Hello Steve, 
 
In 1994 I was flipping through the pages of a magazine and came  
across an advertisement for a computer game.  My memory of the 
event is foggy, but as I recall, the ad showed two or three teens 
on their knees before a computer monitor.  The text which  
accompanied the ad said something about having a reason to give 
thanks for "Hell on Earth."  Something like that.  I think it  
was an advertisement for Doom 2: "Hell on Earth."  I saw these  
kids bowing down on their knees before the computer and I thought 
this was very strange.  The game was filled with lots of violence, 
plenty of opportunity to kill things.  I'd tried a similar game  
which allowed the player to move about in a 3D maze-like environment. 
It actually made me ill, some kind of motion sickness, I think. 
The overall effect of this ad and the decision to market the game 
in this fashion was unsettling, to say the least.  While contemplating 
the nature of the computer as "god" before which these kids bowed, 
I recalled a song which had been written 30 years earlier by Paul Simon. 
It included the lyrics: 
 
   And the people bowed and prayed 
   To the neon god they made. 
   And the sign flashed out its warning, 
   In the words that it was forming. 
   And the sign said, "The words of the prophets 
   are written on the subway walls 
   And tenement halls." 
 
You recall the song?  It's thought that this song was about the  
relatively new, at that time, invention of television.  People 
were beginning to spend more and more time gathered around the  
television.   30 years later, the world wide web was opening up 
and multi-player games with 3D environments were drawing more 
and more people to computer monitors. 
 
I don't see the appearance of any kind of animated robot convincing 
the world that we should bow down before it.  Not any time soon, 
anyway.  But there are other possibilities that we might explore 
involving the entities known as "Internet" and "World Wide Web." 
We were talking about artificial intelligence, and research like  
"Cyc," which would involve computers acquiring the ability to  
learn and teach themselves, eventually achieving a form of intelligence 
which exceeds that of man.  If you consider the idea of hooking 
something like Cyc up with a Google-like search engine, allowing it 
to analyze all searches performed by people using Google throughout 
the world... or... hooking Cyc into a program like that offered by  
SETI where people allow SETI / Cyc to time-share on their computers... 
or... if you hooked Cyc into something like ECHELON and tasked it 
with analyzing data, gleaning information from the stream...  
perhaps we could visualize a kind of golem that's positioned like 
a "god."  It could be given a label, like "Total Information
Awareness" 
and a logo which looks a lot like the one-eye in a triangle above 
the pyramid on the Great Seal of the U.S.  That would make you wonder 
what the people behind such developments were trying to achieve. 
It would make you wonder if they were people of faith or people who 
were mocking faith, belief in God, and God.  Then again, there's  
very little difference between YAHOO and YHWH.  But it's probably  
wise not to let your imagination get too carried away.  :-) 
 
 
Marnie 
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