byMICHEL BAUWENS
This essay first looks at some of the social and cultural changes associated with the notion of a Digital Revolution, the result of the growth of the Internet and the emergence of 'cyberspace'. It then examines some basic 'spiritual' attitudes and how various debates within and between different schools of thought are changing attitudes about technology. Technology can be seen both as a degenerate practice and/or as a means to bring mankind to a higher level of consciousness or to a more well-developed civilization. Finally, the essay will discuss some of the emergent spiritual practices on the Internet itself.
The Digital Revolution, Virtualization, and the Emergence of Cyberspace
The Wisdom Tradition
The God Project
Electric Gaia
A Sacramental Cyberspace
Conclusion
Notes
The world is utterly and irreversibly changing right now thanks to the exponential growth of the Internet, a new global communications tool linking humans together in real time as never before. This sort of massive computer networking changes human relationships with time and space in a fundamental way. It is not an exaggeration to remark that much of the world is experiencing an important shift in the way in which it works.
Consider simply the effect of computer networks on the speed of knowledge transfer, and hence on the speed of cultural and technological evolution. Before the invention of the written word, it was not possible to codify knowledge nor to save it over time. 'When an old man dies', says an African saying, 'a library goes up in flames.' In pre-literate times, progress depended on the capacities of humans to remember and hence, progress was very slow.
With writing, but especially with the mass-produced book in the last century, knowledge became independent of its bearer and independent of Time. Knowledge was still fixed in physical objects however, so it was not yet independent of Space.
With computer networks, and with an increasing migration to wireless styles of communicating, knowledge is being liberated of the constraints of Space. When a network appears in a home, an organization, in a city or state or country, every innovation, every creative thought, every possible solution to a given problem, becomes widely and nearly instantly available over the course of the network.
This sort of computer network will accelerate the growth of culture and science. It will permit a greater diversity of science and culture, representing the ideas and emotions of many more groups of people, to become available to larger and more diverse audiences. At one time, it may have required thousands of years to double our collective knowledge about the world. Now, according to some calculations based on the mathematical study of 'novelty', it seems that this doubling time has been reduced to less than three years, at least in certain knowledge domains such as engineering. There indeed is some speculation that a hypothetical point in the not too distant future will occur, called the Singularity. At this point, knowledge will double in a single moment, leaving mankind utterly unable to even understand what is happening. According to some, we are indeed creating a world that is totally 'Out of Control' [1].
In this essay, I will first look at some of the social and cultural changes associated with the notion of a Digital Revolution. Then I will examine some basic spiritual attitudes and how various debates within and between different schools of thought are changing attitudes about technology. In this context, I will describe how technology is seen both as a degenerate practice and as a means to bring mankind to a higher level of consciousness or to a more well-developed civilization. I will also discuss some of the emergent spiritual practices on the Internet itself. But first, some comments on the notion of the Digital Revolution.
I mentioned how networks change relationships with time and space, and alter fundamentally social, political, and economic conditions. Liberating ourselves from the constraints of space means change in our definitions of territory, which in turn has serious implications for the ways in which we define law and politics. It also alters the way we explain community and human settlements, which traditionally have been based on the need to be close to physical products and the centralized structures of power. The recent growth of "tele"- activities points out this rise of new kinds of communities and social structures, in "tele"-education, "tele"- shopping, and "tele"-working.
It is possible that quite a few of the changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution in the last century are being reversed at the end of this century. A great deal of recent growth in employment may be attributable to teleworking [2]. It has been reported that 9.1 million Americans already telecommute; this number is expected to increase by 15 percent annually [3]. Production technologies increase the efficiencies in creating material products with less manpower. Four decades ago, a third of the U. S. labor force worked in manufacturing; now it is less than 17 percent [4].
In the thirties, under influence of organizational advances like Taylorism, manual labor was heavily reduced and gradually expelled from the production process. In the last decade, a similar process is now in progress for 'routine' intellectual work. Many organizations are analyzing processes under the theme of "re-engineering" to further take advantage of technology and eliminate routine procedures [5]. The effect of the digital revolution on how we organize and experience work will be very important. Some analysts seriously argue that concepts of work, employment, and the job are altering forever [6].
Part of this digital revolution involves virtualization. Virtualization is just the latest step in the ways in which humans have transformed the material world for their own needs. In the agrarian age, nature and matter were transformed by first physical labor and then mechanical devices, tools to alter matter (and thus we had 'matter' vs. 'matter'). During the Industrial Revolution, the expenditure of energy was a new factor in the production process, energy in the form of processed fuels (and thus we had: matter vs 'matter + energy'). Tools, powered by new energy sources, led to a quantum leap in productivity.
Now a new factor has been added to this equation, information. Today, the natural world is being transformed not only by using matter and energy, but also by information, leading to a new explosion of productivity. In one way, virtualization is the increased substitution of matter by information. This substitution has profound consequences for the relations of humankind to nature, between humans and other humans, and between humans and machines. This new layer of information is becoming increasingly prominent as virtualization intensifies.
In the past, the credo of science, the industrial world, and materialism was simply"if I can't touch it, it is not real."Today, it is nearly reversed to the point where it could be said"if you can touch it, it's not real."Information has become more important, in political, economic, social, and philosophical terms, than material objects.
This alteration has affected leisure time. Many find watching nature documentaries on television more preferable than real walks in the woods. This process has been intensified by new cyberspace media. For many, the Internet is not just a continuation of traditional mass media, but a new shift. The Internet, unlike other media, represents a new collective mental space. Hence the notion of cyberspace, a parallel 'virtual' world, co-existing in tandem with real world. Over the long term of human existence, our prehistoric ancestors existed principally in a natural environment. Civilized humanity occupied an invented architectural environment. Our descendants may principally live in a digital environment (mentally speaking, that is), where they will spend a great deal of time, working and playing. If this digital revolution is altering civilization, it will also impact our metaphysical imagination, the basic building blocks of our experience.
What are the reactions of spiritual schools of thought towards this digital revolution? Let me digress by examining the notion of the 'Wisdom Tradition' itself. If I define spirituality as the means through which mankind finds meaning in its relationship to the totality of the external world, I can then examine the most basic human activities and decipher their relationships to man's place in the universe.
In the modern world, there clearly is a divorce between those who subscribe to a belief in an Absolute or Supreme Being, those who accept the existence of non-material realms and beings, and those in the rationalist or scientific camps. Within the camp of the spiritualists, there are many great differences in terms of methodology and approaches. In very general terms, we can distinguish paths based on 'the concepts of "belief" and "faith," and those based on concrete experiences. Some distinguish between "exoteric" religion, based on belief and aimed at those without concrete experiences, and the "esoteric" tradition, for those who do indeed have experience with the "divine." This body of knowledge, known as the "Tradition," "Philosophia Perennis," or the "Wisdom Tradition," is considered to be the foundation of an enormously diverse corpus of religious thought [7]. That such a tradition itself would exist, is subject to debate, but an increasing number of scholars do accept it (Ken Wilber, Huston Smith, Aldous Huxley, Rene Guenon, Julius Evola, ...).
I accept that there is a Wisdom Tradition but in my personal analysis, there are two main interpretative schools within it. This contradiction has an impact on the meaning and role of technology in the psychological and spiritual development of mankind. I will call these two schools of thought the "pessimistic" and the "optimistic" interpretations of the Wisdom Tradition.
The pessimistic view sees human history as progressive degeneration or regression. Some writers, like Rene Guenon and Julius Evola, argue that a 'spiritual golden age' existed only in the mythical past (though for them, it is evidently not 'mythical' but 'real'). Early mankind, in this perspective, was more developed spiritually than current civilization. It is argued that the first ruling classes were primarily spiritual and over time corrupted into the military and merchant classes. Support for this spiritual loss is also based on an interpretation that many sacred texts argue for a gradual loss of consciousness over time. This continual loss of the spiritual culminates in world destruction. Hence, for traditional Hindu scholars, we are now in the Kali Yuga age, before the destruction of the earth, and the beginning of a new cycle.
The 'optimistic' school of thought, as exemplified in the works of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, takes an evolutionary approach. These philosophers generally agree that there has indeed been a fall, at the creation of the Cosmos and our universe, when divine consciousness was lost in unconscious matter. But from that point on, there has been progress towards ever higher levels of complexity and consciousness.
This basic attitude towards spirituality and life colors spiritual points of view. Pessimism leads to dualism, a fundamental split between the human and the divine; or Gnosticism, where there will always remain a split between the Knower and the Known; or towards negative attitudes of the body. Indeed, pessimistic spiritual practices emphasize "you're not (fill in the blank)," as in "you're not your body" or "you're not your mind." Optimistic spiritual practices avoid this duality through mysticism or simply a fusion with the divine or in a positive approach towards the body and the self. Optimistic techniques teach that an individual is more than a sum of their parts, as in "you're more than your ego" or "you're more than your body." In reality, most existing spiritual schools contain both pessimistic and optimistic elements, but it is very instructive to look at these schools and practices simply from these more 'radical' perspectives.
Hence, man's technology, and especially the current cyberspatial phase, can be seen from one view as a 'Luciferian' God Project, an attempt to usurp 'God' and to liberate man from all limits imposed by Nature. Alternatively, technological advances can be viewed as the means to spark the evolution of mankind towards higher levels of collective consciousness. I will continue my exploration on the meaning of technology inspired by these two points of view, as a God Project and as Electric Gaia.
Metaphorically, technology perhaps started mythically when Adam ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. At that moment, mankind said "we can do it on our own and we want to understand the meaning of it all." The very first tools enhanced our mastery over Nature rather than encouraged our harmony with it. For spiritualists, there are two ways of approaching knowledge, one which will lead to holiness or wholeness, the other to a false, arrogant, and destructive mastery over nature. The first approach is based on the idea that mankind is created as an image of God. By discovering our inner being, we discover our God-like aspects. Spiritual practice will therefore give us aspects of the powers of the divine. To some, technology is simply a crude substitute for spiritual powers. Technology indeed is magic; as Arthur C. Clarke said,"any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
Pessimists see the inner way strengthening human character, arguing that technology progressively weakens humanity. This interpretation would fit with Marshall McLuhan's thesis that technology extends our senses. The more we extend technology and thus our external senses, the less need for inner senses. This technosphere is increasingly becoming inimical to both our bodies and minds.
Pioneers in artificial intelligence, such as Marvin Minsky and in nanotechnology such as Eric Drexler, predict a world where both body and mind become obsolete. This world, a combination of technologies and genetic engineering, could lead to some sort of post-human world.
A group of young scientists called the Extropians have carefully looked at these technological promises. They are examining techniques to double life spans by special diets and to deep- freeze bodies via cryogenics. With computers, they are studying ways to download human memories into computers and to upload digital memory into human brains, a mechanical merger known as cyborgism.
The Extropians, in their faith in technology, may represent a kind of 'Technological Unconscious' in Western civilization. They ask the fundamental question: What does mankind really want? In their view, it is entirely possible to create an immortal 'trans'- human, capable of controlling nature and ultimately the Universe.
If the complex worldwide computer networks will soon be inhabited by artificial intelligences and sophisticated agents, there may be a point of such complexity that the network itself is no longer manageable by human intelligence. Some see this condition leading to the invention of a Machine-God, a Deus Ex Machina, in direct competition with a concept of a Supreme Being of some spiritualists. Some spiritualists would see the birth of this Machine- God as proof of technology as ultimately Luciferian. Others might see this event as the actual Technological Singularity, which might be painted by some as the "End of History" or the "End of Mankind." To spiritual pessimists, this event would equate to the coming of their versions of the Anti-Christ.
Spiritual pessimists are not alone in their assessment. Their dim view of technology is shared by neo-Luddittes and some 'deep ecologists'. Spiritual pessimists and neo-Luddittes dream of their Utopia in the past. Spiritual optimists and technological utopians see a Utopia in the (near) future.
For these spiritualists, the optimism imbedded in the Wisdom Tradition would point out that technology is simply one more step in the unfolding of mankind's consciousness.
This perspective subscribes to the view that at the creation of the Cosmos, divine consciousness "fell." At first, Nature itself could not be conscious. Life evolved, leading to the eventual development of uniquely self-conscious beings called humans. Through this latest manifestation of life, Nature and the Cosmos become conscious and aware of itself.
The process of increasing consciousness in mankind is slow. Mankind evolved through stages, from magical to mythical to rational consciousness, and from tribal through political (nation-state based) to planetary consciousness. For planetary consciousness to truly become widespread, a material basis, and thus certain tools are needed. Hence, technology can be seen as a necessary adjunct to make improvements in consciousness possible.
Some might argue that there have been and are certain humans who have already achieved higher states of global or universal consciousness. History is indeed littered with stories of these personalities but for most of mankind, these humans have been anomalies. For the mass of humanity, help is needed, and it is precisely technology that, to some, drives consciousness forward. It could be argued that political consciousness could not have been achieved without the printing press. Others see only a real planetary consciousness with the creation of truly a worldwide communication network, accessible to all, anywhere and at any time.
Universalization may have started with the print media and extended itself with primitive electronic tools such as the telegraph, telephone, radio, and television. Only now is there a medium that combines both personal and mass media, extending human thought to much of the world. The Internet is a tool that broadens awareness and allows mankind to invent a noosphere, a collective mental space.
Optimists see the Internet ultimately evolving into a global brain, connecting much of mankind together. These optimists read a prediction of this sort of state in philosophers like Hegel and Teilhard de Chardin. Their enthusiasm is shared by many working in cyberspace. Certainly, it provides one kind of explanation for the extraordinary amount of creative and cultural energy generated with this medium known as the Internet.