Women of any hue were not allowed to participate in the governance so divined and black people of any gender were declared worth three fifths of a person for purposes of establishing participatory power within this governance structure. Otherwise, they could be property owned and traded as chattel goods. The words “equal” and “Rights” were metaphors meshed in the social interactions of the time. That one could look upon these words and derive from them something other than gender independent suffrage, and in particular could draw from them an acceptance of human slavery, is critically foreign to our current mores. Such is the double-edged sword instilled in metaphorical understanding. As the 42^nd President of the United States suggested to us, “It depends on what the definition of ‘is’ is.” Despite its somewhat self-serving nature, this was in fact a prescient observation.

Computers are complex tools of the human species. To make them work well for us, we have to specify their actions in very great detail. When properly instructed, networks of computers take on the trappings of human social orders derived from the physiological characteristics and capabilities of our species. To create a social order, we engage in grouping mechanisms through which the actions of the individuals within the group are influenced. From a technical perspective, such grouping mechanisms form the trust environments within which we can effect policy. Historically, the most comprehensive such environments have been formed by religions. Within a