The Sacred Spaces of Margaret Wertheim
by Paul Mitchell
Zadok Perspectives Issue No. 63
Autumn 1999

Introduction

The idea that cyberspace could help establish a new heaven and a new earth pre-dates the realm's inception. On the cusp of the 21st century, forces proposing visions of cyber-paradise are gathering speed.

In her book, The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace: A History of Space from Dante to the Internet, physicist and computer scientist Margaret Wertheim places cyberspace in its historical context and finds something deeply medieval about our technological advances . . .

Paul Mitchell
Paul Mitchell is Associate Editor at Zadok and edits the e-zine www.shootthe messenger.com.au. (See Alan Gijspers' review of The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace)

IT WAS REPORTED EARLIER this year in the Melbourne Age that Australian and British scientists had compiled the largest and most comprehensive map of the universe ever seen. These scientists said the map, which details the exact location of 30,000 galaxies and 3,000 quasars, will be expanded in future to eventually help them ascertain the precise age and size of the universe.

For most of us, that's probably about as far as our understanding of space goes; that it is the topographic expanse of black beyond the earth's atmosphere, speckled with stars, stretching out ad infinitum. But, as former Australian (and now Los Angeles-based) physicist and computer scientist Margaret Wertheim points out in her book, The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace: A History of Space from Dante to the Internet, humanity's current popular conception of (outer) space is a recent phenomenon.

To: Part 2