A while back, I started to write on the effects of technology. I focused on the physical and psychological effects and noted some of the positives and negatives. While doing that research and interacting with readers some notably not physical aspects of the tech world were brought to my attention. For example, one reader informed me that when Apple launched its first computer, it priced it at $666 and 66 cents. The creepy parallel between the cost of one of the most influential and important computers in history and the apocalyptic number of the beast found in the biblical book of Revelation seemed like it was too much. But after looking it up, I confirmed it (cofounder Steve Wozniak stated that it was because he liked repeating numbers). When I mentioned this interesting fact to a friend, he pointed out something obvious that I had never noticed before - the name and the logo of that same company (Apple with a logo featuring an apple with a bite) - has a biblical flavor pointing to Adam and Eve who were tempted by a serpent to eat the forbidden fruit and thereby brought the destruction of the world.
That same friend noted that the programming language that tech giant Google (now Alphabet) designed their application using programming language, Python. Python creator, Guido van Rossum, has claimed that the name comes not from the snake but from an old BBC television comedy sketch series, Monty Python's Flying Circus. His supposed intentions aside, the word “python” has another Adam and Eve parallel (pythons, of course, being serpents). And perhaps more interestingly, the Koine Greek word python (Πύθων) also means ‘divination’ in the Bible (e.g. see Acts 16:16 where a young possessed woman has the “spirit of python”).1
Another reader mentioned yet another strange biblical allusion common in the tech industry: the “daemon process”. In computing, a daemon runs continuously as a background process to “wake up” and handle service requests. The use of daemon processes are common in email handlers, Linux utility programs, and in the Hypertext Transfer Protocol daemon (HTTPd) which runs on every web server. The process was named after a thought experiment by James Clerk Maxwell (dubbed Maxwell’s demon) in which Maxwell used an imaginary demon to explain his ideas regarding thermodynamics. The term daemon is just an older spelling of the word demon. [1] A process named daemon that runs on every web server? Perhaps just an unfortunate naming and a coincidence. Perhaps. But interestingly the same name was used in a seemingly unrelated project sponsored by the European Union. In January 2021, the EU established a project to ensure that the numerous Artificial Intelligence algorithms are properly integrated and they named it…the Daemon project. Was it named after the daemon process? No. It is an acronym. According to the European Commission’s website, the Daemon project stands for “aDAptive and sElf-Learning MObile Networks.” [2]
So here we have some of the largest tech companies, most common computer processes and applications, and a giant EU project all with very strange (and dark) biblical allusions within their names and brands. It is quite possible that nothing dark, satanic or even spiritual was intended by the people involved. Perhaps the reasons were truly innocuous (as Wozniak argued) or coincidental (as the daemon process naming purports to be). And it is certainly true that sometimes we see patterns and meaning where the people involved intended none.
But there is something interesting about names that any student of history notices. Whether they were intentional or not, names often have an uncanny prophetic nature to them. Think of Bernie Madoff who famously made off with billions of stolen retirement funds. Or think of Amy Winehouse the singer who famously died after drinking too much. Biblically, this happens all the time. Consider Moses (whose name means to draw out) drawing his people out of Egypt or Jacob (whose name can mean liar) using deception to accomplish his objectives. The truth is that sometimes names point to something that goes beyond the intentions of those doing the naming. C.S. Lewis discusses this phenomenon in his excellent, Perelandra,
“All in a moment of time he perceived that what was, to human philologists, a mere accidental resemblance of two sounds, was in truth no accident. The whole distinction between things accidental and things designed, like the distinction between fact and myth, was purely terrestrial. The pattern is so large that within the little frame of earthly experience there appear pieces of it between which we can see no connection, and other pieces between which we can. Hence we rightly, for our use, distinguish the accidental from the essential. But step outside that frame and the distinction drops down into the void, fluttering useless wings.”
Is it possible that the names given to some of the central technologies like Apple, Google, or the programming languages and processes that make them work that in turn shape our everyday lives have meaning beyond what was intended? If Lewis is right, yes.
But I do not want to just dismiss the possibility of intent. Almost all the people involved in these names and brands were thoughtful, educated, and calculating. It is doubtful that they just missed the potential dark meaning behind some of what they did. And I am not the first to note that there are a lot of strange spiritual allusions within the tech world and not all of it is accidental. In the 1998 book, TechGnosis: Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Age of Information, Erik Davis notes that eastern mysticism and technological development have long had a symbiotic relationship and that neo-pagans and mystics were some of the earliest adaptors of the internet and technology and some of the earliest developers joined in these ceremonies. Plenty of tech titans have espoused the benefits of mysticism, psychedelic trances, and meditation. So the assertion that there is zero significance to these otherwise strange names and logos can’t just be assumed.
We live in a world of technology. We live on our phones and our computers. We go from screen to screen in our work, our leisure, and even our worship. This widespread adoption of technology has come about slowly and then all at once. And almost all the adoption was done by default rather than with sober reflection. What is this technology that we have adopted and what is it doing to us? Is it a neutral thing that can be used for good or for ill or does it have a direction to it? And is there more to what we are doing than simply manipulating the physical world? Does it have meaning that is deeper, more existential, or transcendent? And who are the people that developed it? What did they think about these things? What intentions did they really have?
[1] https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/definition/daemon
[2] https://cordis.europa.eu/article/id/442590-laying-the-groundwork-for-beyond-5g-success
HT: François Benoux (twitter handle, _benoux_)
Re. your imagery, also note (with entirely different intent and Christian-evocative *positive* lyrics):
https://shinedown.lnk.to/ThreatToSurvivalAW
Good stuff! As a former consultant to many in Sili-Valley, I urge you to keep going along these lines—with eyes fixed above, on Christ. There are many more creepy-crawlies there than most people imagine. The fact that the inventor/purveyors of these technologies dismiss any larger significance for them is itself a big ‘tell’. Satan disguises himself as an angel of light, writes the Apostle Paul; therefore, he continues, we should expect that his minions will also dissemble. (See, e.g., 1st Corinthians 11:13-15 & Ephesians 6:12.)
“Innocuous" is a flat-out lie; they keep their own kids away from them! “Coincidental" is a necessary out-working of their godless worldview. Under the sovereign God, there is no such thing as true chance. (See e.g., Heb 1:3, or Prvbs 16:33 & 21:2.) Some serve the enemy with fuller awareness of who he is and what he’s about, but preferring the juicy-steak eat-drink-and-be-merry pyramid-dominating wide-asleep “blue pill” in the meantime. (IMHO, in these elite circles, the classic soul-selling crossroads devil’s-bargain trope is a lot more real, common, and explicit than most people think.)
But most simply repeat lies they regard as small-t truth because they—and the society they live in—hate The Truth who is Christ. To get along in it with more lies is easier than getting burned at the stake. (I can’t help but think of Jack Nicholson’s line: “You want the truth? You can’t handle the Truth!”) They too are willfully self-deceived, thus accountable, but in a different way than say, the members of Led Zep, who went in with occult eyes wide shut. (See, e.g., 2nd Thess 2:8-12, Rom 1:18-33, & John 14:6.)