makeshift

Our generation is witnessing a gradual (but unprecedented) shift in its relationship with everyday technology. Where previously the internet has been a mechanism connecting human being to human being, the semantic web represents the next crucial step into a world in which the internet forms a complex, real-time link not just between people but between inanimate objects. Before long, your toaster will be having a conversation with your car. While you’re on the phone to a loved-one, the picture frames around your living room will prod your memories of the person you're talking to. Even performing simple functions, these conversant domestic objects will form some kind of total system - a complex web of simple synaptic functions - a global supercomputer. For the first time in mankind’s history we will have made a processor with no off button; events and trends flocking across its thin, spherical surface like meteorological patterns. Is it conceivable that these fluctuations will constitute semi-autonomous thought… even total awareness? A global brain?

What an evolutionary twist it would be if, after centuries of mysticism and superstition, mankind were to finally manufacture God - not 'up' (in heaven) - but as the sum-total of our technological project on earth. The last possible Babel.