But what is this omnipresent space we increasingly inhabit?…What is not always apparent is how our time in this disembodied, alluring, liberating world changes us and especially influences our relations with each other…Cyberspace, in science fiction writer Williams Gibson’s words, is a ‘consensual hallucination,’ more so than any of the alternative worlds man has ever created – from Greek mythology to the layered slices of the medieval heavens to film or theater. We aren’t just mulling and imagining our new realms. We live in them.
-Maggie Jackson, Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age, p. 48
I once heard a comedian (I can’t remember who) begin his set with a joke that goes like this: Anybody here believe in telepathy? Raise my hand.
I think the term ‘telekinesis’ would actually be more fitting. But we’ll run with it.
At one time the idea of controlling other people or objects from a distance was sheer telepathic spiritism. Now we can unlock our front door or adjust our thermostat from another continent. Anybody believe in telekinesis? Turn the heat up from across town.
The idea of reading someone else’s thoughts was mystic nonsense. Now it is an online reality. How many websites exist today that allow us to read the random and quasi-private thoughts of others. Anybody believe in telepathy? Interpret my secret emoticon 🙂
The idea that we can have certain knowledge of the future was once wrapped up in divination. Now we have meteorologists who go to school for that sort of thing, and the certainty of science about the destinies of far off glaciers. Anyone believe in divination? Predict a hurricane.
Once the idea of locking people into image induced trances was mesmerism. Now it’s simply entertainment. Anyone believe in mesmerism? Get me to sit in front of your TV screen for three hours without getting up.
A big takeaway from the first two chapters of this book (for me) is the picture Maggie Jackson paints of the fantasy, spirituality, and ethereal nature of our technology. If you follow that line of thought you will come to the conclusion that we live in an age of mysticism and plasma mediation. It is mystic in the sense that we experience the presence of others who are separated by distance without giving thought to the mediation that makes the experience possible. It is mediated by plasma in the sense that screens become the gateway to other worlds – she calls this omnipresent space.
We like to think that our species is evolving and becoming more rational and scientific. In reality we are just using different forms of mysticism and different means of mediation. I am not knocking it wholesale. The issue is that folks need to wake up to the fact that there’s more going on here than plastic, plasma, and science. I find that more and more people are interested in mysticism these days. But it seems that few are giving attention to how ‘media ecology’ if involved in such a trend.
One plus of this line of thought is that, I think, it can be helpful in teaching the importance of mediation; or, at least, it could serve as an illustration of the need for mediation. Eastern religions and Catholic Mysticism have tended to lead to the idea that we can have direct, unmediated experiences of the presence of God. But, as my former pastor used to say, heaven is the presence of God with a Mediator. Hell is the presence of God without one. God has chosen to reveal himself and allow us to experience his grace and love and presence through means and mediation.
I appreciate your varied meditations here on how different forms of mysticism have been satisfied via technology, while being re-labled as “mere science” and/or “technology”. It would appear that this clever semantical change allows us to avoid the negative connotations with the occult, and continue the modern man’s assertion of himself as god, rather than needing to admit to powers outside his own control.
Your point about man’s desire to be rid of mediation seems relevant here as well; that is, one who desires to be rid of the requisites of a ruler beyond himself would also desire to deny the limitations of a mediator, as such would only place one further from absolute control.
I’m very interested to hear your thoughts on the book. It has been on my list to read for a little while now. Mrs.Jackson’s discussions with Ken Myers on the Mars Hill Audio are some of my favorites.
I did not finish the book. This post had been sitting in my queue unfinished for a while and I had been thinking about it. The first couple of chapters of the book (and the introduction) are really good and thought-provoking. I used some of her material on our culture’s propensity to push death and suffering to the fringes of modern-life in my sermon this past Lord’s Day on Judges 2:1-5 about ‘Bochim,’ the Place of Weeping.
With that said, there was a certain point about 70 or 80 pages into the book where I really bogged down in reading it and gave up. I’ll do that from time to time. I do plan to revisit it. I’m hoping it will be better once I’ve had time to let it breathe. I try to take myself out of my comfort zone in reading and technology is something I can focus on too much. Hence I’m trying to read more fiction for the foreseeable future.
By the way, I did get a gift subscription to Mars Hill Audio for Christmas!
Awesome! Best subscription I ever applied to, myself!