The consequences of informationalism

A summary of:
Zaleski, J. (1997). The Soul of Cyberspace: How New Technology Is Changing Our Spiritual Lives. HarperEdge: New York.
Reflections part 3 – Other bits and pieces of interest

I think that Zaleski asks the wrong questions a lot of the time; or at least he seems preoccupied with different things than I am. He’s interested in the question of where blurrings may occur between technology and religion (notice the emphasis is on religion, not spirituality), and specifically how technology may be blurring our notions of religious ritual. For example, he asks, “Does sacred ritual have a place in cyberspace? Is cyberspace sacred space” (6)? He is also concerned with the virtualization of the physical more generically. For example, he asks, “The online world is a world of mind alone. How will the human spirit fare in such a realm, sundered from the mystery of the flesh? And what of the artificial intelligences – bodiless minds – that are beginning to populate cyberspace? Do artificial life-forms have artificial souls” (6)?

These are not issues I want to touch with a 90-foot pole. Not only do they seem boring, but they seem contentious and confused. But finally, Zaleski hits upon the question that interests me when he asks, “What effect does surfing the Web have on mind, on consciousness, and, most importantly, on attention – the basic tool of spiritual realization?” (6); and “Does cyberspace… present a particular challenge to spiritual work” (6)?

One of the things Zaleski explores is what people get – spiritually – out of cyberspace. He interviews several religious leaders who use the Internet as an extension of their congregation/practice. Rabbi Kazen (creator of the Chabad-Lubavitch site) believes the Internet represents tremendous potential for Judaism in that it “frees” it (“‘The idea,’ Kazen decleares with a wave of his hand, ‘is that Judaism has to be free’” (14)!). The website is not used by his congregation, but it is a portal onto Judaism for those not already in the flock. Kazen also talks about ‘The Global Interactive Database of Good Deeds’, where “people will be able to participate in lighting their own menorah, by typing in an act of goodness or kindness or a positive thing that they did. And by having a map of the entire world, as every person types in something good that they did, another part of the world will be lit up” (17).

Is this what I mean when I talk about wanting more spiritual technology? No. To me it is a sort of simulacrum of ritual; and it is religious in nature, as opposed to spiritual. Kazen’s comments reveal a very objective way of understanding cyberspace – as an information transference mechanism. And the latter example reveals a very objective way of understanding spirituality – as something that you can measure by the doing of it. I’m concerned with the soul-nourishing power of spirituality.

One interviewee, Sheikh Hisham Muhammad Kabbani, seems to recognize a tension between technology and this nourishing spirituality: “I spend a fair amount of time on the computer because I write, create, design. There are many times when I question how well spent that time is, even though it’s productive time that allows me to design and create things I could not design and create any other way. I appreciate that, but I don’t think it helps my (74) inner state, and it appears that my inner state even suffers through this kind of work” (75). He explains that while it may seem as if a kind of mesmeric engagement in technology is akin to meditative or spiritual practice, “…I don’t feel any better for it [being absorbed in the screen]. I don’t think working at the computer returns as much in the realm of quality as working in a garden, or painting, or playing music, or sitting down and talking to another human being” (75).

This above quote reveals the problem with contemporary values surrounding ‘productivity.’ Productive time is time when you do stuff with information, when you make money, when you save time. But productive time is never defined as ‘spiritually nourishing.’ This is because we have been subjugated by the values of technology, which are speed, efficiency, and built on informational foundations. As John Perry Barlow says, “Cyberspace is any information space, but it’s interactive information space that is created by media that are densely enough shared so that there’s the sense of other people being present. / You could say that cyberspace is also where you are when you’re reading a book” (29). And “Wired Style: Principles of English Usage in the Digital Age… defines cyberspace [as]: ‘Information space…. The place between phones, between computers, between you and me’” (30). But in this view, there is only void between information nodes; there is no meaning in between. The space itself, in other words, is not a meaningful – or spiritual – space. To use a phrase from Woody Allen (Life and Death), it’s “an empty void.” Even Zaleski’s own definition, which lacks any informational elements, depicts such an ‘empty void’: “For the purposes of this book, cyberspace is defined as the virtual space created through the activation of a computer” (30). I would suggest that making cyberspace more spiritual might be conceived as making the spaces in between ‘nodes’ “a full void.”

The other problem with this informational understanding of cyberspace is that it makes the lack of knowledge that much more conspicuous. “Employing Lucky’s pyramidal grid, it seems that what is transmitted through cyberspace is, in most cases, information – not knowledge, and certainly not wisdom” (33)…. “mystical knowledge and wisdom are said to lie beyond the reach of logic and of binary computation, which divide unity into plurality” (33). The problem here is objectivism: information can be measured, knowledge or wisdom cannot. If it cannot be measured, how can it be bundled and passed along in cyberspace? I should clarify that I don’t think that knowledge or wisdom is never exchanged online; but I do think that this knowledge and wisdom is bundled as information for another to extract. Take, for example, The Zen Garden (http://www.nominus.com/%7Ezenyard/zenyard.htm), which packages Buddhist wisdom to be collected by viewers of the site. This is explained in greater detail in Carr’s Rewiring the World: From Edison to Google. Carr’s notions of ‘bundling’ and ‘flattening’ are a product of informationalism; the shallowness of experience makes us shallow. This objectivism and informationalism places the emphasis on quantity over quality; the result of which, in the words of John Perry Barlow, is that, “My range of possible experiences is multiplied hundreds of times. And the possibility for depth of those experiences is reduced. Considerably” (50).

The problem is that there is nothing inherently meaningful about information. If anything, it is a distraction from deeper meaning. Sheikh Hisham Muhammad Kabbani says, ”Our humanness is being eroded by our own cleverness in creating ever greater distractions for ourselves, and by a whole industry creating ever greater distractions” (78). The point is if information is meaningless we should hardly be building our world on these flimsy foundations, lest we lose all “meaningful meaning.” After all, “…there’s nothing more terrible than the loss of meaning” (78). The way to prevent this is to use technology to do greater things. For example, Kabbani says, “If my sitting at the computer is in some way an extension of my yearning, or of compassion, it may be useful” (76).

To some extent, I fear we’re asking the wrong question if we are asking how to make informational technology more spiritual. Why are we not asking the question, instead, Why does cyberspace have to be an informational technology? Can it not do more? Are we not wasting this unique space which holds the most tremendous potential for spirituality in modern society?