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Originally Posted by ardeegee
"The future is already here, it just isn't evenly distributed yet" -- William Gibson
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And it never was, and never will be.
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That made me wonder about something: for extremely religious Jews, I hear that they aren't allowed to erase the name of God once it is written down-- so would changing the page on an ebook of the Torah violate that rule? A bit of googling, and it seems that they have decided to give a pass for displays on a computer screen:
http://www.jewfaq.org/name.htm
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A late rabbi friend talked about "building a fence around Torah". He was referring to cases where the Torah mandated a severe punishment for a transgression. To avoid the sort of problems that could arise, rabbis over the centuries carefully redefined the required circumstances so that while the punishment might be mandated in theory, in practice it would never be applied.
This is a similar example of what is often called a pilpul. The rabbinical opinion cited is one way of getting around the prohibition. Another might be to call the file that is being displayed the actual residing place of the Name of God, and changing the screen is simple the equivalent of turning the page. The Name is still present, merely no longer visible.
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Dennis