JAMES PINKERTON: When Tech Elites Lose Their Religion. If they no longer have faith in the digital empire they’ve created, who will?

Speaking of centurions and imperiums, one can’t help but compare the digital status quo to the Roman Empire of yore. Yes, at its geographic peak, Rome dominated much of the known world, and yet there was a hollowness to its value system. As Edward Gibbon explained in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, long before the Empire actually fell, its guiding faith had fallen. “The wisest among the Pagans,” Gibbon wrote, “had already disclaimed its usurped authority.”

And then, seemingly out of nowhere, came a new faith. As doctors of the Christian church once said, back in the days when they were sure of themselves, sine auctoritate nulla vita—“nothing lives without authority.”

So who, or what, will provide the new authority? That we don’t yet know. All we know is that it’s coming, because vacuums are always to be abhorred.

Read the whole thing.