enhance the ability of such computers to further fulfill their analogous potential to emulate and facilitate human interactions.

We were initially drawn down this path by the observation that images passed to us from prehistory to the modern era characterize mechanisms that are readily found in the design and implementation strategies of personalized computers. This suggested a continuum in concepts on which human cognition is grounded; a continuum that stretches from the emergence of modern man to the current incarnation of mankind’s most intimate tools. This elicited a curiosity on our part in the human evolutionary process from both an individual and a group viewpoint. Since much of pre- and proto-historical imagery and ongoing cultural development is synonymous with religious environment and practice, this appeared to be an interesting model through which to try to understand general and specific computer developments.

If one starts with a rudimentary view of living organisms, we recognize that they evolve in a manner guided by changes over time in their basic chemical language defined structure. Today, we know this basic chemical language as DNA. The DNA molecule found in the cells of organisms comprises a book that details the design and operational characteristics of the organism. Changes to the design are effected through adaptation and mutation of the book and their efficacy is judged through natural selection. Natural selection, in turn, functions through individual and multi-level mechanisms, religion being a non-trivial example of the latter. Over time, religious communities have grown and interacted, internally and among each other. Within the context of these communities, the individual members interact through special protocols. On a grander scale, entire religious communities interact among themselves through special protocols as well. Driven by theologically inspired stimuli, religions respond individually and collectively to internal and external threats. We see in these processes great parallels to the desired behavior of computer networks in which the facility for human involvement across the full range of needs based stimuli extends from networked personal electronic devices.

Computers have evolved, just as have the distinct individuals of other species, as well as the species themselves and the environments in which they interact; they all continue to evolve. Computers were born as successful entities in and of themselves through a series of mutations that found fertile ground among a variety of concepts that, while certainly interesting in a mechanical world, actually thrive in the electronic world. They have continued to evolve through invention and the application of market pressures. Individual and multi-level selection is effected in the marketplace, both economic and ideological, through a variety of protocols reminiscent of religious practices. Devices with built-in security substrates have recently emerged as a distinct strain of computer, the harbingers of the new species we’ve suggested. In today’s highly networked environment, these devices, be they labeled as, say, smart mobile phones or personal assistants, are computer analogues of people. They attempt to address the complex policy considerations of individual interactions throughout extended technical and social communities. Within the electronic world, they become people. Moreover, their operational capabilities require them to ponder their position and orientation in the world in which they periodically find themselves, and from this contemplation they must derive, in total isolation, the manner in which they will choose to interact with their current surroundings. It is this deeply contemplative state, coupled with the derivation of trust in policy from it, that strikes us as growingly analogous to an early stage of ecstasy that is a recurring theme in the religious experience, expressed in meditation, and reflected in art and ritual.

Lest our discussions appear too opaque, let us reiterate that the policy we’re talking about involves us as individuals from the time we wake up in the morning until we go to bed at night. Much of it

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