Pancomputationalism is an idealist notion that the whole world is a vast computation, with information as the essential substrate of nature. Faith that physical reality is ultimately comprehensible, and even computable, rests on the assumption that the universe is a computer, a computation, or at least a deductive system. Pancomputationalism simply views nature through the eyes of modern technology. For, the computer is the latest version of the mechanist metaphor, an icon of modern life and thought. A notion of the universe as an analog computer that somehow computes itself from one momentary state to the next is by itself trivial. It tells us no more than ordinary physics with differential equations, or the notion of causality as normally conceived. The operation of such a device (its “programming”) resides in its physical structure. The idea that the universe is a digital computer goes further. Its operation is a distinct affair from its structure. The digital computer must be programmed, and therefore programmed by someone. The program imposes on the machine a (temporary) virtual structure that is separate from its physical architecture and expressible in a binary code. Perhaps this idea finds acceptance because laws of physics have long been thought of as transcendent and separate from nature. Originally they were thought to be divine decrees.