Customer Reviews

The Soul of Cyberspace: How New Technology Is Changing Our Spiritual Lives

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2 star:		(1)
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A comparitive survey of what differing religious groups (from Zen to Hasadic Jewish to Catholic to New Age and more) are doing to create a presence in Cyberspace, mostly the world-wide web.

Not truly revelatory in either spirituality or the implications of cyberspace, but some of those interviewed have thoughtful comments on how they see the role of their work.

This book is far from scholarly, and sometimes seems hurried into publication. It's closer to a series of brief interviews, combined with the author's reactions, than an organized exposition. There seems more strength in the cyber/philosophy side than in any religious area, mostly thanks to some thoughtful insights from one techno-philosopher. This makes it slightly deeper in technological consideration than spiritual, but neither area is treated rigorously nor with depth.

This is a searching, deeply informative book that is by far the best I've seen yet on spirituality, religion and the Internet. Zaleski is a good and lively writer who makes his exploration of online spirituality fun and exciting to read. He does two things in the book. He gives an overview of what's going on spiritually online--what the various major religions and more homegrown spiritual groups are doing online, and what they hope to accomplish. What makes this aspect of the book so strong is that rather than just discuss Web and Usenet sites, Zaleski went out and talked to the men and women who are pioneering the spiritual use of cyberspace, from Zen Webmasters to Pagan programmers. The book also provides what seems to me to be a thorough and very provocative discussion of the implications of digital spirituality--what it means to try to transpose spiritual and religious work into a virtual, bodyless realm. He also considers at length the ramifications of artificial life and artificial intelligence. Here too, Zaleski includes conversations with some high profile digital pioneers, including Mark Pesce, who created HTML, and Tom Ray, the creator of the artificial life experiment Tierra. This is a book that tackles the very most imporant religious, spiritual, and philosophic questions raised by cyberspace, and I recommend it very highly.

Jeff Zaleski takes you behind the scenes of the screen and shows how the Internet is filled with idealists who care for others. If you want to understand the power that sits at your fingertips, you must read this book. It's your chance to change the world to a better place. All you need is the resolve to care for others and share your G-d given talents with millions of people who are searching for meaning in life.