WHAT IS CYBERSPACE AND HOW CAN WE FREE IT?

     At first glance, entering into Cyberspace is like entering
into a new frontier.  The blank screen is like the vacuum of
Outerspace or in the beginning there was nothingness and then came
the Word.  The best way I can describe this space is to say that it
is our collective unconsciousness becoming consciousness as we
search for meaning, striving to understand the reason for our
existence and the Cosmic Order of life.  I have heard it called the 
Underworld and the Afterlife. Cyberspace is the place of the All-
Knowing I/Eye, a place which records our written thoughts and
actions.  

     There is something dead about the word.  After it is written,
like a photograph, it is there as a reflection of a past thought,
there to remind us of a moment in time when the inspiration
possessed the writer.  Nevertheless, like the Goddesses and Gods of
the Underworld and the Afterlife, the word is alive in Cyberspace
being shot instantaneous through communication satellites around
the world, the bytes ending up after their planetary travel back in
my mbox.

     The basic principles about Cyberspace are that there are no
national borders, no money, or mothers tying one down to social
customs. Instead, there is vast internal mystery to Cyberspace, a
place where the unfolding of the innerspace of the soul is visually
seen.  In Cyberspace, the world is an idea.  For Idealist, it is
the place where Ecocites can finally be built on Earth and the
garden of love cultivated.  With the use of email, we have awoke to
an age of the global gene pool.  

     There is a flow to Cyberspace.  It is the Ocean, the Great
Universal Sea which makes Planet Earth into a blue orb of life in
Outerspace. Writer Howard Rheingold in his book _Virtual
Communities_ has called Cyberspace the agar medium in a petri dish. 
He says that no one planned the colonies of microorganisms now
growing in the agar medium, nevertheless, it is happening.  But
maybe it is not just a matter of chance that virtual communities
began to grow. Couldn't Cyberspace be far more intelligent that we
think?  Could it is the medium of life itself, a divine idea, the
evolutionary water inside our brain?  Could Cyberspace be Gaia, the
microbial Superorganism which recycles all of our wastes and
regulates life on Earth?

     In Cyberspace, we are the ones who give each other meaning. 
Nothing else but our interconnectiveness and our re-affirmation of
who we are creates the support systems that we need in order to
inspire us to even greater efforts.  We are here to uplift each
others spirits, to bind us into a world community of lovers of life
who have the wisdom to live in peace with each other and with the
universe.

     But like the Great Seas of the Earth, the ocean of Cyberspace
has been polluted with the garbage of civilization.  The war
against life dominates most of the channels of communication.  The
old networks of Western Thought have seeped into all the virginal
streams of hope, so that now the visionaries have been
marginalized, hanging on by mere charity to maintain their limited
access.  As the prices to connect to Cyberspace continues to rise
by the privatization of the Net, more and more souls are pushed out
of the New World.  The Old World is corrupting the New World which
has the potential to liberated the dreams of the water inside the
Global Brain.  

     Again, the New World has been colonized by the manufacturers
who push greed, private interest, the profit motive, pornography,
and war.  Rheingold asked, "Which scenario seems more conductive to
democracy, which to totalitarian rule:  a world in which a few
people control communications technology that can be used to
manipulate the beliefs of billions, or a world in which every
citizen can broadcast to every other citizen? (14)."
     
     Isn't it time we realize that money, the power base of the
powerholds, has become an electronic abstraction, one which should
be deleted from the Global Brain for being an unworkable, cruel,
and oppressive idea?  Isn't it time to start a new accounting
system, one in which what counts is one's personal integrity and
their contribution to the human species?  Isn't it time we
rearrange the accounting system so that everyone's basic needs are
met and their dreams of a just world actualized?

     Capitalists have said to me that there is no free lunch in
America.  If I want freedom of speech then I will have to buy it. 
In other words, if I don't have the capital to buy Net time, then
I don't deserve freedom of speech.  However, this is the double-
speak which George Orwell in _1984_ was talking about:  freedom
equal slavery.  All those with money are free while the people who
can't afford to broadcast there ideas over the communication
technologies are their slaves.  Those with the big money rule which
is what the plutocrats have been doing for centuries while they
wallow in the luxury produced by the exploited labor of their
economic slaves. 

     Now with the miracle of Cyberspace, we can see our problems of
consciousness.  We still see people who are sick with the thought
of self-interested, censorship, and the private ownership of the
natural resources. Cyberspace is one of our natural resources. We
must understand that Cyberspace is not a privilege of those who can
afford it, but it is a human right of everyone to have the full
access, skill, and time to be able to use it.  Rheingold writes,
"We need a clear citizens' vision of the way of the Net ought to
grow, a firm idea of the kind of media environment we would like to
see in the future.  If we do not develop such a vision for
ourselves, the future will be shaped for us by large commercial and
political powerholders (6)."  

     There can not be a world democracy without a global open forum
which gives decentralized empowerment to all people to express
their ideas and enter into the important dialogues of the times. 
Thanks to the computer wizards who developed this magnificent
technology, we now have the means to carried out the vision of
creating a spiritual democracy, a worldwide information lovolution. 
I use the word lovolution here instead of revolution because as
some wise person pointed out me in an email, the next revolution is
being fought in Cyberspace not with guns and bombs, but with words
and ideas.  The liberating idea is that everyone has a right to
enter into the New World.  This my friends, is a vision of
universal love.  For the vision to be manifested means that we need
to create a leisure based economy where everyone has the free time
and education necessary to become informed about the issues being
discussed in the Gaia Forums. 

     The idea of creating a global democracy has been called a new
religion.  In my dissertation GAIA, THE PLANETARY RELIGION, THE
SACRED MARRIAGE OF ART AND SCIENCE, I have articulated a way in
which the social architecture of a world democracy might work.
We now have an ideology of true love to save us, if only the world
will listen.  Only if feminist thought and Neutopia would be taken
seriously with the highest spiritual respect will we have a chance
to emancipate Cyberspace. Then we will finally understand the way
true leadership works to use our advanced technologies to create
paradise for all on Spaceship Earth.


                                           Doctress Neutopia


a public copy of the dissertation can be gotten at ftp site:
bertha.pyramid.com /pub/leri/Neutopia