By Ian | 25 February, 2016
A few years ago, I was involved in several projects where it could be foreseen, that the Internet would have big influences on the way we work.
As the Internet was young, it was a tool for communicating. Then came the world web web allowing us to use the Internet as a massive big library of knowledge or beliefs. It allows us to communicate, learn and exchange
thoughts with similar minded together online. It has since changed the way we work, communicate and spend time with others. Due to computerisation, more and more ‘dumb’ devices like meters, homes, lighting, cars are being connected. The industry is talking about the Internet of Things (IoT) - an acronym to describe a ‘cloud’ of devices or things connected together. I find the concept interesting as the word ‘Things’ implies something which cannot as yet be specified.
The market is pushing to establish a core set of standards or beliefs on how things within IoT shall communicate and work together. The advantages of standards in the long term is reduced costs, improved services / security / safety. Not having a core set of beliefs will result in hundreds of systems based on their own standards as well as “belief” wars of which is the better system.
Looking around in our world we also have a ‘cloud’ of other things - Religions. There are hundred or perhaps thousands of faiths on this planet, starting from simple concepts like ‘Shit will Happen’, mainstream religions, to entity relationship concepts as described in The Knowledge Book.
Some of these belief systems have been around for a couple of thousand years, do not interoperate with others and cause tremendous amount of damage.
Every now and again a couple of mainstream religions will inform us that work is going on to find some consensus on similar concepts, however perhaps we need a shift on how we perceive religion.
Should we perhaps be thinking of religion or beliefs as some kind of Faith of Things (FoT) where the ‘things’ here are the belief systems, concepts, people, the non visible family and cultural systems, etc.
A Faith of Things (FoT) concept and term has the advantage that:
- their is no historic emotional binding
- it can be used to collect certain core concepts or tenets from other belief systems
- it allows other faith systems to exist
If the world is to change for the better, it is necessary to bridge the divide between religions. Of course, the misuse of a religion as a control instrument, a scepter of power, or as a trigger for the release of systemic hate, cannot be prevented but FoT would be a start to a better world.