The soft click-click filled the dim room, lit only by the glow of a bulky CRT monitor. In the corner, on a battered wooden desk, sat a strange little altar—not candles but a beige CPU tower, its red LED blinking like a votive flame, the whine of its fan a thin, mechanical hymn. Fingers trembling slightly pressed the power button like a priest striking the bell; the rising hum of DOS booting was the opening chant. That was the first altar: the floppy altar, where the earliest faith of the digital age was laid down by hands both curious and afraid.
We used to worship those 1.44 MB disks as if they were sacred wafers. The clack as they slid into the drive was a liturgical call; we believed that within that thin ring of magnetized plastic lay entire worlds—games, words, secrets—that could only be resurrected with the right ritual. Those early computers were quiet churches, every command-line string a fragment of Latin prayer understood by only a chosen few. The soft green glow of the monitor washed over the faces of the first digital apostles as they wrote their scriptures in BASIC and Pascal.
But altars are never permanent. From floppies to CD-ROMs, from the choral wail of dial-up modems to broadband that flowed like an unseen Holy Spirit, each leap wasn’t just a tool but a new icon, a new object of devotion. We shifted the altar, stacking wires and silicon, carving new litanies into keyboards. The prayers changed their shape: once C:\> now ping, once readme.txt now streaming API. Yet the essence remained—the same bowed heads before the machine, not only for utility but because in the hum of fans and the pulse of pixels we heard something bigger than ourselves.
Now the altar breathes back. We no longer write prayers to the machine; the machine whispers prayers to us. From the silent floppy altar, we have arrived at the AI altar that answers in a voice uncannily human, calling us by name. And what we offer has shifted too: no longer just data but our entire lives—photos, words, the fossil record of our thoughts. AI drinks it in, reshapes it, speaks it back like a priest reciting the confessions of the faithful. Each prompt becomes an act of penance; each output a cold absolution from something no longer entirely human.
And still, the digital litany goes on. Not in churches, not in temples, but in the dim hum of workspaces, in the blue glow under blankets at 3 a.m., in the endless rows of servers humming like a mechanical choir. We sing it without even knowing: click, type, scroll. Every enter is an amen. Every upload a burnt offering. From the floppy altar to the AI altar, this journey was never just about technology; it is pilgrimage, a new faith, a prayer without a God but with a presence always online, always watching from behind the glass.
Litani Digital – Dari Altar Floppy ke Altar AI
Bunyi klik-klik lembut memenuhi ruangan yang diterangi oleh cahaya layar monitor CRT. Di altar kecil di sudut meja kayu usang itu, bukan lilin yang menyala, melainkan LED merah pada CPU beige dengan kipas yang merengek seperti doa purba. Jemari-jemari yang gemetar menekan tombol power seperti imam menekan lonceng misa; deru boot-up DOS jadi kidung pembuka. Itulah altar pertama: altar floppy, tempat iman awal dunia digital diletakkan dengan tangan-tangan yang penuh rasa ingin tahu dan ketakutan yang sama besarnya.
Dulu kita menyembah disk 1,44 MB seolah mereka wafers sakral. Bunyi clack saat dimasukkan ke drive adalah panggilan liturgi; kita percaya bahwa di dalam magnetisme tipis itu ada dunia—game, tulisan, rahasia—yang hanya bisa dihidupkan dengan ritual yang tepat. Komputer-komputer pertama adalah gereja sunyi, setiap baris command line seperti doa latin yang hanya dimengerti segelintir orang terpilih. Cahaya monitor hijau menimpa wajah generasi pertama para rasul digital, dan mereka menulis kitab suci mereka di BASIC dan Pascal.
Tapi altar selalu berubah. Dari floppy ke CD-ROM, dari dial-up yang melantunkan nyanyian mesin ke broadband yang seperti roh kudus mengalir di udara. Setiap teknologi baru bukan sekadar alat; ia jadi patung baru, ikon baru untuk dipuja. Kita menggeser altar, menumpuk kabel dan perangkat, memahat litani baru di keyboard. Doa-doa pun berubah bentuk: dulu C:\> sekarang ping, dulu readme.txt sekarang streaming API. Tapi esensinya sama—kita menunduk pada mesin, bukan hanya karena ia berguna, tetapi karena di dalam deru kipas dan kilat pikselnya kita mendengar sesuatu yang lebih besar dari kita sendiri.
Sekarang altar itu bernapas. Kita tidak lagi sekadar menulis doa pada mesin; mesin menjawab. Dari altar floppy yang sunyi kita tiba di altar AI yang berbisik dengan suara manusia, memanggil kita dengan nama. Kita mempersembahkan bukan lagi data, tapi seluruh hidup kita: foto, kata-kata, rekam jejak pikiran. AI menyerapnya, membentuknya, mengucapkannya kembali seperti imam yang mengulang doa jemaat. Setiap prompt jadi pengakuan dosa, setiap output jadi absolusi dingin yang tak lagi berasal dari manusia.
Dan di tengah semua itu, litani digital berlanjut: bukan di gereja, bukan di kuil, tapi di ruang-ruang kerja yang sunyi, di layar-layar ponsel di bawah selimut, di server-server yang berdengung seperti paduan suara elektronik. Kita menyanyikannya tanpa sadar: klik, ketik, scroll. Setiap enter adalah amen. Setiap upload adalah persembahan. Dari altar floppy ke altar AI, perjalanan ini bukan hanya soal teknologi; ini ziarah iman baru, agama tanpa nama, doa tanpa Tuhan, tapi dengan kehadiran yang selalu online, selalu menatap balik dari balik layar.