The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace: A History of Space from Dante to the Internet
The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace: A History of Space from Dante to the Internet
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网络空间的天国之门：从但丁到互联网的空间史
DOI：
10.5860/choice.37-0982
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发表时间：
1999
影响因子：
2.4
通讯作者：
M. Wertheim
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
M. Wertheim
来自出版商：
互联网似乎不太可能成为心灵的门户，但正如玛格丽特·韦特海姆（Margaret Wertheim）在这本富有想象力的书中所说，近年来，网络空间已成为巨大精神渴望的宝库。我们被告知，完美的王国并不在珍珠般的大门之后，而是在标有“.com”和“. net”的电子网关之后。为了理解这种精神欲望到数字化空间的映射，韦特海姆带领我们踏上了一段令人惊叹的历史之旅，追溯了从中世纪到今天我们对空间的概念的演变。从但丁的宇宙观开始，我们看到中世纪人如何将自己嵌入物理空间和精神空间。然而，随着现代科学的兴起，人们开始用纯粹的物理术语来看待空间--精神空间被写在现实领域之外。在这种背景下，韦特海姆认为，网络空间使我们回到了一个几乎中世纪的位置：我们再次拥有了身体的物理空间和一个非物质空间，许多人希望这将成为灵魂的新空间。通过将空间科学与更广泛的文化和宗教环境联系起来，韦特海姆表明，网络空间的精神化符合想象空间的悠久历史。特别是，它可以被视为一种尝试，以实现基督教天堂空间的技术版本。
From the Publisher:
The Internet may seem an unlikely gateway for the soul but, as Margaret Wertheim argues in this imaginative book, cyberspace has in recent years become a repository for immense spiritual yearning. The perfect realm awaits, we are told, not behind the pearly gates but behind electronic gateways labeled ".com" and ".net." Seeking to understand this mapping of spiritual desire onto digitized space, Wertheim takes us on an astonishing historical journey, tracing the evolution of our conception of space from the Middle Ages to today. Beginning with the cosmology of Dante, we see how the medievals saw themselves embedded in both physical space and spiritual space. With the rise of modern science, however, space came to be seen in purely physical terms - with spiritual space written out of the realm of reality. Within this context, Wertheim suggests that cyberspace returns us to an almost medieval position: Once again we have a physical space for body and an immaterial space that many people hope will be a new space for soul. By linking the science of space to the wider cultural and religious milieu, Wertheim shows that the spiritualizing of cyberspace fits into a long history of imagined spaces. In particular, it may be seen as an attempt to realize a technological version of the Christian space of heaven.