A spiritual experience of cyberspace
- 作者：Cobb ; Jennifer J.
- 刊名：Technology in Society
- 出版年：1999
- 期刊代码：52_0160791x
- 类别：pw
- 出版时间：November, 1999
- 卷：21
- 期：4
- 页码：393-407
- 文件大小：66.2 K
摘要
A meditative experience within a virtual reality artwork serves as the jumping off point for an extended thought piece focusing on the issue of the relationship between embodied spirituality and cyberspace. Cyberspace is a particularly disembodied medium, a space of thoughts, ideas, and information communicated in words and images; it is not a place where our bodies participate. As such, cyberspace has the potential to further split our minds from our bodies, a cultural trajectory that is well-documented in Western culture. In their current implementation, computers seem to propel us further toward this disembodied place, becoming, to borrow Walker Percy's phrase, “cosmonauts in cyberspace”. This notion borrows from both a hope and a fear. We have the desire to escape the messy and mortal sphere of the body while, at the same time, we are afraid that the alternate realities offered by cyberspace will suck us in, pulling us step by step away from the organic world that gave us birth. This article suggests that the split between mind and body is not inherent to cyberspace. Rather, cyberspace acts as the perfect foil for furthering our splintered experience of mind distinct from body. But if we approach cyberspace as part of a larger, integrated, sacred experience of the world, our perspective begins to change dramatically. In this context, cyberspace can enable us to expand and enrich our embodied spirituality.