'Deus in Machina': Godscapes in Cyberspace

Abstract

In popular ideology, The Computer has been given many of the traditional attributes of a god. Anyone who has had a sales assistant insist that the total must be right because the computer did the addition, or an airline clerk maintain that the computer ticketing cannot be in error, has experienced a little of the cultural mythos of infallibility that now attaches to the computer. Where once we believed in a recording angel assiduously writing down the events of our lives, our sins now leave small snail-trails of electronic data in cyberspace - our salaries and financial transactions, our travel details, our phone calls, records of our homes, our cars, our library books ... all is recorded. All of this raises questions relating to who is looking, and why. And science fiction writers, paranoid and vjsionary to the last, have been offering some fascinating extrapolations on this topic.