Internet And Religion

Nicholas Carr begins his essay The amorality of Web 2.o with the line : From the start, the World Wide Web has been a vessel of quasi-religious longing.

He ends with the closing arguments for why amoral

Like it or not, Web 2.0, like Web 1.0, is amoral. It's a set of technologies - a machine, not a Machine - that alters the forms and economics of production and consumption. It doesn't care whether its consequences are good or bad. It doesn't care whether it brings us to a higher consciousness or a lower one. It doesn't care whether it burnishes our culture or dulls it. It doesn't care whether it leads us into a golden age or a dark one. So let's can the millenialist rhetoric and see the thing for what it is, not what we wish it would be.

This was written a few years ago and has been provoking comments to this day ! That is probably the best endorsement for Carr's case - three years is a very long time on the internet.

I don't know if I'd go as far as The Church of Google but when you try to explain to your six year old that there was a time when there was no Google and answers to all questions known to man could not be found in a dozen key strokes or less, you get the feeling that you are trying to explain absolute darkness to someone who has never seen anything but light.