On Spirituality & Technology

OK, well I think it's about time I update this thing. I'm not quite sure what to make of last week's reading by Wertheim, "The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace", because it pretty much represents one of the arguments that I am absolutely trying to argue against in my paper. I think I will use this entry as a stomping ground for combing through my argument about why cyberspace was not created and is NOT utilized for purposes of spiritual transcendence. Actually, for now, I will just post some quotes that I think are relevant to the issue. Later maybe I'll sift through them and make some notes.

"Cyberspace too is potentially open to everyone: male and female, First World and Third, north and south, East and West... cyberspace is also unfractured by national boundaries, a "space" where people of all nations can in theory mix together with mutual ease." (22)

Commentator Allicquere Rosanne Stone has noted that the apparent disembodiment engendered by cyberspace offers a special appeal to teenage boys. With their bodies going through rapid and unnerving changes, Stone suggests that young males are drawn to a realm where they can escape their physical awkwardness and embarrassment. (24)

Michael Heim: Isolation persists as a major problem of contemporary urban society - I mean spiritual isolation, the kind that plagues individuals even on crowded city streets. In the midst of this isolation, "the computer network appears as a godsend in providing forums for people to gather in surprising personal proximity". The net, apparently, will fill the social vacuum in our lives, spinning silicon threads of connection across the globe. (25)

People will only adopt a technology if it resonates with a perceived need... The sheer scale of interest in cyberspace suggests there is not only an intense desire at work here, but also a profound psychosocial vacuum that many people are hoping the Internet might fill. (28)

We modern Westerners have prided ourselves on, even defined ourselves by, our tremendous material achievements - our skyscrapers, freeways, and power stations; our automobiles, supersonic aircraft, space shuttles, and inter-planetary probes. In this modern physicalist age we have navigated the globe, put men on the moon, eradicated smallpox, etc. All these are extraordinary accomplishments, and ones we might well be proud of. (30)

Modern mastery of the physical world is exhibited nowhere more strongly than in our scientific understanding of physical space ... Our understanding of physical space now extends beyond our planet and out to the most distant reaches of the cosmos. (30)

Yet while we have been mapping and mastering physical space, we have lost sight of any kind of spiritual space. In the vision painted by modern science, the physical world is the totality of reality because within this vision physical space extends infinitely in all directions, taking up all available, and even conceivable, territory. (31)

Even though many cyberspace enthusiasts long to escape the limitations of the body, most also cling to the glories of physical incarnation. They may not like physical finitude, especially the part about death, but at the same time they desire the sensations and the thrills of the flesh. Cybernauts' ambivalent regard for the body is indicated by the very metaphor of "surfing" they have chosen. Who more than a surfer revels in the unique joy of bodily incarnation? (8)

The typical cyberspace enthusiast ... wants to enjoy the pleasures of the physical body, but without any of its weaknesses or restrictions. (258)

Just as the Christian body returns in glorified form, so Fisher explains that in contemporary cybernautic dreaming the "body returns in a hypercorporeal synthesis". Transcending the limits of the physical body, this cybernautic body has powers far beyond mortal means. (259)

Immortality, transcendence, omniscience - things some cyberspace enthusiasts are beginning to think of as "possible and plausible". Myself, I cannot imagine a worse fate than being downloaded into immortality in cyberspace. What would be the fate of an immortal cyber-elect? What would one do in cyber-eternity? (264)

The pattern of seeing new technology as a means to spiritual transcendence has been repeated so many times that Erik Davis has coined the term "techgnosis" as a generic description of the phenomena. (278)

Too often, cyber-religious dreaming suggests a tendency to abandon responsibility on the earthly plane. Why bother fighting for equal access to education in the physical world if you believe that in cyberspace we can all know everything? ... Paulina Borsook has noted that the culture of the Silicon Valley cyber-elite is indeed imbued with a deeply self-serving libertarianism that shuns responsibility toward physical communities. It is a tendency she terms "cyber-selfishness". (280)

Unlike genuine religions that make ethical demands on their followers, cyber-religiosity has no moral precepts. One gets the payoffs of a religion without getting bogged down in reciprocal responsibilities. It is this desire for the personal payoff of a religious system without any of the social demands that I find so troubling. In its quest for bodily transcendence, for immortality, and for union with some posited mystical cyberspatial All, the emerging religion of cyberspace rehashes many of the most problematic aspects of Gnostic-Manischaean-Platonist dualism. What is left out here is the element of community and one's obligations to the wider social whole. Ironically, it is in just this communal aspect that cyberspace may ultimately prove to be of the greatest value. (280)