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Cyberspace: the final [mission] frontier?
Is there a mission for the Church in cyberspace? Sounds a little like that introduction to Star Trek — TOS, of course.
Let’s first ask what cyberspace actually is. There is some reason to think that this is ultimately a question for metaphysics, but let’s not go there yet…
One dictionary definition is “The electronic medium of computer networks, in which online communication takes place.” The term itself came from a 1984 novel, Neuromancer, by William Gibson, “a computer-simulated reality that shows the nature of information”.[1]
It is hard to imagine a technology that is more intrusive upon human culture. By that I mean the processes of communal living which produce the distinctive markers of humans as opposed to other apes: language, art, symbolic pair-bonding (i.e., marriage), and a sense of “the sacred” lived out in symbolic rituals. As the ultimate tool-making animal, Homo sapiens has always relied on technology in order to survive: clothing, farm implements, weapons, etc. Individual communities’ cultures, as well as the economies that make culture possible, have developed and continue to develop alongside their technologies.
Our tools control us?
The German philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) wrote an influential essay, “The Question Concerning Technology”…
