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190 COMMUNICA TION THEORY
Wertheim (1999) quotes from a 1997 virtual reality conference paper by the
developer of VRML (Virtual Reality Modelling Language), Mark Pesce. In
opening his paper Pesce claims that those who fully appreciate what
cyberspace is are those touched by revelation, sangrail, the Holy Grail – a
revelation that was once the privilege of witches and mystics, which hack-
ers have a special understanding of, and which is available to all in the
modern era: ‘The revelation of the Graal is always a personal and unique
experience. ... I know – because I have heard it countless times from many
people across the world – that this moment of revelation is the common
element in our experience as a community’ (253).
In Pesce’s account, the ecstasy of cyberspace is that it is, at once, the final
paradise available to all, whilst offering all a unique, irreplaceable moment
of revelation – a place of both redemption and solipsism. The excessively
individualistic form of this revelation paradoxically embraces some order of
a generalized other whilst failing to identify with any particular others.
Foster (1997) argues that ‘[s]olipsism, or the extreme pre-occupation with
and indulgence of one’s own inclination, is potentially engendered in the
technology [of the Internet]’ (26). As the private basis from which each neti-
zen realizes his or her own very personal Grail becomes more convincing,
sources of self-identity become tenuous: ‘as the private becomes more all-
encompassing and the image of one’s own world view becomes more con-
vincing, one can lose sight of the other altogether’ (26).
In the absence of the other, avatars everywhere encounter only them-
selves, and extend themselves in the image of the medium itself, which
acts back on them as an externalized spirit to be worshipped. Wertheim
(1999) remarks that, ‘[i]n one form or another, a “religious” attitude has
been voiced by almost all the leading champions of cyberspace’ (255, see
also Robins, 1995: 151). Regardless of whether the champions of cyber-
space are ‘formal religious believers’ like Wired magazine’s Kevin Kelly,
‘again and again we find in their discussions of the digital domain a “reli-
gious valorization” of this realm’ (256).
In order that such a place is reserved for cyberspace, it is frequently
associated with Judaeo-Christian narratives of which it is seen to be part
of an eternal return. For example, Michael Benedikt (1991) describes it as
a New Jerusalem, which, like the Garden of Eden, ‘stands for our state of
innocence’ and is a ‘Heavenly City which stands for our state of Wisdom
and Knowledge’ (15). In the Book of Revelations, the Heavenly City
exhibits a beauty and a geometry tantamount to a ‘religious vision of
cyberspace itself’ (Wertheim, 1999: 258).
However, the genesis myths which are commonplace are not at all
9
restricted to Christianity. As Wertheim points out, they can just as easily
be based in Greek mythology: ‘From both our Greek and our Judeo-
Christian heritage Western culture has within it a deep current of dualism
that has always associated immateriality with spirituality’ (256).
The ineffable and the sublime feature strongly in Greek mythology,
and indeed the very idea of utopia comes from the Greek, meaning