Books @ my Bedside (1)

The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace: A History of Space from Dante to the Internet by Margaret Wertheim

In this day and age, cyberspace may seem an unlikely gateway for the soul. But, as science commentator Margaret Wertheim argues in this volume, cyberspace has become more and more a repository for immense spiritual yearning. Wertheim explores the underpinnings of this mapping of spiritual desire onto digitized space and suggests that the modem today has become a metaphysical escape-hatch from a materialism that many people find increasingly unsatisfying. In a journey through the history of space, Wertheim traces the combined story of physical space and spiritual space from the Middle Ages to the present, and shows how reality has come to be defined as the exclusive domain of the physical world. It is against this profoundly materialistic world that Wertheim persuades us of the appeal and ultimate failure of cyberspace to satisfy spiritual needs.

I’ve just about finished this after picking it up several months ago in a second hand book shop (or actually bookbarn). I thought it was interesting to look at the history of an idea – Space – that isn’t usually discussed by many people. In this book Ms Wertheim looked at (largely) European history through the lens of its relationship to its vision of space and how the ideas that followed affected science, art and religion. On somewhat shakier ground when she moved the discussion into various aspects of Cyberspace (not helped by the fact that the book is ‘old’ in technological terms – having been published in 1999) and after some pretty wild statements, both for and against the power of the Internet, she nevertheless made some interesting points about the future on the Net. Though it didn’t “rock my world” it certainly made me look at things in an interesting way. If you can find a copy I recommend you pick it up.