Review:The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace 72
"Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the Holy City, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God..."
--- The Book of Revelation
For faithful Christians, death isn't the end but the beginning of a journey whose final destination is the Heavenly City of New Jerusalem, wherein the elect will dwell forever in the light of the Lord. In this weightless city of "radiance," adorned with sapphire, emerald, topaz, God himself "will wipe away every tear.."
It's one of religion's loveliest images, and the promise of this radiant space has sparked countless quests, over centuries, for this new Jerusalem or its equivalent.
More and more spiritualists believe that this promised and long awaited land is cyberspace, a notion explored in Margaret Wertheim's new book "The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace" (Norton, US$24).
Cyberspace is a new kind of radiant space -- infinite, mysterious, dazzling, yet filled with countless ethereal connections between people.
This new view of the invisible world of the Internet was perhaps inevitable. From the first, the Net has, in its typically idiosyncratic and unpredictable way, attracted mystics and seekers along with techies, nerds, and engineers hammering away at the software and hardware, the infrastructure, that make the Net and the Web work.
This may be the only space in which geeks and gurus seem attracted in roughly equal numbers, doing radically different things side by side for utterly divergent reasons.
The nerd culture and the spiritual one have little to do with one another, unless you consider the Mp3 player a miracle, as I do. Their paths rarely cross, and if they are conscious of one another, it's rarely remarked on.
They probably wouldn't get along anyway. The geeks are louder, and lots more quarrelsome; they also have a lot more control and understanding of the technology of the Net and the Web. Yet the two tribes are connected; both dwell and wander in the same realm.
The culture of the geeks is increasingly well documented in articles, discussions. The seekers are more remote, as Erik Davis details so well in his book "Techgnosis; myth, magic + mysticicism in the age of information (Harmony Books, US$25)". In "Techgnosis," Davis describes how the technology of the Net and the Web has unveiled a new kind of techno-mysticism, replete with utopian dreams, apocalyptic visions, digital phantasms, and alien obsessions.
The contrast between the two worlds is sometimes staggering. The mystics are nearly incomprehensible, the programmers obsessively literal.
Although pornographers, hackers and virus-makers have always attracted most of the attention, the pilgrims have, from the first, been walking beside them. Next to sex and e-trading, nothing keeps a search engine humming longer than typing in "spirituality," or "religion."
"I have experienced soul-data through silicon," Kevin Kelly, the former executive editor of Wired, declared in a l995 forum in Harper's magazine. "You'll be surprised at the amount of soul-data we'll have in this new space." He was right. It is surprising.
Cyberspace philosopher Michael Heim agrees with Kelly. "Our fascination with computers is...more deeply spiritual than utilitarian," he wrote in an essay. In our "love affair" with computing machines, "we are searching for a home for the mind and heart."
Wertheim's thinking is provocative, imaginative. E-mailing, messaging, connecting to distant people in sometimes powerful ways across great distances has always had a spiritual feel. The ability to share a personal, sometimes intimate experience with a presence about whom one knows absolutely nothing material - looks, age, ethnicity - is sometimes astounding.
Cyberspace, writes Wertheim, has in recent years become the focal point of immense spiritual yearning, one whose roots go all the way back to the Middle Ages.
But Wertheim, a commentator and science writer, takes a densely academic approach to this potentially riveting subject. Her writing is stiff, formal. There is, she argues, an important parallel between cyberspace and "the spatial dualism of the Middle Ages." Spiritualists or philosophers might know what this means, but hardly anybody else will.
Such prose is distancing. It repeatedly stops this book in its tracks. "In the parlance of complexity theory," she writes, "cyberspace is an emergent phenomena, something that is more than the sum of its parts."
What's frustrating is that Wertheim is clearly onto something. This is a new kind of space, it often does have profoundly spiritual overtones, and we spend precious little time exploring them. Unfortunately, her highly intellectualized approach obscures the very idea she's trying to advance.
Yes, we are in a similar position to the Europeans of the sixteenth century who were just becoming aware of the physical space of the stars, a territory completely beyond their prior conception of reality. But we are also radically different from them. We already believe in science and technology, many of us are more or less free of religious dogma and monarchical tyranny, and we have already witnessed technological advances beyond anybody's wildest dreams in just a few short years. The Europeans were just heading into the world's first Enlightenment, and we - those of us privileged to be working and spending time online -- are knee-keep in the second.
The idea of the Net as a new kind of space, a New Jerusalem is tempting and haunting. At times, I confess I've thought of the Web in almost that way, as a wondrous, connecting, providing -- yes, almost spiritual - place.
We do sometimes seem so busy and harried keeping up with our own culture that we forget to stop and wonder at it, or consider its inherently spiritual dimensions.
But long-winded, sometimes turgid essays on spatial schemes this kind of pleasing fantasizing less, not more likely. The spiritual nature of cyberspace is intensely personal and diverse, seen and found in the human beings who use it: the old people on SeniorNet who say goodbye to their friends before they die, the terminally ill children who exchange hopeful messages in chat rooms, the geeks who give one another online gifts of websites ("check out my site," are four of the neatest words heard online), software and upgrades, the scholars who rush to help a colleague in need of information in a distant part of the world.
Wertheim's book is much too cold for a subject like this. For we do live in a radiant city, where we sometimes glimpse a new heaven and a new earth.
If you'd like to pick this book up, head over to Amazon.
What are you going on about now? (Score:1)
So you're suggesting that if we're good little Christians, when we die, we'll go to the Internet?
> The geeks are louder, and lots more quarrelsome
Umm... have you watched the news lately? Or ever? The word "Palestine" ring any bells? How about "Northern Ireland"? "Serbian Muslims"? Us geeks may be vocal, but I've never heard of anyone getting shot or bombed over a platform "war" (paintball doesn't count).
> Next to sex and e-trading, nothing keeps a search engine humming longer than typing in "spirituality," or "religion."
That's because sex, money, and religion are the humanity's primary driving forces. It has nothing to with a deep-rooted spirituality of the network and more than e-trading means that there's a deep-rooted mercantilism to the network, or porn sites mean that there's a deep-rooted sexuality to the network.
Oh, sorry, you think that there _is_ a deep-rooted sexuality to the network. I'd forgotten about the sex bots. Well, a.b.p.erotica.* is over there... have fun.
> unless you consider the Mp3 player a miracle, as I do.
It's not a miracle, it's engineering. This whole thing boils down to Clarke's Law, doesn't it? ("Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.")
You don't understand the 'net, so you think it must be some magical gift from the heavens, if not heaven itself. You can't get your mind around hardware pushing electrical impulses, so you talk about ethereal connections between souls. You don't understand the tech, so you buy a magic wand (slightly dented in shipping), and tell everyone you're a magician now.
The 'net's nothing special and nothing new, and certainly nothing mystical. The first time a caveman yelled and waved to another caveman in the distance, that was the beginning of the 'net. Since then, it's just been a matter of tech. Through smoke signals, written messages, telegraph, telephone, fiber... Increased speed, increased range, increased bandwidth. Just tech. The communication stays the same. People stay the same, whether you talk to them in person, over the phone, or over IRC. They don't instantly become mystics because you make an ethereal connection with their soul in a chat room.
Accepting all paths as legitimate (Score:1)
Nah, screw it. You're right, there's only one legitimate path. If you don't follow the word of Eris Discordia, you're going to go to Thud and be bored far beyond the limits of mortal flesh for all eternity. I have spoken. If you don't agree with me, your beliefs don't have the right to exist, and must be combatted at every opportunity.
Some here are Christian... (Score:1)
I've been Pagan since about 1980...and loving it!
Ultimately, we all find our paths, those who go seeking for them, that is. It is only when we can all accept the paths that others follow as being legitimate can we get closer to solving some of the *real* problems on this planet.
ttyl
Farrell J. McGovern
Chronicler, Ár nDraíocht Féin: A Druid Fellowship
Spirituality on the Net (Score:1)
ttyl
Farrell
Great Mambo Chicken! (Score:1)
Pearly Gates (Score:1)
So the title "Pearly Gates of Cyberspace" made me shiver...
This is Katz at his best.
Heh. (Score:1)
(Those whacky techno Christians, what are we going to do with them?)
Fnord.
Nah... couldn't be... (Score:1)
If it really is the Promised Land, then why isn't God smiting spammers left and right? Wouldn't their business be roughly equivalent to putting those little ad insert cards that make up half the weight of most magazines into Bibles? I would think that he'd be kinda ticked about that.
Opposite of Spiritual (Score:1)
Unless of course it isn't. Do you really know or do you just say that on faith? Yes of course you do. I wouldn't worry about it except that faith seems synonomous with delusion with you. (I'm not arguing one way or the other, just pointing out the flaw in that logic.)
But aside from this nonesence, there is two different articles here, the book (which I haven't and I don't think any of the posters have read) and Katz's review. Any differences in oppinion with Kats probably means you need to read the book too.
I for one find the article interesting but will hold my opinion until I know more. But one thing I can say for sure is that however spiritual/not spiritual the internet is, it isn't the New Jerusalem.
^~~^~^^~~^~^~^~^^~^^~^~^~~^^^~^^~~^~~
Faith (Score:1)
This sounds a lot like that Dialogue in Gross Anatomy between the professor and the punk-arrogant student...
______________________________
"Were you guessing?"
"Am I right?"
"Yes."
"Then I wasn't guessing."
______________________________
In any case, "I could be wrong, or I could be right" means you don't know for sure. And if you don't know for sure but believe you are right anyway (becuase you have in your possestion reasonable evidence), isn't that faith? It is to me.
I'm not flaming, I just think that faith is a misunderstood word. Thats all.
^~~^~^^~~^~^~^~^^~^^~^~^~~^^^~^^~~^~~~^~~^~
OOC (Score:1)
That would be boring, wouldn't you rather me prove my Dad can beat up your Dad?
:)
^~~^~^^~~^~^~^~^^~^^~^~^~~^^^~^^~~^~~~^~~^~
Exactly (Score:1)
^~~^~^^~~^~^~^~^^~^^~^~^~~^^^~^^~~^~~~^~~^
Faith (Score:1)
Unless of course it is right.
Then it can't possibly be wrong. So does that mean we give up, sitting around on our thumbs becuase people think it is impossible to find real truth?
Just becuase society hasn't agreed on truth does that mean its impossible to find/have?
No faith isn't imagionation, but it isn't educated guessing either. It is the evidence of things not seen, and the assurance of things hoped for. Evidence and assurance being key words here.
But faith is built on one undeniable foundation, that being the existance of absolute truth. That is where I say, "Any statement has the possibility of being wrong, unless of course it is right."
^~~^~^^~~^~^~^~^^~^^~^~^~~^^^~^^~~^~~~^~
Spiritualism is Bunk. (Score:1)
In the ancient world, people resorted to spiritualistic explanations because they honestly did not know what caused the thunder, or the phases of the moon, or the seasons. They believed that there was no way that we could learn what "really" caused these phenomena, and so they ascribed the phenomena to the gods or spirits. As our knowledge of the world progressed, we learned that we can know what really causes all these things. We can formulate physical, material explanations of them all.
Thunder is not the wrath of Zeus or Jehovah; it is the explosion of the air caused by lightning, which is an electrostatic discharge. The phases of the moon are not caused by it being devoured and regurgitated by dragons, nor are they the menstrual cycle of a goddess; they are caused by the angle formed by the sun, moon, and earth. The seasons result from the tilt of the earth altering the exposure of the two hemispheres to the sun's rays.
The way we find out these explanations is called the scientific method: the method of observation, hypothesis, and experiment. The knowledge that results from the scientific method is properly called natural history or natural philosophy, though in this century we've slipped to simply calling it science or scientific knowledge. The uses to which we put this knowledge are called technology, and the method by which we create technology is called engineering.
Technology works because the scientific method works. The scientific method works because materialism -- the belief that the workings of the universe are physical and knowable, not mystical and unknowable -- is true.
To spiritualize technology is to invent an absurdity. However, worse than that, it is to demonstrate the very truth which distinguishes technology from mysticism: the fruits of technology are available even to those who do not understand the principles of science upon which engineering rests. The boons which science makes possible are useful even to people who do not believe in the scientific method.
(Contrast this with spiritualism, mysticism, and religion. Religionists are always after us to have Faith. If we do not have Faith, we cannot, they say, receive the blessings that religion has to offer. Televangelists reject the scientific method even as they use its fruits, the technology of radio broadcasting, to reach their gullible audiences. The ingratitude is astounding.)
The fact that people spiritualize and mystify the Internet is evidence that scientific education is failing. We cannot maintain our present level of technical advancement if our society slips into ignorance of science -- if we are deluded by spiritism. Already fundamentalists oppose the teaching of evolution in schools because it conflicts with their mystical, spiritual belief about the origins of life. If the idea that the Internet is a spiritual entity got into the general population, the next thing we know, the religionists would want to prohibit the masses from learning that it's really just a bunch of computers and wires. Electronic engineering would become the province of priests.
Now, class, go read "If This Goes On..." by Robert A. Heinlein.
Opposite of Spiritual (Score:1)
information is free.
the only question is:
Opposite of Spiritual (Score:1)
I'm inclined to agree. However:
"cyberspace is the opposite of the
spiritual.cyberspace is a vast consensual
delusion manufactured out of bits of silicon
and electrical signals."
"religion is a vast consensual(ish) delusion
manufactured out of bits of carbon and
electrochemical signals"
That part doesn't seem to hold up so well
I think it's just part of the age old pattern:
Random things [that people don't understand very well] happen, people can't cope with the idea that life is arbitrary and chaotic, people try to find order/meaning where there isn't any, people cook up the most bizarre ideas, and then cling to them desperately. .
Opposite of Spiritual (Score:1)
on faith? Yes of course you do"...
There's a difference between "just saying that on faith" and observing people's behaviour and drawing your own conclusions. I could be wrong, or I could be right - I happen to think my point of view is more self consistent than any religion that's ever been pitched to me: Speaking of saying things "on faith" - you seem pretty certain of how and what I think - I assume you've got a direct line to my subconscious...
[Just in case you do... where did I leave my keys? I can't remember...]
Relax. It's just words - or is it? (Score:1)
Words and ideas have power. I think few people can argue with that. Open Source is words and ideas and they have very real power to threaten some very powerful corporations.
You may say that it's not words and ideas, that it is coding and long hours of debugging. This is also correct. But the words and ideas had the power to get thousands of programmers to spend the time coding and debugging.
Most of the mystic's terminology for describing this kind of power makes mosts of us reject what they are saying without actually listening to it. A lot of it is admittedly pure BS, but some of it actually provides some insight into how this power works.
If you take the idea that "cyberspace is the New Jerusalem" literally to mean that "cyberspace is an actual location in some other plane of existence accessible through my modem and in that plane there is a city called New Jerusalem with all the jewels and stuff" it is indeed ridiculous. But if you take into account the fact that many people have a somewhat shared image in their mind of something which is beyond their day to day existence, whether it is inspired by Judeo-Christian sources or not and that the experience of being online makes them somehow relate to that idea - this is powerful stuff. It doesn't need to be "true" or "false", it's just there. I suspect the majority of people who share this idea also don't believe it to be literally true, but it's still there. You can't ignore something which many people have in their heads. For example, many people have in their heads the strange notion that green pieces of paper are worth something. They are only worth something as long as enough people have that idea in their heads.
Satellite imaging (Score:1)
Not exactly difficult to spot with modern technology.
I can't see how the internet could possibly be the New Jerusalem, except of course in the sense of the word "NOT".
The Promised Land of Porn! (Score:1)
Honestly, thats about the most intelligent response you can muster to such rubbish.
Nice title... (Score:1)
Geek spiritualism (Score:1)
I guess that if by spiritual culture you mean the bible-thumping, proselytizing, tent-revival crowd, then you're probably right. Or even if you're just talking about the church-going crowd. But I disagree that geeks and the spiritual don't go together.
My disagreement is based more on your use of the term spiritual. What you describe I would call religious or more specifically, Christian, and I don't see either of those as synonymous with spiritual.
Although there may be much of the spiritual in religion, and in Christianity, I like to see a broader definition used. This is not without precedent: don't we sometimes speak of a "spirited" horse, or a "spirited" wine? Have you ever heard a critic say that the orchestra played "with spirit"? There are probably a thousand other examples.
So why does a "spiritual" person have be one that's religious, or one that believes in the literal existence of God? Why, in fact, does a "spiritual" person have to be some that believes in the literal existence of the spirit, or soul?
I'm an atheist. I don't believe that I have a soul -- something that will live on beyond my body and still be me. But I like to think of myself as a spiritual person, because I like to contemplate matters that are traditionally associated with the "spirit": who am I, really? Does life have any purpose, or do I have to define my own? What is the nature of mind, and why does my "self" feel so real, so permanent?
Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera...
My point is that the spiritual and the religious are not the same, and that if you use a broader definition of "spiritual" then geeks and the spiritual are not so distant. The Spiritual is as much a state of mind as anything -- a transcendent moment when the sense of self expands to encompass, embrace, to grok someone or something else. When that other becomes a part of self, and you take away something of the other even after the Spiritual moment passes.
I have found the Spiritual in contemplating the universe and my place in it. I have found the Spiritual in really good sex. I have even found the Spiritual in a meditative moment with a glass of fine Scotch.
I am a geek and I am Spiritual. But please don't confuse me with the religous. Thank you.
--JT
About spiritualism (Score:1)
I have found happiness, thank you, in my wife, my beautiful children, my friends, my job, and in being a "spiritual" person. Oh, and I know my purpose in life, just as I know that each person must find their own.
--JT
Sand Castles... (Score:2)
It is the bazaar where every sensual desire can be gratified.
It is a place where your personality becomes the traded currency.
It is a tool for verbal and visual communication, nothing more. It is a neutral force. Real believers in the New Jerusalem have much higher expectations than the internet. I also recall a scripture in Revelation that describes the population in the End Times thinking like One Mind. One must be careful armchair scriptural interpretation. One's interpretations can slice both ways. Be careful if what you interpret as dawning the age of Jesus could also dawn the same for Satan.
It is a tool for greed and good. It is no promised land. Jon Katz does not have clear thinking.
No (Score:1)
The new jerusalem is heaven. If you sit down and think really hard about what heaven would be like, you come to the inevitable conclusion that it would be REALLY REALLY REALLY BORING. If you take a close look at christianity, pretty much everything that is enjoyable is sinful in one way or the other. The internet is WAY too much fun to be heaven.
-Laxative
Re: (Score:1)
Relax. It's just a packet. (Score:3)
Point one: there's no such thing as cyberspace. Get over it. The web is just HTML and USENET is something less than that. If I ping your IP address have we made a cosmic connection? If you email me are we brothers in the mystic order of Sendmail? If you answered yes to either of these questions, please stop reading now.
Point two: cyberspace will be ubiquitous soon and no one will know or care what you are talking about. The web is all exciting and new, but very soon this Love Boat of dropped packets and bad dial-up connections will dock. Evreyone will have web access, just like everyone has cars, and TVs, and no one will think of this as a mystic place.
Counterpoint: the argument could be made that not EVERYONE will have access to the internet. Impoverished people around the world and even in America (Say it ain't so!) don't have cars, TVs, or even telephones today. This is correct. My statement that the internet will become ubiquitous merely implies that it will become so common and mundane that people will no longer take notice of its newness.
Jon,
From Katz: "This may be the only space in which geeks and gurus seem attracted in roughly equal numbers, doing radically different things side by side for utterly divergent reasons. "
Or you could just look at an Interstate highway, or cable TV, or intercept the varying phone calls which traverse our POTS. If you pigeon hole people enough, if you apply enough diverse labels and stereotypes, then the internet becomes an exciting melting pot. I am a geek. The guy three web sites over and to the left is a mystic. His neighbor is a pornographer. Rejoice in our diversity!
The internet is an incredibly diverse place "filled with countless ethereal connections between people."
The world is an incredibly diverse place "filled with countless ethereal connections between people."
If I invite enough people to my house then, my back yard is an incredibly diverse place "filled with countless ethereal connections between people."
Relax. It's just a packet. (Score:1)
The subtitle of this book is "A History of Space from Dante to the Internet." In Medieval times, people thought of themselves in terms of two different kinds of space: located in physical space, and located in "spiritual" space. People felt that they needed to have some kind of a "place" where their soul existed. The medieval conception of the universe was that the universe ended somewhere past the solar system, at the sphere of the fixed stars.
That description was probably a bit cryptic, but the gist of it is that when modern science came around, people suddenly started believing that the universe extends infinitely in every direction. This removed the possibility of "spiritual" space existing outside of the physical universe; if the physical universe never ends, where is the outside?
Margaret Wertheim's thesis is that some people are starting to believe that "cyberspace" is a real space, that some people are viewing in spiritual terms. After all, you can sit down in front of a computer, and visit someone's web site. In some sense, you really are in a different place. You're still physically sitting in your chair, but some aspect of you has "surfed" over to a faraway place. Maybe it's not your soul that has traversed this great distance, but some aspect of your consciousness has.
At any rate, at the end of her presentation, she said that she did not believe that cyberspace could end up being spiritual fulfilling. Some people may be thinking of cyberspace in terms that are highly suggestive of the Christian view of heaven (some part of you will be immortal, etc.) but as Wertheim said, being stuck in a world of "frat boys' pages discussing God and Nietzsche sounds more like hell than heaven." I'd have to say I agree with that.
However, I do also think she has a point. When we think of going to the Internet, we do think of "going" somewhere; in most people's mind, the Internet is a place. We can analyze it down to its nodes and network wires, but the Internet is more than that. There's something we've built up inside our minds that has some level of reality to it. Now I think I'm done "visiting" slashdot. I think I'll go back to the real world...
Heaven? hardly (Score:1)
MY ideal place to live would involve me, some high end sgi's, some cool programs that need to be written with some cool people, beer, sausage rolls (mmmm!), linux, OpenBSD.
Oh, and some of the latest games ported over to wahtever i happened to be workon at the moment.
perfect! (not that Microsoft isnt in here.)
Basic Jungian psychology (Score:1)
But my real point is that your right, windows is reliable. I mean, i know windows crashes, but it has never SUPRISED me by crashing, i just go "Oh, how typical. windows crashed." heh.
How comforting (Score:1)
ehehahh ok, i realize what you mean its just a funny picture =)
Silicon Snake Oil (Score:1)
rambling book, but the point should be well taken.
The internet is cool, technology is cool, they're
both a barrel of fun, useful, and many other
positive things. But they are _not_ a panacea or
the solution to all problems. Go outside once in
a while. You do better general thinking, and
sometimes you even hack better.
Is it just me? (Score:1)
Certainly, computer and networking technology have created, and will create, great social and economic changes. (Good or bad changes, that is a different question.) But I am baffled as to how this changes the fundamental human spiritual condition:
And the Internet changes all this ... how?
Opposite of Spiritual (Score:1)
Faith (Score:1)
A Joke? (Score:1)
Did you *read* this book? (Score:1)
For you to critisize Wertheim's writing style is too much. Personaly I find you wordy and full of fluf. Still each to there own.
Porn around every corner (Score:1)
hehe
As if WE didn't know... (Score:1)
"No phyiscal bodies or countenence, to be judged solely on ones thoughts and the ability to share and define them, a single, simple intelligence floating on a digital stream of nothings and somethings."
from "Crap I just Made Up"-Wah
Some here are Christian... (Score:1)
And I thought the geek community was more accepting of this...
Fnord??? (Score:1)
:-)
Didn't mean to be anonymous. (Score:1)
ZDtv (Score:1)
(Spoiler: Transhumanism and 'uploading').
Can we PUH-LEEZ STOP USING THE WORD "CYBERSPACE"?? (Score:1)
anything in particular. The WWW is NOT ``cyberspace'' in the William Gibson sense. Not even close.
Silly metaphorical word association games aside, the technology involved in the WWW has absolutely no direct bearing on religion and the myriad mounds of new-age nonsense. Unless of course the WWW (or its future variants) are used as ICONS for said social phenomenon, but then again, almost anything can be a religious/spiritual focal point.
If quacks and hippies really do gather via IRC/chatrooms/etc... and generate terabytes of nonsense, nothing has changed except that the S/N ratio is dropping just that much faster.
A Joke? (Score:1)
Looks like Jonkatz actually believes the stuff he writes.
Some people believe that because they cause controversy, or becuase they hold the minority view, it makes their ideas more "correct".
Sad. Isn't it?
Spirituality on the Net (Score:1)
It seems to me that people always grab onto the latest technical innovention with an almost surprising avarice. It surprises me how people, by and large resistant to change in their fear of the new and unknown, grab hold of an idea or a product and herald it as having some kind of earth shattering impact on humanity. The TV didn't turn out to be that cool. Really. In the internet, we have something that is mysterious to the average person. They don't know how it works, why it works, but it does work. It's unlike anything they've ever seen, and fear of it and fascination with it combine in a compelling need for people to 'get connected'. (Hey man, everybody's doing it.)
I'm always so terribly disappointed when people capitalize on the spiritual seeking of the masses. Most people are so confused anyway that they're perfectly willing to throw away $25 in hopes of finding some new, easier, faster way to the spiritual fulfillment they're seeking. What better way to promise instant gratification than by pushing spirituality in a medium where pointing and clicking gives you results?
Really, it's a sad commentary on our society that inward-seeking, or searching for God, or whatever has become such a big seller.
Just one last question... If I'm wrong and they're right, do you suppose God prefers Linux or Windows?
Faith (Score:1)
it's entirely possible that by some cosmic fluke of entropy all the air in my kitchen found my livingroom to be a lower-pressure environment and vacated the kitchen (at least for a fraction or two of a second). So if faith is saying something is correct when you can't be sure, then apparently everything anybody has ever said has been entirely based on faith.. or maybe we just need a new defenition.
Dreamweaver
Spirituality on the Net (Score:1)
And by the way -- the Deity likes Linux for sure!
Basic Jungian psychology (Score:1)
Likewise, the "mystics" embrace the "chaotic" aspects of life and their shadow pulls up the structured aspects. Some of them become control freaks (e.g., self-castrating Heaven Gaters, or much of the "religious right") and some of them are attracted to computer systems but they can't quite explain why.
The reason is simple: computers (even Windows) are remarkably reliable and consistent... at least compared to what they deal with on a daily basis. (Linux, of course, is Nirvana.) The mystic's claims of how computers work leave us rolling in the aisle, but the important thing is that it provides balancing structure to their life. Before you laugh at them too hard, what do you do to achieve such balance? Or do you really think the universe is as tidy as CSICOP claims?
Basic Jungian psychology (Score:1)
But think about it from the perspective of most people. Compare Windows crashing vs... traffic patterns. How "reliable" are traffic signals? (I know I always check cross traffic before entering an intersection after a red light turns green.)
How "reliable" are physics experiments? In my undergraduate program, we always laughed at the Intro to Physics students who could get g=9.81m/s^2 using a meter stick, rubber ball and stop watch. Us physics upperclassmen were happy to get g=10+/-2 m/s^2 with the same gear. I don't think I *ever* got the same answers twice to any lab exercise except for a few involving microwaves.
Yet that's physics, one of the hardest of sciences. Many (not all) of the mystics are dealing with real phenomena under virtually no control... and few of them realize it.
(BTW, CSICOP has a far better grasp of reality than most FOX shows, but it's still a fairly limited worldview. Every so often the experts do learn something new which explains a former bit of "nonsense," but after reading SI for many years I don't expect to learn it from them.)