Sometimes, when I'm in a bit of a reflective mood, I think it's possible to see icons, or images that convey something of God, just about everywhere we look. Even on a computer screen, in those three little letters www.
Most people nowadays are familiar with those initials, which stand for World Wide Web. The Web is one of the magical features of modern culture, which so much define the world we live in that it seems both miraculous, and impossible to imagine now living without it. It is defined, by the man who invented it, as 'the set of all information accessible using computers and networking.' It has its origins in a whole different way of wanting to communicate and receive information.
We are all used to dealing with text (it's what you're reading now). With text, you have to read one word after another to make sense of what the writer is saying. Even if, like some readers of whodunits, you turn to the last page first, you still have to make sense of it in the order of the words on the page. But what if you could write and read completely non-sequentially, so that you could approach the content in whatever order, or way, you wanted? This possibility was the idea behind hypertext, a form of non-sequential writing. It would mean that if you came across a word or concept you didn't understand, or wanted to explore in greater detail, you could do so without having to put that text down and pick up a dictionary or encyclopedia. There would be some way of getting to the information you wanted from wherever you were, and then returning to that point afterwards - or going somewhere else altogether. You could look up the meaning of a word, or view a picture, or listen to a sound or tune, or contact a person or place, or discuss something with the author, or embark on a different train of thought entirely. Of course, it's hard to imagine doing this with a conventional kind of book, but it's just the kind of thing a computer lends itself too, with the idea of 'links' from one part of a document to another part, or to another document, or ... well, almost anything that you or, better, the author can think of.
This still wasn't enough for Tim Berners-Lee, a young computer software consultant who was working at the time for CERN, in Geneva. His great idea came from this 'suppose': 'Suppose all the information stored on computers everywhere were linked. Suppose I could program my computer to create a space on which anything could be linked everything and connects everything. It is also grace-full, by which I mean that Berners-Lee's intention was that all this information should be freely available, easily and at no charge, to anyone. That's also like God, who, as Jesus says, sends his rain upon the just and the unjust: his gifts are for everyone.
Like God, too, that idea isn't very popular. Ever since the Internet took off, there have been people who have been obsessed with the idea of finding a way to 'make money out of the Internet.' (The Internet isn't the same as the WWW; it actually refers to the network of networks of computers, that makes the WWW possible.) But this is just like all the religious people down the ages who have tried to get rich from religion. Just as God is all generous giving, so the concept behind the WWW is something gracious, partaking of that quality of the divine.
So whenever we surf the Web, it's appropriate to do it with an Alleluia, and a prayer that its amazing grace may continue to be freely available for all. Then even our computer screen can be an icon: a window upon God.
1 Tim Berners-Lee. Weaving The Web. London: Texere, 2000
Published in the Marston Times, October 2002