‘nowhere’, a beyond which cannot be found in the mundane materiality
of everyday life.^10
Of course, technology has always figured in attaining such a beyond,
for which cyberspace is the latest enlistee. Because of this, the Greek
legends used to explain technologically mediated community are always
about the emancipation as well as the imprisonment which technology is
capable of delivering. In Technopoly (1993), Postman narrates the
Judgement of Thamus as being able to teach us that ‘every culture must
negotiate with technology‘, and that always ‘a bargain is struck in which
technology giveth and technology taketh away’ (5). The realization by
human beings of some form of community is said to be dependent on the
correct negotiation of the perils and ecstasies of technology.^11
These relationships to technology invariably harbour dreams of
unity, in the form of democracy, community and a metaphysical common
weal or common interest. In nearly all cases the status of modern com-
munication technology is cast within the above configuration of a ‘use or
abuse’ framework of technology. Technology can be a source of great
enlightenment, hope and belongingness, but it is assumed that it can also
foreclose relationships in which it has a lesser mediating role.
Such is the tenor of Darin Barney’s Prometheus Wired: The Hope of
Democracy in the Age of Network Technology(2000). Barney takes a rather
more in-depth look at the history of both technology and the meanings of
political utopia, employing the writings of Plato, Aristotle, Marx, Heidegger
and George Grant for this purpose.
In doing so, Barney revisits the myth of Prometheus, who concealed
the earthly possession of fire from Zeus. Zeus’s response was to deny the
blessing of hope to mortal beings. The technology of fire is granted. It may
provide light and warmth, but Zeus knew it would also lead transient
beings to extend themselves beyond their mortal limits, leading to apoca-
lyptic situations. ‘When beings who are mortal by nature no longer fore-
see their own death, they begin to regard themselves as immortal: as
having no natural limits, like gods, which they are not. Hope thus seduces
human beings into overestimating and overreaching themselves, with
tragic consequences’ (5). Barney’s corrective to Enlightenment doctrine is
that ‘[h]ope enlightens, but it also blinds’ (5). Nowhere are the stakes of
this insight so high as they are in the virtual dreams that are held out for
the role of network technology in political organization.
The immateriality of cyberspace, the fact that it is so ‘clean’ and free
from mortal struggle, coincides with another metaphysical theme of the
cyber-utopians – that of ‘liberation from the flesh’. As Wertheim (1999)
has commented, ‘Among many champions of cyberspace we also find a
yearning for transcendence over the limitations of the body’ (259). In the
sentiments of cyber-enthusiasts like Jaron Lanier and Nicole Stenger, it is
possible to ‘transcend the body’ or at least be ‘re-sourced’ sparkling juve-
niles who will never age (259). ‘Dreaming of a day when we will be able
to download ourselves into computers, Stenger has imagined that inTelecommunity 191Holmes-06.qxd 2/15/2005 1:03 PM Page 191