that most holy books carry somewhere deep within their bowels.

Yet, in order to propound, preserve and defend their version of an interpretation of the Koran, or their vision of the future of Pan-Arabic unity, albeit just a new take on the old and unlamented Ottoman Empire, more about which never, the fedaykin and Jihadists have no compunction about using modern technology to further their
ends and means. If it allows them to move faster, harder and destroy more quickly, then it's a pretty cool thing.

If it involves making them pretty close to useless, then it's a bad thing.

Technology itself has come to be worshipped. There are many unchurched, unmosqued and unsynagogued who have no holy books in their houses beyond a programming manual for Linux.
There are people on this planet who have spent more time and money on worshipping comic book series and heroes and action figures and made pilgrammages to comic conventions world wide with a sense of devotion that would sicken the Buddha himself.

Technology doesn't only include computers and cellaphones and PDAs and satellites, it is also in microwave ovens, firearms, and vehicles.
It is also in microscopes, mining equipment and textile factories.
It is in genetic engineering, dye chemistry, and the art of creating a knock-off pair of Nikes that don't fall apart during the first monsoon.

Yet technology doesn't have a soul. A shovel and the plow were innovations in their time, and they had a marvelous and far-reaching impact on civilization and culture, yet they are not worshipful items unless they are holy-ized by association with some famous or mythical figure. Excalibur and the Holy Grail are wonderful examples of worshipped toys that if they really existed would be much more mundane than the fantasies about them.

South Korea is supposed to be one of the most technologically advanced societies in the world, according to a recent BBC news article. Yet, what do they believe? They are also supposed to be almost as censorious and mean as their neighbors to the north, only with more of a Las Vegas redux fashion thingy going on. Yet, both upper Korea and lower have shared traditions that are separated only by politicians and a line on the map.

The irony of "terrorists" and "drug barons" using technology to their advantage while supposedly 'up-to-date' governmental agencies who are supposed to be stopping said 'terrorists' and 'drug barons' are fighting with their own governments in order to update their investigative abilities and machinery beyond the Carter administration is just so 'David and Saul' that I have to cry to stop myself from laughing. That an Afghani tribesman can wander out of the hills wearing camel hide sandals and clutching an Enfield MkIII bolt-action rifle and within weeks learn to access a Google Earth image that will allow him to send a Russian surplus anti-tank missile to disrupt a power grid substation long enough to allow his compatriots to attack a sewer treatment plant necessary to the rebuilding of his country while Beltway bureaucrats are commuting into Langley from Maryland in order to attend meetings designed to discuss the possibility of upgrading the automatic soap dispensers in the American embassies around the world with an electric eye that won't disrupt cellphone connections while diplomats are washing their grubby paws while talking to Condoleeza on a secure line is just patently absurd. That this same Afghani fellow can still cling to out-dated religious and cultural conclusions while faced with technology that will allow him to access the ENTIRE WORLD is also absurd.

And what place does belief hold in the lives of the well-dressed, well-heeled, warmly-fed, spent their lives in air-conditioned comfort technologically blessed American bureaucrat or sycophant?
Do they hold any beliefs beyond the bumper sticker mentality of the Red and Blue morons that the media would like us to believe in?
Do they hold forth on religious matters that would influence their choice of market stocks or underware selection? Do they care whether their sons or their daughters are circumcised or not? Do they care whether their ancestors were formed from clay 6000 years ago or were gallivanting around the African plains clutching stones and skulls 2 million years ago? And do we really care?

Porn is a big thing on the internet. A casual glance at any of it strongly suggests that it doesn't do much to add to the art or the philosophy of anything. It is possible that there is some real art out there somewhere, but how would one find it and do the majority of viewers really care? You can find nude art on the net. Some of it was painted or carved thousands of years ago and some was made back in the 1870s. You can find the photo experiments of Thomas Eakins and Man Ray. You can find the comics of Manara. You can read portions of the 'Molly Bloom' portion of 'Ulysses' or you can read the most recent installment of a forty-two chapter online novel about serial incest. The lawyers of the people who create porn would have us believe that this is a legally and culturally important thing, albeit the idea of lawyers telling us that 'giving the people what they want' also applies to violent action films and 'cop-killer' gangsta rap.

That's just regular old sex porn. Man on woman, man on man, women on woman style stuff. There is also a wide series of even more disgusting and inventive stuff, involving amputees, surgical scars, plaster casts like those used on broken limbs, animals, machinery, and clothes pins. There are sites about dragons... never mind. There are sites about alien invasions of the personal sort. There are sites about religious rite inversions and perversions. And there are the children. The babies. The toddlers.

Who reads and looks at this stuff? Cabinet ministers, rock stars, preachers, teachers, doctors, cops and housewifes. A major industry exists to fill websites with images and stories that are so disgusting that I will have to go wash out my mind from just thinking about them. Police worldwide spend millions of dollars trying to shut down these sites and catch the creators and their customers. People go to prison and get killed for making and buying this stuff.

And yet, there are those who die for trying to make peace. There are those who die for trying to heal. There are those who are mutilated, tortured and burned for trying to be human. Those who kill them and torture them are doing it not just for the obscene and disgusting gratification of it, but to defend tradition and please a god.

People were doing disgusting things before modern technology made it easier for them to talk about it and do it more efficiently. But when IBM sold card-sorting machines to the Nazis in order to seperate Jews by heritage down to the seventh generation, then commerce became as evil as the beliefs that made the purchase necessary. Efficiency is part of a belief system, yet if the beliefs are inefficient, even unnecessary, then the technology needs to be used to make that known.
The truth may not set you free, but it can make the mottos on your t-shirts a little more dangerous.