It's Mac-Tron Time
From 'Science Wish List' by R Bartlet (March 29 1994)

Perhaps one of the most beneficial discoveries civilisation could make is to realise that events cannot be solely attributed to chance and coincidence, for we might live in a universe that is ordered - a 'cosmic computer'.

This cosmic computer would interconnect everyone and everything to form a unity. since it includes infinite 'subuniverses' such as what I call hyperspace (forming the so called meta-universe and possibly partly accounting for dark matter), the cosmic computer's connections would make it infinitely powerful and give it infinite artificial intelligence.

In my previous letter to Science Wish List, I stated 'Many scientists think the universe is the ultimate computer . . .' Today I'd like to further explore that idea - the 1st exploration was inspired by the article 'How Mac Changed the World' (TIME magazine - Jan. 31, '94) and the book 'The Death and Life of Superman' by Roger Stern - the 2nd by 'Your Remote Control May Have "Hidden" Buttons' tan article my brother Darryl had published in ELECTRONICS AUSTRALIA in April of 1993) and the movie 'My Stepmother is an Alien' (a comedy about sending a radio wave to a planet in another galaxy to save it from an increase in its gravity).

MAC
To paraphrase a sentence in the article 'How Mac Changed the World', it seems possible that any good historian (of a century from now) will trace the universe's ancestry to this statement by Palo Alto Research Center's (P.A.R.C. is about 20 miles south of San Francisco, USA) Alan Kay - 'The next stage of the machines (computers) is for them to disappear (as objects).'

If science is correct when it speculates that the universe may be the ultimate computer, highly intelligent parts of the Cosmic Computer, viz peoples could learn to manipulate actual reality's material objects and immaterial information with the same magic we use to manipulate the world in virtual reality.

When we can do this, computers will disappear (as objects within the universe). Then we'll go beyond what's on-screen and step directly into cyberspace. That's how we can change the world and use shape-shifting powers and, in the words of former Apple chairman Steven Jobs, 'put a dent in the universe' (why stop at making dents - the power to wisely transform reality would make us messengers of God and we could go back in time to create the universe).

(elec)TRON(ics)
At first I naturally assumed a radio transmission like the one in 'My Stepmother is an Alien' is obviously impossible in reality - but then I realised I might be wrong. And this is why:

1) In computers, a pulse of electrical energy may correspond to what is called a BIT tBInary digiT).

2) If, as some scientists speculate, the universe is a giant computer; an infinitesimal pulse of electromagnetic energy would make up what could be called a 'bit of space' (and a 'bit of subspace', too).

3) When a remote control is used on the electronic components of a television, the remote's infrared beam could be said to reprogram the set's brightness, volume, channel selector, etc.

4) so a radio wave with the correct properties might when transmitted to a planet in this 'electronic' universe, reprogram its surrounding bits of space and subspace.

5) Since Einstein concluded that gravity is a result of the curving of space-time, reprogramming bits of space and subspace should result in the altering of gravity.