Electric Mythology

I recently re-read William Gibson's Count Zero. The novel, written back in the late 80's has the internet (Cyberspace, or the "Matrix", as he puts it) containing constructs of a spiritual nature. These constructs are independent entities derived from an fractured AI. From the ashes of this fracturing, they've created themselves as deities from Voodoo religion.

I found this to be an incredibly interesting idea, and began to wonder about the existing Internet. Could it possibly advance to a point where software could obtain this level of sophistication? As the Net becomes a more immersive experience, how would we observe these software constructs? In the context of Cyberspace, would the become gods?

I was curious to see what the current state of Cyberspace was, in regards to this. Is there a mythology of the Internet?

Interestingly, there are two.

The first is a rather mundane form of mythology. They stem from the use of the word myth as a misconception or a popular belief. For example, the myth of that an eighty-hour work week for internet programmers is necessary for business. These myths are more related to a persons actions or existence in the real worlds, but really has no bearing on their cyberspace existence.

The second is a little bit more bizarre.

During the early days of the Internet (and probably ongoing to this day) Mark Pesce attempted to inject Paganism into Cyberspace. As he put it, "Without the sacred there is no differentiation in space; everything is flat and gray. If we are about to enter cyberspace, the first thing we have to do is plant the divine in it."[1] The pagan belief is that "experience of the divine comes from the human mind."[2] Applying Paganism on top of Cyberspace was a simple step forward. Cyberspace is, in essence, a sum total of human knowledge; an outward presentation of the inner workings of the mind. It's information, pure and simple, but applied to network by human devices, and therefore, the techonopagans would argue, a path towards the divine.

Interestingly enough, most of these folks were equally inspired by Gibson's seminal work, Neuromancer. As he describes it: "Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination...A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the non-space of the mind, clusters and constellations of data." In this complexity, there lies the beginnings of a mythology. The Net is a wholly complex system, and becoming more so each day.

In complex and chaotic systems there is the concept of emergent behavior. Informational systems possibly follow the same chaotic rules (sounds like a bit of an oxymoron). As Cyberspace moves toward being the sum total of human knowledge, the emergence of divinity and spirituality in and around the network is real possibility. It has a greater potential of emerging, since there is also a social need to share in a collective divine experience.

It will be interesting to watch and see.