Customer Reviews

CyberGrace: The Search for God in the Digital World

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

If you have always yearned to read The City of God by Augustine, but have not had the time or patience, then Cybergrace, by Jennifer Cobb may be your best substitute. Ms. Cobb is well versed in both philosophy and current technology. She draws on this extensive knowledge to create an understanding of "God" and spirit which rises high above the "Master of the Universe" image which resulted from modernism. Just as Augustine's City made his contemporaries feel at home, Cobb's place leaves us with a sense of purpose and wonder. If only for a moment, we are able to put aside our skepticism and distrust for the unseen world and enter into a place that is clearly our promised land. Although it would be helpful to read The Divine Mileau by Tielhard de Chardin as a prelude to Cybergrace, it is not necessary. Cobb delivers her message in a style that would have met with the approval of Thomas Acquinas. It is crisp, to the point, understandable and easily refutated if one so desires. Like Augustine, Cobb fails to deal with the question of evil. So when the glow begins to depleat, fear returns and we must return to the world of violence, death and who knows what on the other side.

Don't let the fact that she mis-spelled it
"Burners-Lee" detract from your enjoyment
of Cybergrace.

I'm a typical left-brained type, and bought
this book partly because I knew some of
the Deep Blue (chess machine) people when
they were at CMU. No theologian am I.

I discovered a well-written, concise, and
engrossing book, and have come to regard Cobb's
book as a little gem. In recent years I've
bought several copies for friends. The book
covered a wide range of topics which were
new to me, and really was a catalyst for
further exploration. The time was ripe for
me, when the book was first published.

Chapter 1 - Spiritual Evolution, creativity
in process

Chapter 2 - Emergence, Whitehead, John B. Cobb,
Process theology

Chapter 3 - Teilhard de Chardin, noosphere

Chapter 4 - Holons, Ken Wilber

Chapter 5 - Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research
(PEAR) laboratory, quantum consciousness

Chapter 6 - Complexity, emergent computation

Chapter 7 - Virtual Reality, Immersive technologies,
asceticism

Chapter 8 - Ethics, Spirit in Action

Jennifer Cobb explores a sense of encounter with the Divine in relation to cyberspace, which she concludes is essentially a world of processes -- and hence a perfect medium for finding the God of Process Theology.

The book has some superb reflections upon the nature of realities that can be found in a cyber dimension of the lives we live. This, in fact, is the great strength of this book. If the reader has a strong appreciation for Process thought, this is a book that will be of interest. Those who come to it with more of a traditional Incarnational theology (rooted in Christianity) may find some of her optimism about disembodied minds to be a bit disturbing -- a disembodied ANYTHING is a problem for Incarnational thinkers. Cobb heightens some of the problems inherent in Process thought and adds to them.

With all of the book's strengths and weaknesses, on balance I feel the book is very good and well worth the read. In fact, I recommend it.

This book is challenging in the good way. You may have more questions than answers by the time you've reached the last page, but these will be questions you'd never have thought to ask without having read Cobb's book. A great introduction to Tielhard de Chardin.

The first thing that we must note is that this book is no way intended to foster dialogue between Christianity and technology - it has very little to do with Christianity.

Combining emergent technologies and the spiritual evolution of both de Chardin and Cobb can be seen as only analogous, but Jennifer Cobb sets out to show how these evolutionary theories are not simply analogous, but point to the same metaphysical process in which we participate. Speculative at best, not very useful or enlightening in the end.

The chief problem is that of inserting both humanity and the technology we create into a radical panentheistic view which is also radically deterministic. If my actions are simply reflective of the divine unfolding of a metaphyisical creative energy, freedom of choice, the human will, is simply destroyed in the end. What she does is collapse the necessary divide that humanity has with its creations, its media, transporting human consciousness into a bizarre realm of ethical hierarchies that need caveats upon caveats to ensure the intelligibility of humankind. There is nothing here that requires moral obligation to the other for the sake of the other. If we were to look at ethics this way from her perspective the only way that I am able to serve the other for the sake of the other is if such an act forsters my own creative potential and richness of experience. Such an admittedly relativistic ethics that intentionally pulls us away from the categorical imperative leaves us with more ambiguity than calrity, more painful questions than answers. And let us not forget about the whole Christian expression of divine love in the revelation of God's own self in Christ on the cross - this act could not have happened at all. The point being is that in her ethics there is an extreme danger of relegating our ethics into an obscure situational relativism in which it is impossible for one to give of one's self for the sake of the other alone. So if you are out there trying to serve your fellow human being out of a free moral obligation, you ought to stop if you are not enhancing your richness of experience.

All of that aside, what in the world does it have to do with cyberspace? Divinizing a communications medium has nothing to do with enriching religious experience and fostering ethical obligation but divorces us from it. Talk to any pastor about his or her calling and how it would look without necessary physical contact with the parishoner in pain. You will no doubt get a very practical criticism as have I. Cyberspace promotes extreme individualism and ego-centrism if it is not looked at as a creation of human invention. Just as Whitehead thought, with his pal Bertrand Russell, that they had finally discovered the pure set of axiomatic truths in mathematics, so he envisioned a world of absolute and radical determinism. Godel exposed his flaw of a self-referential system that can in no way prove its own truth. Truth, while reflected in human experience, must come from outside of human experience to be Truth. Thus, Cobb's theo-technologism undermines itself in the end. She carelessly notes some of the dangers of computerization in the end, but fails to take them seriously and so, we ought not take this book very seriously either.

For a much better anaylsis of philosophy and technology let me suggest "The Metaphysics of Virtual Reality" by Michael Heim. For a far more comprehensive and honest look at cyberspace let me suggest "Cyberpower: The Culture and Politics of Cyberspace and the Internet" by Tim Jordan. To find out why I feel this book is so unfounded read "Technopoly" by Neil Postman.