Douglas Rushkoff:
 
CYBERIA
 
Cyberia is the place a businessperson goes when involved in a phone conversation, the place a shamanic warrior goes when traveling out of body, the place an "acid house'' dancer goes when experiencing the bliss of a techno-acid trance. Cyberia is the place alluded to by the mystical teachings of every religion, the theoretical tangents of every science, and the wildest speculations of every imagination. Now, however, unlike any other time in history, Cyberia is thought to be within our reach. The technological strides of our postmodern culture, coupled with the rebirth of ancient spiritual ideas, have convinced a growing number of people that Cyberia is the dimensional plane in which humanity will soon find itself.
 
But even those of us who have never ventured into a house club, physics lab or computer bulletin board are being increasingly exposed to words, images and ideas that shake the foundations of our most deeply held beliefs. The cyberian paradigm finds its way to our unsuspecting minds through new kinds of arts and entertainment that rely less on structure and linear progression than on textural experience and moment-to-moment awareness. Role-playing games, for example, have no beginning or end, but instead celebrate the inventiveness of their players, who wind their way through complex fantasies together, testing strategies that they may later use in their own lives, which have in turn begun to resemble the wild adventures of their game characters. Similarly, the art and literature of Cyberia have abandoned the clean lines and smooth surfaces of Star Trek and 2001: A Space Odyssey in favor of the grimy, posturban realism of Batman, Neuromancer, and Bladerunner, in which computers do not simplify human issues but expose and even amplify the obvious faults in our systems of logic and social engineering.
 
Not surprisingly, the reaction of traditionalists to this expression has been harsh and marked by panic. Cyberians question the very reality on which the ideas of control and manipulation are based; and as computer-networking technology gets into the hands of more cyberians, historical power centers are challenged. A bright young hacker with enough time on his hands can break in to almost any computer system in the world. Meanwhile, do-it-yourself technology and a huge, hungry media empire sews the seeds of its own destruction by inviting private citizens to participate through 'zines, cable shows, and interactive television. The hypnotic spell of years of television and its intense public relations is broken as people learn to deconstruct and recombine the images intended to persuade them. The result is that the population at large gains the freedom to reexamine previously accepted policies and prejudices.
 
Using media "viruses,'' politically inclined cyberians launch into the datasphere, at lightning speed, potent ideas that openly challenge hypocritical and illogical social structures, thus rendering them powerless.
 
A new scientific paradigm, a new leap in technology, and a new class of drug created the conditions for what many believe is the renaissance we are observing today. Parallels certainly abound between our era and renaissances of the past: the computer and the printing press, LSD and caffeine, the holograph and perspective painting, the wheel and the spaceship, agriculture and the datasphere. But cyberians see this era as more than just a rebirth of classical ideas. They believe the age upon us now might take the form of categorical upscaling of the human experience onto uncharted, hyperdimensional turf.
 
The people who believe all this, so far, are on the outermost fringes of popular culture. But, as we witnessed in the 1960s, the beliefs of fringe cultures can trickle up through our youth into the mainstream. In fact, we may soon conclude that the single most important contribution of the 1960s and the psychedelic era to popular culture is the notion that we have chosen our reality arbitrarily. The mission of the cyberian counterculture of the 1990s, armed with new technologies, familiar with cyberspace and daring enough to explore unmapped realms of consciousness, is to rechoose reality consciously and purposefully.
 
Douglas Rushkoff
 
Thanks to Douglas Rushkoff.