Taking this story back to the starting point of religion, Kelly reminds us that the equation of information with reality, the universe, and God is not new:
Central to the evolution of Western civilization from its Hellenistic roots has been the notion of logic, abstraction, and disembodied information. The saintly Christian guru John writes from Greece in the first century: “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and Word was God.” Charles Babbage, credited with constructing the first computer in 1832, saw the world as one gigantic instantiation of a calculating machine, hammered out of brass by God. He argued that in this heavenly computer universe, miracles were accomplished by divinely altering the rules of computation. Even miracles were logical bits, manipulated by God. (Kelly 2002)
At this point it also becomes evident what significance Kelly finds in theologizing technology and in bringing religion back to the picture. The notion of universal computing—this most basic rule of the universe, or the “operating system” of the cosmos—is, according to Kelly, what binds us all together. In this “mystical doctrine of universal computing . . . we are linked to one another, all beings alive and inert, because we share, as John Wheeler said, ‘at the bottom—at a very deep bottom, in most instances—an immaterial source.’ This commonality, spoken of by mystics of many beliefs in different terms, also has a scientific name: computation” (Kelly 2002).
Information technology binds us together not simply through the banal and ubiquitous tools of communication, such as e-mails or blogs, but also through its evocation of the most basic reality of the universe and life. Notwithstanding material differences in the world, at the bottom we (humanity, Earth, and the universe) are all one. Kelly concludes his article by quoting Danny Hillis (a key figure in the development of computing) saying, “[Computation] has an almost mystical character because it seems to have some deep relationship to the underlying order of the universe” (Kelly 2002).
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Media and New Capitalism in the Digital Age