The cities of the future will be huge and super-dense — but will they also be alive? Could the increasingly complex systems needed to manage the next generation of megacities become our first true artificial intelligence?

People have speculated before about the idea that the Internet might become self-aware and turn into the first "real" A.I., but could it be more likely to happen to cities, in which humans actually live and work and navigate, generating an even more chaotic system?

Witness the flurry of books and research projects we’ve seen in recent years exploring Buddhism and neuroscience, Buddhism and physics, Buddhism and psychology, Buddhism and therapy.

But something about this comparison rings false to me. Neuroscience and physics and psychotherapy are the fascinations of scientists and intellectuals, but they are not the dominant forces that have shaped our culture’s religious and philosophical heritage. For better or worse, Christianity still takes that prize: despite waning influence in recent years it remains the dominant spiritual zeitgeist of our era. Even if you grew up Jewish, or a Dharma Brat, you are not completely exempt from Christianity’s influence, just as the most diehard Mac users are still, in some ways, dependent on the much larger world of PCs.