infrastructure. Transcendent personal devices present to the network different aspects of our person, be it that of financial agent, a contributor to the work force, or other roles associated with specific identity credentials. With our conventional life thus extended to computer networks, we sit at the intersection of the physical and digital ecosystems we participate in. We’ve seen how biometry can be associated with transcendent personal devices to link them more closely to our physical selves. With advances in biological and other digital circuitry, we can expect to become an even more integrated part of the digital network ourselves, becoming in a sense our own transcendent personal devices. This will increase the integration of our physical, social and digital ecosystems and will also create new opportunities for asymmetries.

As the Internet and the Web thus grow in power through their connectivity and capabilities, we can expect an ever increasing clamor from existing social ecosystems to exert greater control over Internet and Web facilities. The Internet as it originally emerged constituted an extension of the physical ecosystem into the digital realm. Social ecosystems seek to establish some level of subjective influence over the physical ecosystem. So, it is not surprising that existing social orders seek to put their imprint on the facilities of the Internet. Some rail against unfettered access without any societal controls on either access or content. Others are concerned with protecting the individual against communal intrusions. Evolutionary processes will determine whether these threats to the existing Internet bring good or ill. One asymmetry we perceive with the concerns involved is the attempt to deal with these issues through existing social ecosystems’ mechanisms, all of which exist within their own independently derived trust infrastructures. In that perspective, the only way such attempts can succeed is by attacking the efficacy of the Internet itself. In other words, the rules of engagement then revert to the physical ecosystem; if the Internet cannot be controlled, it must be destroyed. An alternative is the establishment of new trust infrastructures fit for the expanded social ecosystems of integrated physical and digital worlds. We hope that this book will help in the intelligent design of such a computer theology.

As we said at the very beginning, we will continue our journey until we come to the end. Then, we will stop.

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