When computers first appeared in the 20th century the means and motivation to self educate, once again suddenly became accessible to the general public, and a similar spurt of growth occurred.

Computing began in the middle of the 20th century but it was not until the widespread distribution of the personal computer that the general public took to it.

Computing gave us binary notation, or rather more properly, showed the practical use of it. Mathematics, or the science of space, number and quantity, could be performed on a base of one and zero, instead of on a base of nine digits and a marker.

In the new mode of thinking the world would now be understood under the principal of duality, or the transformations of opposites, an idea which the Greeks had first propounded in The Philebus of Plato two thousand years ago.

G r e e k s
For the ancient Greeks the corporeal world was based on the principal of opposites, on the relations of yin and yang, alpha and omega. Within the world were darkness and light, hot and cold, left and right, plus and minus, limit and indeterminancy. There was something and nothing, that which is, and that which is not, and being and becoming.

All things were in relationship to the one and the many, and could be defined in terms of duality. Opposites transformed and mutated to build forms and structures. Forms and structures were the constructs or non-physical entities on which the world was based.

Forms could also be concepts or creations of the human mind such as the 'form' of law or the 'form' of justice. They could be principals of ethics such as the 'form of the good' or the 'form of virtue'.

There was argument as to whether the 'form of number' was a creation of the human intellect or a built in law or rule of the universe. Forms in turn could be reduced to their constituent parts and examined, or so it was theorised. Greek philosophers supposed that the study of forms would reveal the origin of the world.

I n s p i r a t i o n
Did the gene pool in the general populace of the ancient Greeks fail to achieve the mental foundation  necessary to support and sustain such cosmic philosophical notions?

Literacy levels in the citizenry were very low. The ancient mind had not yet reached the level of maturity sufficient to provide the necessary mental foundation on which social structures could be built, whereby such theories could be transformed into useful inventions.

Greek thinkers and wise men discussed and recorded all manner of philosophical ideas and notions, but the general populace lived by its own machismo warrior ethic. In the constant wars, usually instigated by Pharoahs, Archons and Caesars, any underlying desire for civilization, culture and self education in the general populace, seems to have been swallowed up in the general  turmoil of the day.

Like children, the ancients seem to have been tough and indestructable. And like children, they seem to have been easily manipulated. With a mind not yet ready for sophisticated mental activity, such philosophical ideas and their attendant flow on inventions fell on stony ground.

Although Democritus postulated the existence of the atom or "the indivisible", a philosophy which explained appearance and disappearance, or coming into being and perishing, no technological developments flowed on.

Greek civilization , although it had a primitive battery, never pursued electric lighting, or the downhill flow of water for hydro power. Instead, they had Archimedes screw pumping water uphill. Alexandrian engineers, such as Ctesibius and Hero devised pumps, wind and hydraulic organs, compressed air engines, and the steam turbine. However, little practical use was found for these inventions, other than some clever inovations in war machines.

Even with the sophisticated mathematical concepts of Thales and Euclid to build upon, the Romans managed to create a number system without the all important placeholder, or zero, resulting in multiplications and divisions being nearly impossible of calculation.

C o m p u t i n g
Computing showed, or shows, that, in technologies based on the mathematics of the relations of one and zero, which is the simplest and most fundamental of all notions, a notion in which the Greeks excelled at theorising and arguing over, but never successfully applied, useful work could be produced.

Medical equipment, transport systems, town and city infrastructure, works in which one hundred per cent accuracy is required, could all be run by computers, or at the very least, make use of the technology.

At their most fundamental level, physical systems display duality. Life itself reproduces by twos. All species and genera of the world have grown by cells repeatedly halving and reforming.

By the end of the 20th century discoveries in physics, chemistry and maths, the great works of literature, classical and popular music, art, history, geography, economics, religions, discussions on all kinds of subjects, all manner of necessary and useful workings of the human mind, were being stored on computer.

As it was now possible to store knowledge efficiently in inorganic matter, for instance, in ones and zeros on the ferromagnetic medium of the coating on aluminium and glass platters of hard drives, much of the valuable wisdom of mankind now began to be transferred from printed matter in books, to the more durable storage medium of digital media.

Any archetypal fear of some future catastrophic book burning, or similar conflagration, was put to rest by the new ability to store knowledge safely. In other words, if it was ever necessary, data could be beamed up to secondary storage on another planet where future colonists could make use of it.

New technology spawned yet more efficient ways of working. You could switch on a calculator, press some keys and get back correct values of a theorem. You could plug in a computer, enter some data, and obtain the correct orbit of the earth about the sun for the next thousand years. Computations under the system of binary notation were shown to be stunningly accurate and successful.

Just as Nature ensures the survival of species by reproducing superfluous to needs, so knowledge, when preserved and distributed in mechanical devices, also seemed to reproduce superfluous to needs.

The internet opened up more possibilities to view and experience the world. Repositories and archives were coming on-line all over the world, and were becoming freely available to the general public. Anyone who had a PC could get an internet connection.

Large Corporations built websites. Governments built websites. Libraries, town councils, utilities, telephone companies, shopping malls, anybody, or any business who had anything to offer, had to have a website. Business was done on a global scale at the speed of light, or rather, was going to be.

Corporate internet connections were seen as new efficiencies and labour saving devices. Electronic commerce was heavily promoted and governments were quick to utilise its benefits. Profits and advancements were expected. There was to be a new Industrial Revolution, the Communications Revolution. Globalisation would break down barriers among peoples. All could participate in the new world order.

New words entered the language. Information technology, information revolution, information super-highway, information overload.

When people asked for brochures on an item in the department store, now they were referred to the website. When old age pensioners telephoned Social Security a recorded message stated that you could now download fact sheets from the website. When Corporation's referred their customers to their website on routine inquiries, it behoved the public to gain web literacy quickly.

Web literacy involved, or involves, many things. You need to know that you can buy and sell over the net, that you can download MP3's and burn CD's, that you can chat on-line without any need for good grammar and spelling, that you can WAP and txt msg, that you can have a firewall and spam, that a hacker can read your mail, that governments can track your web activity, that you can get a screensaver to participate in the SETI program, that the internet is the way of the future.

You can also watch TV, listen to the radio, order from the supermarket, buy and sell shares, gamble, and read books on line. You can play cards or chess with the computer and have nothing to do with the rest of the human race. You can download Dickens and Dostoyevsky and take them to the beach on your laptop.

F u t u r e
Gutenberg's technology, along with public interest in reading and writing, was a major contributing factor to the explosion of culture and growth in the renaissance. Bill Gates' technology, along with public interest in computing, is a mojor contributing factor to the explosion of technology, ideas and cultural exchange in the 21st century.

When knowledge was first distributed widely, as when print media transmitted ideas in the 15th century, a significant leap forward in human mental development seems to have occurred.

When computers distributed information widely, in the latter half of the twentieth century, another significant leap forward seems to have occurred.

Is the information revolution about to open up new worlds? Are new perceptions growing within us? Will the mind be seen as a program or blueprint, and the earth and human form its hardware repository? Will computer technology and the mass communication medium of the 21st century encourage this kind of thinking by opening up new layers of reality?

From hieroglyphs on papyrus and wax tablets, to literature, philosophy and religion hand written on codex, to science and math printed out on paper, to knowledge on-line, each new technology heralded a step forward in mental development.

In the twenty first century computer technology enables access to whole libraries of data through a wafer thin silicon chip. The internet and world wide web now gives us an unlimited communications medium and practically instantaneous connection with others.

Will print and books be replaced by interactive holographs and virtual realities? Will mankind access the web from anywhere on the globe, using headsets and bio-implants, transmitting and receiving satellite data by means of thought?

How will knowledge stored in electronic media serve the human race when it begins to colonise outer space?

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Will other worlds be colonised by our children, who are biologically enhanced with computer chips and mechanical limbs customized to survive and rule the hostile environment of outer space?

Will human ingenuity encode genetic algorithims capable of using the selection processes and combinations of biological matter to replicate and disseminate information. Could meaningful data or information be encoded, stored and retrieved in this way? Such biological systems as bacteria already transport rudimentary information from one replication to the next, sometimes exceedingly fast.

Will the internet become the outernet, or exanet, using robots to run cybercities, data farms and virtual realities. Will humankind terraform planets, using science fiction-like forms of data storage, such as quantum not-mass, or genetically enhanced DNA programmable biomass, which replace silicon chips?

Will the earth become a host for artificial intelligence spawned from the human culture, no longer Gaia, but CyberGaia?

In the information and communications revolution, will we present ourself to the rest of the universe as a benevolent lifeform, as one intent on truth and discovery, on culture, art, science and the work of charity. Or will we present ourself as the acme of life, as landlord and ruler, as rightful inheritor of the universe, having gone forth and multiplied like some pest.

What are our goals and ideals? When we look at our reflection in the web, what do we see? The urge to discover, quests for enlightenment, or base materialism?

Will the web become a forum for reason, culture, science and art, a cyber-eden of self education and discovery, or a fallen angel of business interests, commercial exploitation, advertising and the peddling of wares.

This website is to encourage creative use of the internet, an appreciation of knowledge, art, culture, and science, and a better way of doing things in the new order.