While finishing a generally favourable discussion of prototype implantable ID chips that would allow people to turn part of their anatomy into a credit card, Debbie Terry asked about the possibility that such chips, or more elaborate neural implants, might be 666, the Mark of the Beast foretold in the Bible.

The news director, who was making the report, agreed that, yes, there was a danger, but the Bible, fortunately, prophesied that the Mark would be worldwide and, as of yet, implant chips were only planned for Europe, North America, and Japan.

The assembled Christians looked relieved.

In The Vital Machine, David Channell examines the history of our relationship with technology and argues that a philosophical framework for dealing with them is already in place. The source of our fears, he suggests, lies in an outmoded distinction between organic life and machines, a distinction rooted in the two world-views that have defined and guided Western civilization.

The mechanical view holds that the universe is basically a machine -- we can understand it by breaking it down into its components. Even organisms are machines. The organic view claims that there is something more, some vital, directive force. The whole is more than just the sum of its parts. Even machines are organisms.

 

There is no end to machinery.

Thomas Carlyle