Finding Divinity in Fortran

Abstract

The information revolution is the single most important change in society since the printing press. At no other time has our society benefited from nearly limitless access to information and communication, and the changes brought on by this access have changed, and are changing, society in fundamental ways. Our homes, our workplaces, and our democracy have all been transformed by information and communication technologies.However, our ethics have not kept pace with our technological progress, and the immense changes brought by this this revolution have posed some equally immense moral questions. Indeed, there has been an almost total lack of religious discourse regarding the problems which have arisen out of the information revolution. This thesis is an attempt to change that.The thesis itself is structured as a series of essays on four key problems:1. Intellectual Property, as it relates to Scripture2. Information Ethics, the novel moral theory arising from Computer Ethics3. Robotic Ethics, especially the ethics of robotic warfare4. Hacker Culture, and its implicit spiritualityEach of these essays attempts to tackle one of these key problems, and demonstrate how a religious perspective illuminates some aspect of it. As befits a thesis from a Jesuit, Catholic university, most of the essays are drawn from a Catholic, Christian perspective.