In the first chapter of Genesis, we hear the story of reality. The imagebehind the story is of God as an omnipotent ruler whose very word is law.God speaks and it is done. So God says 'Let there be light,' and thereis light. In response to God's word, reality happens. Nothing intervenesbetween the word of God and reality. God speaks. Reality happens.

If many hands make light work, then maybe many computers can make an artificial brain. That’s the basic reasoning behind Intelligence Realm’s Artificial Intelligence project. By reverse engineering the brain through a simulation spread out over many different personal computers, Intelligence Realm hopes to create an AI from the ground-up, one neuron at a time. A computer mouse (plural mice, rarely mouses) is a hand-held pointing device that detects two-dimensional motion relative to a surface. This motion is typically translated into the motion of a pointer on a display, which allows a smooth control of the graphical user interface of a computer.

Now let us change the image. Instead of an omnipotent ruler issuingcommands, let us think of God as a divine computer programmer, sittingat a keyboard. God types 'Light' and light happens. God types 'Separatelight, darkness' and it happens. And as the divine computer program isrun, light happens, water happens, dry land happens, vegetation happens,animals happen, humanity happens.

We may feel uncomfortable with that image. Indeed, if I were to suggestthat we could make Genesis 1 more relevant by thinking of God as a computerprogrammer rather than as a heavenly king, the idea would be tacky andtrivial. I don't want to suggest that we rewrite Genesis. But I do wantto ask you to stay with me with this image for a few minutes. I would liketo play with the image of God as a computer programmer in order to helpus think about reality.

Those of us who have done computer programming will be familiar witha God-like feeling we get from the power that computers place in our hands.In programming a computer, we create worlds. We type, and it happens. Webring worlds into being ex nihilo - out of nothing.

But what have we created? When we program a computer, what we createis a series of messages. Yet the series of messages - the commands thatwe give to the computer - are not the worlds that we create. The worldwe create is what happens when our program is run on the computer. Theworld we create is what happens when the computer responds to our messages,when our messages take life through the magic of a central processing unit.

As computer programmers, we are very conscious of the transience ofour creations. We run our programs. Reality happens. And yet when we turnoff our computers, the reality is gone. The physical traces of our program,the magnetic signals on our hard disk that we call a file, is not the reality.What resides on the hard disk not the world we created. The file on thedisk is only the way that we freeze our messages so that, at another time,we can issue our commands again without the need of typing them over. Ourprograms are a reality that happens in response to our commands. When ourcommands are given, a reality comes into being, only to disappear intonothingness when the computer is turned off, or even when we exit our program.

The reality we inhabit when we use a computer is a reality that is broughtinto being by the commands of a programmer. Usually, the programs we useare the work of someone else. But if I turn on a Mac, or load Windows ona PC, or even when I use good old DOS, I inhabit a world that has beenbrought into being by the word of some programmer. The messages, frozenon disk or burned into ROM, create a world that I enter when I use my computer.I enter this strange reality we have come to call Cyberspace.

The analogy between the creation story of Genesis 1 and the experienceof computer programs is not, then, so far fetched. Reality happens in responseto the word of God. The world that happens in response to the word of theprogrammer we have begun to call 'virtual reality.'

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(I should note that I am using the term 'virtual reality' here in avery broad sense. Virtual reality refers to the worlds that we constructthrough our use of computer technology. In this sense, virtual realityis not simply the simulation of physical reality that we bring about throughthe use of special goggles or gloves or earphones. In 'virtual reality'I would also include the world of a Windows desktop or even an ordinaryspreadsheet. Through the computer we create a space which is not a space,a world in which we can act and react. In 'virtual reality' I include allthe worlds we enter when we turn on a computer.)

Do we then create worlds out of nothing when we turn on the computer?We are uncomfortable with the suggestion. We know how transient the worldsof our creation are. They are made out of bits and bytes. Bits and byteslive, perhaps, in the memory of a computer or on a hard disk. Yet theyare not physical. They are not the atoms in the memory chips or on thehard disk. They are messages that just happen to be carried by the atoms.Our stored messages, our words, bring these worlds into being. And whenwe exit our programs, the worlds cease to exist. We want to object thatour creations are not reality. They are only the ephemeral appearancesof reality.

We want our worlds to be solid. But virtual worlds are not solid. Thereseems to be a difference between the hardware reality that God made andthe software reality of our virtual worlds. I know - or, I think I know- that my desk continues to exist when I am not in my office. But doesMyst exist when I exit the program? Does the world of the Windowsdesktop exist when I exit to DOS? A world that is constructed out of ourmessages does not seem to us to be real. It is, we want to say, the appearanceof reality. It is, at best, virtual reality. It is virtual un/reality.

Perhaps we want to distinguish between the hardware worlds which arereally real and a software world which is only apparent. The hardware worldis solid, stable, permanent. The software world is an appearance that iscommanded by the messages that we send to the computer.

That seems reasonable. And yet, when we listen carefully to Genesis1, it is not quite so reasonable after all. For what Genesis 1 suggeststo us is that the hardware world, like the software world, is brought intobeing by the word, the messages, of God. The old idea, first articulatedby early Christian writers, that the world is created out of nothing shouldundercut our confidence in the stability of the hardware world. What theearly Christian theologians wanted to suggest is that the world has nostability, no solidity, no permanence in itself. The world exists onlyin and through the word of God, the divine command which summons it intobeing and without which it would disappear into the nothing from whichit came. The more we think about it, the more reality - the world whichGod has called into being - seems to resemble a world which is createdby a computer program.

When I speak of virtual un - slash - reality, I have no intention ofminimizing the importance of the worlds that are the creation of our computersoftware. What I want to call attention to by the slash is that one ofthe effects of the digital technology that we use day by day is that thedistinction between reality and unreality is increasingly blurred. It isbecoming more and more difficult to draw a sharp distinction between thereal and the unreal. The American Heritage Dictionary defines theword 'virtual' in this way: 'Existing or resulting in essence or effectthough not in actual fact, form, or name.' What that obscure little bitof prose means is that a 'virtual' something is essentially equivalentto the real thing. In other words, if it looks like a duck, quacks likea duck, waddles like a duck, we may at least say that it is a virtual duck.But then, we may ask, how do we tell the difference between a real duckand a virtual duck?

This is not a new problem. In the 18th century, the philosopher GeorgeBerkeley raised doubts about the nature of material reality. In Berkeley'sphilosophy, all reality existed in the mind. 'To be,' Berkeley proposed,'is to be perceived.' The real existence of things is not 'out there' insome mysterious reality called 'matter.' To say that a lamp post existsis simply to say that some mind - my mind or the mind of God - perceivesa lamp post. There is an anecdote to the effect that Samuel Johnson, irritatedat what he thought was the outrageousness of Berkeley's theory kicked alamp post and declared 'Thus I refute Bishop Berkeley.' The problem was:Johnson's kick proved nothing. His sore toe was nothing more than justanother perception in Johnson's mind.

Virtual un/reality is what we have come to call 'cyberspace.' Increasingnumbers of human beings are coming to inhabit this strange world. It isstrange because it is 'there' without being there. It is strange becauseit is constantly shifting, rarely the same from day to day. It is a worldof our own making. It is a world, perhaps, that has some similarity tothat of Bishop Berkeley. It is a world that is constructed totally of signalsor messages. It is a world that exists in those mysterious forms of mindthat digital technology has made possible. In cyberspace, 'To be is tobe digitized.'

But perhaps we need to notice something about the way we use the word'real.' I have interpreted Genesis 1 as a story about how reality happens.God speaks. Reality happens. But the text goes further. The text tellsus that when reality happens, God pronounces it to be 'good.'

What God joins together in Genesis, modern thought has done its bestto put asunder. I refer to the separation that has been common in modernthought for centuries between 'fact,' on the one hand, and 'value' on theother. To the modern mind, the question of fact is a matter of objectivetruth. Fact is 'out there.' Fact is independent of what I might happento think about it. Fact is objective. To be objective is to be real. Valueon the other hand is not objective. It is arbitrary. Value exists onlyin the mind of the valuer. Values do not change the facts. Values are subjective.Values are matters of opinion. Values are private concerns. Values areunreal.

Most of us are aware that before the scientific revolution - in ancientand medieval thought - there was a close connection between fact and value.For the pre-moderns, the highest being and the highest good were identical.Evil - and this is particularly true for Western Christian thinking - wasnon-being, the absence and the distortion of being. Being and 'the Good'were always closely identified. There was no split between fact and value.

In Genesis, when God sees reality happen, God sees that it is good.To be real is to be good.

I want to suggest that modern thought has not been quite honest aboutwhat it was attempting to do. It is one thing to argue that one cannotderive fact from value or, on the other hand, that one cannot derive valuefrom fact. It is quite another thing to equate 'fact' with reality. Forwhen we suggest that 'facts' are 'real' but 'values' are subjective andnot 'real,' we are always making a value judgment. We want to usethe word 'reality' in what strikes me as a rather prejudicial way. We wantto expel considerations of value, of good and evil, from 'reality.' Butwe can only do that by implicitly pronouncing the factual, the objective,to be the Good.

Let me put a rhetorical question to you: What did you think when youfirst heard or saw the title of my talk tonight - 'Living in Virtual Un/Reality.'Did it not at least cross your mind that I was going to put down what wenormally call 'virtual reality'? Did you not suspect that I was going tosay that what we call 'virtual reality' was inferior to whatever it isI was going to claim was 'really' 'real'? Was there not a suggestion inyour mind that I was going to make the claim that somehow analog realitywas superior to digital reality?

Well, that is not my purpose. What I want us to do, first of all, isto suspect this word 'reality.' It is a much more slippery word than weusually think it to be. We are all products of the modern world. We allshare the prejudice that reality is somehow 'out there,' solid and reliable.What I want to claim is that the distinction between 'real' reality andvirtual reality does not make a lot of sense. I want to claim that digitaltechnology has called into question our metaphysical prejudices. To dwellin cyberspace is to dwell in a different reality than modernity has beenprepared to admit. To call cyberspace 'unreal' is a value judgment which,in its own way, exposes the contradiction in the modern enterprise to keepreality and values rigorously separate.

We have gathered here in Baltimore as part of that growing proportionof humanity have chosen to begin to live in virtual un/reality. I imaginethat very few of us - if any - understood that we were making that choicewhen we bought our first computer. We did not understand that we were aboutto disorient ourselves and to lose our grasp on what we used to call 'reality'when we bought our first modem. And probably, we are not comfortable evennow with describing ourselves as letting go of our grasp on 'reality.'Neither am I. But we need to use provocative language. For things are notthe same. We know that things are not the same because we have experiencedsomething that does not fit with the way things used to be for us. We knowthings are not the same when we see the fear and trembling of our Ludditefriends who feel blackmailed into entering the on-line world because ofthe media hype that has surrounded the Internet in the last year or so.To describe what we have seen, we are ultimately forced to do funny thingswith this strange word 'reality.'

It is now ten years, to the month, that community we know as Ecunetbegan to gather. From May 1985 to March of 1986 people of different denominationsand geographical locations struggled to understand their new identity andthe new intimacy that computer communications had imposed on their lives.Was what we were experiencing on-line really 'church'?

We were uneasy about that question. Some of us were very reluctant tomove away from the conviction of the church as a physically gathered community.The church, we argued, had to be incarnated in flesh and blood. We believedthat a computer mediated community could not express the full humanitythat is necessary if the church is to be truly the 'body of Christ.' Butmany of our assumptions of what the church had to be were broughtinto radical question by what happened at the end of January 1986. TheChallenger exploded - live, on TV. In response to the universal shock ofthat awful event, four of our number planned and carried out an on-line'Memorial Service.' The effect was electric. They had done what many ofus thought could not be done. They had gathered a community for prayerand proclamation. The community was geographically disperse, stretchingfrom Hawaii to Nova Scotia. It reached out to all who were feeling theshock of the Challenger disaster. It demonstrated that, indeed, the Spiritmoves where it will and that our inclination to restrict ecclesiasticalreality to the hardware world needed to be seriously questioned.

The Memorial Service experience has not, at least to my knowledge, beenrepeated. In retrospect, I wonder why we did not attempt it again in responseto the Oklahoma bombing. But whether or not it is repeatable, the MemorialService experience taught us that reality could no longer be the same.We were beginning to live in virtual un/reality.

A few months later, in March of 1986, those of us who had been buildingthe ecumenical community on-line met for the first time as a group. Theoccasion was the CAMCON meeting in Los Angeles, which was to explore theuse of computers in the church. The effect of the physical gathering ofthe on-line community was electric. The energy of that small group dominatedthe meeting. We discovered two things. First, we discovered that the communitythat had been growing on-line was very real. Secondly, we discovered thatmeeting physically added new dimensions to our on-line community. Our senseof reality was stretched. What was this curious thing called community?Did it become real only when we met face to face? Not at all. But faceto face meeting did make a difference. In what did 'real' community consist?

The fact is that Ecunet has always been something of a chameleon, takingon different configurations of reality as it has gone from crisis to crisis,as it has moved from UNISON, to NWI, to its present home in Louisville.It has begun taking on different natures again as it continues to respondto the growth of the Internet. Ecunet reflects the shifting, unstable natureof cyberspace, of virtual un/reality. And over the past ten years, we havebeen learning - slowly but surely - what it is to live in virtual un/reality.

But we have only begun to learn. Ecunet has grown - partly by choice,partly by chance - in a very protected environment. We chose to find aplace for the on-line church community apart from the mainstream of theon-line world. We chose, for example, not to be a SIG (that is, a 'SpecialInterest Group') on CompuServe or any of the other public 'informationutilities.' We have chosen not to place our community and our discussionin a perfectly public space where it might - we feared - be stomped overby the on-line Philistines. And we have chosen - at least so far - notto have full Internet access for many of the same reasons.

Over the next few days, in my daily reflections, I will continue toreturn to the Internet and its relationship to Ecunet. The explosion ofInternet has decisively changed the situation for us in several respects.First, it has made cyberspace - virtual un/reality - very visible in the'real' world. Secondly - and this is my more important point - the Internetis making explicit some unexpected dimensions of virtual un/reality. Iwill argue here that the Internet has undercut some of our own prejudicesabout the on-line world.

The first point is quite simple. The Internet has managed to enticethe traditional media into believing that cyberspace is real. Rarely aday goes by when there is not some mention of the Internet in the newspapersor on television news. We have all been brought up to believe that realityis defined by the mass media. To be real is to be 'covered.' Cyberspaceis now being 'covered.' Therefore cyberspace is real.

The problem is that the traditional media represent reality as somethingsolid and fixed. Consequently, cyberspace - virtual un/reality - is consistentlymisrepresented in the media. Indeed, one might say that any attempt torepresent virtual un/reality is to misrepresent it. One can live in virtualun/reality. One cannot define it, pin it down, draw pictures of it. Consequentlywhen we hear of pornography or hate literature on the Internet we beginto think of cyberspace as a pretty seamy neighborhood of reality. Thoseof who actually live in virtual un/reality realize that while the mediareports are true - there is pornography on the Internet - they are at thesame time utterly false, utterly misleading.

Wittgenstein in his early work attempted to define reality as the 'totalityof the facts.' So we try to understand virtual un/reality as the totalityof what is on-line. The traditional media attempts to make cyberspace fitinto this version of 'reality.' Yet those of us who live in virtual un/realityknow that the media account does not fit. The Internet cannot be adequatelydescribed in terms of the totality of the documents and files it contains.

That is my first point: The attempt of the mass media to report on theInternet reveals some of the cracks in our conventional understanding ofreality. My second point is this: the Internet reveals cracks in the understandingof on-line reality that those of us who have lived in virtual un/realityhave come to hold dear. I want to mention two myths which, I think, arebrought into question by the explosion of the Internet.

First: Cyberspace is often represented as democratic and anti-hierarchical.Indeed, this was one of the first things that impressed me when I firstcame on-line. When you connect people in computer networks, then the flowof information is radically changed. One is not dependent on hierarchicalpatterns of information flow. Instead of passing up and down a bureaucratichierarchy, information can flow directly from person to person. In theprocess, as I was often tempted to remark, computer communications marginalizeshierarchy. With a few qualifications I still consider that to be true.

The problem, though, is this: In spite of our clichés, the oppositeto hierarchy is not democracy. The opposite to hierarchy is anarchy. Democracyis a system of government where the majority decide. Anarchy is the situationin which no one person or group - not even the majority - have the meansof imposing their will. And it is anarchy, rather than democracy, thatcharacterizes virtual un/reality.

Parts Of A Computer Hand In:mr. Mac's Virtual Existence According

The problem of hate literature on the Internet provides us with a convenientillustration. Hate literature appears on the Internet. It may appear ina Usenet news group or it may appear in the form of an Internet node dedicatedto the superiority of the Aryan race. Our impulse is to suppress this kindof thing. Indeed, we may assume that a vast majority of Internet usersare opposed to making the medium available to hate groups. But it cannotbe suppressed. If the government moves to make it illegal to post hateliterature electronically, the hate group can move its material to an offshore site. If we attempt to make individuals legally responsible for thecontent of their postings, the offenders can mask their identity. Whatthe Internet has made explicit is this: In cyberspace, if there is a supportgroup for a certain type of material - including pornography and hate literature- that material will appear. In virtual un/reality 'There is no king inIsrael and everyone does what is right in their own eyes.'

My first point, then, is that the social organization that is at homein virtual un/reality is anarchy. My second point may be a corollary ofthe first. It is this: Virtual un/reality does not support community.

I want to state this point very carefully, because it is only one sideof the truth. The other side of the truth is that we all know that communityhas happened for us on-line. Ecunet is the story of electronic communitybuilding. I want to say, though, that the community that we know as Ecunethappened by the careful nurturing of what I will call an 'electronic neighborhood.'Internet, however, has convinced me that the medium, having fostered thegrowth of electronic neighborhoods, ultimately works at their dissolution.

The typical use of the Internet is a highly individualistic, idiosyncraticactivity. One 'surfs' the Internet, touching down here and there. Usenetnewsgroups, with their threaded structures, encourage readers to pick andchoose messages according to their content. The typical Usenet newsgroup- or Listserv mailing list - does not foster community except for a verysmall and dedicated in-group. On the Internet, one makes brief contactwith other individuals with whom, for a brief period, one shares a commoninterest. It is like ships passing in the night. The result is that, ifyou can settle down in a neighborhood of virtual un/reality, communitymay be found. But it is not automatic and most of our activities in cyberspaceare not communal at all.

It may be, in fact, that community can happen on-line only where thereare 'firewalls' in place. It is very unlikely for community to prosperon the freeways of the information highway, exposed to the full force ofInternet traffic. For community, one needs a neighborhood. As we have learnedin the analog world, freeways tend to destroy neighborhoods. It may besimilar in virtual un/reality.

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Even Ecunet has long since ceased to be a community. Ecunet isa neighborhood of neighborhoods. One can find communities on Ecunet. Theyhappen in different places. One community gathers, for example, aroundStephen Rose's 'Renewal 2.' Another gathers around the United Church ofChrist discussion of 'Confessing Christ.' I am sure there are many moreof which I am not aware. In the early days, the electronic world was smalland every place in cyberspace was a neighborhood. So Ecunet began as aneighborhood, as a recognizable community. It was a place where everybodyknew everyone else, a village in virtual un/reality. It is that way nolonger.

Is this the way things are? Is virtual un/reality an anarchy in whichcommunity can exist only behind the protection of firewalls? Yes, thatis the way things are. Or, rather, this is a face that virtual un/realityturns towards us.

I would remind you, however, that I asked you earlier to be very suspiciousof this word 'reality.' We need to be aware of the many faces that virtualun/reality turns our way. Those faces are not simply products of our imagination,not simply wish fulfillment. But, at the same time, they are products ofour imagination as virtual un/reality is a product of our imagination.It is the creation of our messages. We project ourselves into cyberspace,and yet cyberspace takes on a life of its own. The worlds that our messagessummon into being have 'falls' of their own. Like God, we can find ourselvesalienated from our own creation.

What I have described is no more, but also no less, than a possibilityof virtual un/reality. Possibilities are the stuff from which virtual un/realityis made. That virtual un/reality is anarchy is true. That virtual un/realitydissolves community is true. But I could equally well say that anarchyis the possibility of virtual un/reality that is being presented to usat this particular point in the development of the technology. There areother possibilities, other truths of cyberspace. We have recognized otherpossibilities in the past. We will encounter still others in the future.To live in virtual un/reality is to live in the midst of shifting possibilities.That is why it is virtually un/real.

Keynote address at Ecunet '95, Baltimore, MD

Parts Of A Computer Hand In:mr. Mac's Virtual Existence Depends

David Lochhead
May 1995

Copyright © 1995 David Lochhead