The Net as the New Jerusalem

Like the late Romans, says author Margaret Wertheim, our civics are no longer sustained by a firm belief in our society; we are no longer sure of its purpose. This is clear enough from the presidential campaign to date. Cyberspace, she writes, will fill the void. The Net, she says, is the New Jerusalem, our new common and profoundly spiritual space. (First of two parts.)

Wertheim says we live in a time marked by inequity, cynicism and fragmentation. She isn't the first or only social observer to point out that our civics are no longer sustained by a firm belief in our society, that we are no longer sure of its purpose. The primary message emanating from the current presidential campaign is that most Americans have lowered their modest expectations about politics, and now believe their government is dominated by a coalition of interests -- corporations, big media, political parties, lobbyists -- rather than by them.

Like true believers watching the sunset of the Holy Mother Church, we have a growing sense of political ennui and disintegration accompanied by a surreal air of prosperity. Some seek to fill this void with a yearning for traditional spirituality; others (like Wertheim) are coming to see cyberspace as a transformative new spiritual geography.

For all its stumbles and shortcomings, the new cyber-culture at its political heart has always had a clear sense of purpose: freedom of speech and thought; the interactive and open distribution and liberation of information; the exploration and development of creative new technologies, the shared creation of a culture with its own particular values.

In response to the decline of old notions of politics and society, Weirtheim writes in her provocative new book, "The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace," Americans in particular look to religion and spirituality for grounding in their lives. She sees a palpable spiritual yearning -- reflected in the right-wing zeal of the Christian Coalition, in California-style mysticism, and in the pseudo-Native-Americanism of an executive retreat at a sweat lodge -- vibrating throughout U.S. society.

Wertheim sees cyberspace as part of a continuum dating to medieval times, through the discovery of astronomical space in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, to the relativist conception of space in the twentieth century, and on to contemporary physicists' eerily beautiful ideas about hyperspace.

Wertheim believes this has brought us full circle. Once again, we have a physical space for the body to inhabit, and an ethereal space a number of people believe will ultimately become the home of the soul. She even goes so far as to suggest cyberspace will become the technological version of the Christian heaven.

It's a big idea, one many people will be attracted to. I think I see what Wertheim means, but can't quite enter this kingdom myself, or buy the notion of cyberspace as heaven. The world is probably ripe for this new techno-spiritualism, but it probably doesn't cover all generations. Perhaps it applies mostly to the disillusioned and fatigued Boomers, who talked about revolution and spirituality, but didn't quite achieve either. Now they rush to fill their moral void, to overcome their political disappointment by trying to infuse politics with some higher purpose, perhaps the highest of them all.

Boomers have a bad name at the moment, but they did -- some quite consciously -- lay a framework for a different kind of revolution, one they were able to pull off. They did the legwork and visionary planning, and built the preliminary distributed architecture, that became the Net. In a way, the Net is one of the Boomers' greatest legacies, though it would take the next generation to patch together the Web and push cyberspace to the next level. That turned out to be quite a leap.

But if you take Wertheim's idea and apply it to politics, the whole notion takes a new, highly relevant twist. Cyberspace may not be the gateway to heaven, but there is definitely a new kind of geography here, and we could well be witnessing the Birth of a Nation. Or at least, of a 51st state, a new sort of space with intensely political as well as spiritual significance.

Scholars like Wertheim see global and domestic politics going through a sea change. The kind of politics being played out by Bush-Gore-Nader and their anemic parties is clearly exhausted, overwhelmed by change and challenge. The process doesn't seem to have any purpose, and does suggest a culture whose political structure is in decline. Because the system has no moral purpose, it has no moral authority; a growing number of people ignore it. Online, an entire generation has grown up learning how not to take government seriously.

Cyberspace, writes Wertheim, is a completely new kind of space, a New Jerusalem, potentially welcoming male and female, First World and Third, "...is open to anyone who can afford a personal computer and a monthly Internet access fee ... many cyber-enthusiasts would have us believe that that the Net dissolves the very barriers of race and gender, elevating everybody equally to a disembodied digital stream."

This New Jerusalem stuff is appealing but, again, relates as powerfully to politics as spirituality.

Younger Americans, especially those who spent a large part of their lives as citizens of this new space, have mostly detached themselves from the institutions producing the last days of politics. They don't often read newspapers or follow the evening news or check out the newsmagazines. They don't see themselves as Republicans or Democrats, liberals or conservatives. There's a lot of earnest chatter about the importance of voting, but it's defensive. Mostly, people talk about voting to prevent something from happening: a certain person's being elected, the judiciary's being tilted too far in one direction or another. It's hard to find a citizen who's voting for something.

My own sense is that they are witnessing and participating in the birth of a different sort of nation, seeking not so much spiritual as moral and ethical renewal. We have the sense of being present at the revolution, even if it's not clear what kind of revolution. People are hungry not only for spirituality, but for a sense of purpose, and they don't see one advanced in the election.

The birth of any legitimate political system begins with a moral purpose, an ethical underpinning for existing. Some see cyberspace as a new kind of sacred space, and maybe they're right. Politically, it's an empty place waiting to be filled up. The people running the other system seem out of ideas and ethical impulses. Perhaps the void could be filled from within. Then cyberspace would, in fact, become the New Jerusalem Wertheim describes.

Next: Politics and ethical technology in the New Jerusalem