Mind Is A Leaking Rainbow

A summary of:
Stenger, N. 1991. Mind is a leaking rainbow. In Cyberspace: First Steps, M. Benedikt, Ed. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 48-57.

Wertheim’s mass walked us through the development of our concept of ‘space’. Here, Stenger makes a indicate close the termination that cyberspace has had on our concept of time: “If at that topographic point is something that computers induce got forced into our society, it is a dissimilar feel of time. We soundless conceive of fourth dimension inside the mental framework of the eighteenth century: fourth dimension is what is laid upwards yesteryear a clock, God equally ‘the Great Clockmaker’ (Voltare), together with then on. The (re)emergence of dissimilar senses of fourth dimension volition non destroy the traditional one, merely become far relative” (55). She draws on Eliade, who writes close the sacred nature of time, or mayhap ameliorate phrased equally the nature of sacred time. He writes: “’Religious human lives inward ii kinds of time, of which, the to a greater extent than important, sacred time, appears nether the paradoxical expression of a round off time, reversible together with recoverable, a classify of eternal introduce that is periodically reintegrated yesteryear agency of rites’” (in Stenger, 55). Stenger writes, “Eliade’s sacred fourth dimension is nonhistorical. It is the fourth dimension that ‘floweth not,’ that does non participate inward the profane duration” (55).

I don’t know how useful this is for my purposes, merely at that topographic point it is anyway.

Stenger concludes amongst a hyperbolic, utopian paragraph, 1 that is fairly instance of that breed described yesteryear Wertheim equally hailing the Internet equally an chance for almost religious rebirth: “According to Satre, the atomic bomb was what humanity had institute to commit collective suicide. It seems, yesteryear contrast, that cyberspace, though born of a state of war technology, opens upwards a infinite for collective restoration, together with for peace. As screens are dissolving, our futurity tin solely induce got on a luminous dimension! / Welcome to the New World” (58). I remember Hawken would concord amongst this. I, however, notice this hopelessly naïve (but a neat quote!).