Its been ten years
since my book, Digital Dharma, was released by the
Theosophical Publishing House (Quest Books). I’ve decided to look
over some of my “predictions” a decade later, and in general, I
think I did pretty well! Yes, Second Life and
Friendster didn’t
make it as online
communities, but Facebook
has over 1.9
billion monthly users.
I called Twitter messages “twits,” but truly predicted the rise
of SMS text-based services, and while I labeled the emergence of
shared global intelligence networks “the grid,” we are all
becoming dependent on our “smart devices” communicating via “the
Cloud!”
In
retrospect, using the chakras
as the organizing ladder was probably a mistake in terms of
marketing: my media-ecology and technology readers were frightened
away by the esoteric references to “energy wheels,” while my New
Age friends often told me that they “hate their computers and
smartphones,” and have no interest in seeing them as tools for
self-reflection. It might have been safer to rely more on Don
Beck’s “Spiral Dynamics”
and Ken Wilber’s holons,
but in the end, the real leap I asked my readers to entertain was
that our “outer technologies” both reflect and influence our
inner psycho-spiritual challenges, and are in turn, created and used
in ways that also reflect the state if our mass consciousness. As our
world gets even more connected, having a “big picture view” of
the emerging spiritual issues
– the Light and Shadow of
each technology – is even
more critical to our mental health and the survival of the planet.
In
the next few weeks, I will try to update each of the book’s seven
chapters. I will also try to respond to any blog questions readers
may have about the intersection of telecommunications technologies
and spiritual evolution. As
a start, here is a look at how the global telegraph, with its “first
level” issues of security and self-identity, has reemerged in our
constant “texting” and Twitter feeds, and a President who can’t
keep his thumbs off the phone screen!
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