Yvon Avenel: The piece that you published with Tim Jurgensen just before summer, entitled “Computer Theology,” brings together several subjects we rarely see discussed together: computing and religion, the evolution of societies and of the Web. In it, you talk about smart cards and personal devices as the most evolved of a species of computers born in the 50s, with mainframes, but which today are more and more sociable, capable of interacting with their environment. What’s the meaning behind your cross references to religion and computing?

Yvon Avenel: How would you characterize these personal devices in both the evolution of information technology and in human evolution? And what are the characteristics of these “transcendent personal devices,” as you construct this conception?

Bertrand du Castel: Personal devices such as smart cards, RFID tags, cell phones with an embedded secure core element, etc. are at the forefront of an emerging technological infrastructure within which people live and work. The characteristics that make personal electronic devices distinct from other computers are rooted in the manner in which they are constructed and they are used. Their very being is obviously grounded in the concept of trust. They are capable of establishing a trusted platform that can launch at least our identity, but more importantly our personality into both digital and physical worlds. Yet what’s more interesting is this capacity to represent us in a world that is seeing an overall explosion in ever more complex interactions, while also constituting a true external memory. These personal devices become part of ourselves in a physical sense and subsume our person in an electronic sense. By pursuing this parallel between human and information technology evolution, we can see that personal devices endowed with ever-growing physical and symbolic communications as well as provisioning capabilities, beyond the sensori-motor differences, for example, trace the same evolutionary path as the humans they now represent, and with whom they ultimately tend to blend. That’s the most interesting aspect, one which really ups the ante. With advances in biological and other electronic circuitry, we can expect to become an even more integrated part of the digital network ourselves, becoming in a sense our own transcendent personal device. The notion of transcendence allows us to design personal devices that are (and will be even more so, in the future) endowed with the capacity to communicate through evolved protocols and languages as well as to self-actualize and reason. We understand transcendence through the Maslow scale^*where it appears at the top of the pyramid. It corresponds to the most advanced expression of human needs, manifested through the individuals’ capacity to expand their interaction potential and to affirm their presence to the largest possible society. By mapping this scale with different steps in human evolution (family, clan, tribe, etc.), transcendence corresponds to the largest social ecosystem, which we call ‘égalité’ and which answers to the governance of our modern societies, in which religion, constitutive of trust, is iconic.

Yvon Avenel: These personal devices that use their capacity to interact and to reason on behalf of the bearer, in order to effect policies in trusted infrastructures, contributing to their constitution and maintenance, are also vulnerable to attack, and to greater and greater interactions with the internet and web, where trust is fairly low, if not inexistent. How do you see the internet and web evolving then. Is a trusted internet possible?

Bertrand du Castel: Our hope is also to contribute, through this book, to the intelligent design of what we call computer theology, that is to say, a framework of beliefs and rules of conduct that would form the base for trusted systems reflective of evolved social systems of religion and government. Without trust, there is no humanity. But if there are no conflicts, if order rules supreme, there is no humanity either. If the internet cannot be controlled – it must be destroyed. We see that existing social ecosystems try to take the greatest advantage of the internet’s connectivity and capabilities by exerting growing control in this sector. But we also see new social ecosystems directly constituted from internet capabilities. This is true of Google, which constructed an economic model based purely on a dynamic and entirely appropriate system of description of the value of elements that exist in the web, which has become a system of trust that operates with fairly sophisticated algorithms. This system is impracticable in the “real” world, while projecting mystical constructs akin of religion. We also find social mechanisms in the Internet. We’ve already seen wars. There will be religious wars also. Remember, we’ve only emphasized the illuminated side of religion, even as we have evoked the threats and conflicts between the state and privacy; we could have also developed a conception of the dark side, by trying to pursue our juxtaposition in that domain. Science-fiction is replete with such themes. However, our message is overall one of hope. Through a better understanding of both computing and religion, perhaps we’ll help in a richer cohabitation promoted by ever more powerful personal devices.•

^*A scale that defines a hierarchy of human needs: physiological needs, safety and security needs, belonging and love needs, esteem needs, the need to know and understand, aesthetic needs, self-actualization, and transcendence at the top.

This article has been republished on Smart Card Trends May 2, 2009, with the following introduction by Yvon Avenel:

‘Computer Theology’ is an unprecedented and original reflection on technology, and in particular that of smart security.It is not only at the center of a highly theoretical and epistemological game sketching out a vast and highly erudite fresco on the history of humanity and its technology, but also at the heart of current events, rocked by a major crisis in confidence, and yet already taken in hand with ambitious projects and initiatives in favor of a new economy or of a Safer or Trusted Internet, thanks to Smart Personal Devices.