Jottings on science, religion, technology, pop culture and faith from the Antipodes.

Faith & Religion

Liquid Self: Just add cyber-water

I’ve been reading about the self and cyberspace today. Here’s a quote I like from:

Wertheim, Margaret. The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace: A History of Space from Dante to the Internet. New York: W.W. Norton, 1999. Reprint, London: Virago Press, 2000.

One question that arises, then, is where does the self end? If the self “continues” into cyberspace, then as I say, it also “continue” through the post and over the phone. It becomes also like a fluid, leaking out around us all the time and joining each of us into a vast ocean, or web, of relationships with other leaky selves. In this sense, cyberspace becomes a wonderful metaphor for highlighting and bringing to our attention this crucial aspect of our lives. As (Christine) Wertheim points out, the Net make explicit a process that is already going on around us all the time, but which we in the modern West too often tend to forget. By bringing into focus the fact that we are all abound into a web of interrelating and fluid selves, the Internet does us an invaluable service. (p. 249)

Leads to all sort of possible images

  • Baptism in the fluid of other people
  • Liquid church metaphors
  • God’s self as sloshing about down here too.
  • God’s continuation of self into Scripture