Why did Eve bite the apple? Milton puts this question at the center of Paradise Lost, the greatest long poem in English. Why did Eve listen to Satan, pluck the apple from the tree, and take a bite? This temptation bears on us now. Satan always hides in plain sight. So it’s no surprise that there on the laptop, courtesy of Steve Jobs, you see an image of the apple with the fatal bite taken. It’s a brilliant piece of corporate poetry. Open the computer, Satan says, log on, engage. Bite the apple. Become as gods. In Milton’s story about a garden, an apple, and the quest for godlike knowledge, we can see a reflection of our own encounter with computers and artificial intelligence—and the way we might fall, or navigate it virtuously.
Milton tells us that on a certain day in heaven, prelapsarian Satan, one of the highest-ranking angels, flies into a rage against God. God’s crime? He has revealed to the angels—Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, and Powers—that they are now subordinate to a figure God calls the Son. The Son is the ruler of all the heavenly hosts. He is also, God proclaims, their creator. The Son made them all, and is eternal, like the Father, though up until this day, the angels have known nothing of him.
