Cyber Tribes of the Global Village
by Paul Mitchell
Zadok Perspectives Issue No. 62
Spring/Summer 1998/1999

Part 2

At the frontiers of cybertechnology there are tribes of the global village with names such as "techgnostics" and "extropians", seeking through technology a personal and or global salvation. Paul Mitchell talks to San Francisco-based writer Erik Davis about what's happening at this crossroads of the information superhighway.

Paul Mitchell
Paul Mitchell is Associate Editor of Zadok Perspectives and editor of the e-zine www.shootthemessenger.com.au in which a version of this article first appeared.

"The extropians," says Davis, "have a very hard-edged, materialist, technological, evolutionary view. They're very hostile to any religious or spiritual ideas." But, he continues, their view of the computer as creating a new dimension (fourth? fifth?) to human evolution places the 'extropian' world view on a thought plain neither physical nor rational. "Their enthusiasm and the way they think about the new possibilities of nanotechnology [the creation of subatomic, self-replicating machines], artificial intelligence and human/machine cyborgs is essentially a religious world."

The pseudo-religious dimension to the 'extropian' world of human perfectionism is most apparent in their belief that human history is on the point of a monumental shift, where time and space will be transformed as part of a technological 'rapture'. The 'extropians' are but one 'techgnostic' group keeping the faith that humanity (or at least those willing to believe) is on the point of (cyber) redemption.

'Techgnostics' appear to have taken the myth of progress to the conclusion that technological development sees them ready to move beyond the restraints of the body. Now, while rationalists put cotton wool in their ears and ignore this doomsday song, regardless of which new voices join the choir, Erik Davis believes we ignore this song at our own risk.

"Some of the apocalyptic feelings fluctuating through society can be helpful," he says, "if it encourages people to take a step back and say, 'Wow, this isn't business as usual.' The kinds of problems we are dealing with right now will have an extraordinary impact on the future of the planet."

But, then again, Davis admits that some of it can lead to the "ludicrous excesses" of Heaven's Gate-the disaster, he says, we had to have. The problem, he goes on, is that this desire for transformation seen among the techgnostics, "has been so materialised and cut off from inner-transformation that in Heaven's Gate we reap the inevitable feedback loops from that quest." Heaven's Gate gained the world's attention because in its perversity, he says, it acted as mirror for the "deeper forces" in society that we find difficult to face head on.

So what are these "deeper forces"? Davis doesn't believe humanity is on the brink of some divine reckoning (and given his background in pagan religion, that's not surprising). However, he does admit that the ecological, ethical and technological problems confronting humanity at this time cannot be solved without some kind of religious or spiritual underpinning. Predictably, he sees mainstream religion as passé. Many within the church would join him in saying, at the very least, that the church has struggled to provide useful dialogue on the aforementioned problems, particularly on the effects and implications of new technologies on ethics and spirituality.

But regardless of whether they find their solace in the church or some other spiritual haven, the urge for a spiritual solution to our current problems grows deeper, as people cast aside scientific rationalism and cast their eyes to the heavens-ethereal or digitised. "One of the reasons there is more interest in spirituality now," Davis says, "is people instinctively feel there is some other way of connecting to the world and to other people that might enable us to erode some of the insane drives that push much of our society, like a headless creature lumbering down the road without a real sense of where it is going . . ."

To: Perspectives Issue 62

Paul Mitchell Paul Mitchell is Associate Editor of Zadok Perspectives and editor of the e-zine www.shootthemessenger.com.au in which a version of this article first appeared.