Once there was a joke in which scientists build a giant computer that contains all
human knowledge and reasoning ability. They ask it one question: "Is there a God?"
It replies: "There is now!"
I'm not so sure this is only a joke. The internet is still in its infancy - and consitutes an
amazing world-wide structure that no one imagined. Ten , twenty years from now,
who knows? One day, it's a novelty that gives you cheap plane tickets and free porn,
tomorrow, with some neural nets and artificial intelligence thrown in, perhaps a
collective planetary intelligence.
I have no fears about any "Terminator" fantasies here, but archaic, dead -end
structures like the Watchtower will suffer in the face of MANY emerging technologies.
The idea of a god-like box in everyone's house that can tell you just about anything
must gall them.
I would have no trouble with the idea of the Internet Apotheosized. If you already
see God in every flower and tiny microbe, then this is just another manifestation
writ in silicon instead of carbon.
metatron