While others have been worrying about how to keep kids away from computer porn or how to use the Web to make money, Jeff Zaleski has been contemplating how the Net will affect our spiritual lives.
"I think organized religion as we know it is going to run into trouble in the centuries to come," says Zaleski, 49, a writer and editor in New York.
Others have pointed out sites for cyberpilgrims to visit, but Zaleski's new book, The Soul of Cyberspace (HarperEdge, $22), moves beyond the tour-guide approach.
It is both an analysis of how religions are using the Net and an extended meditation on issues he believes they must soon address…
…Zaleski doesn't depend entirely on his own reflections; he also interviews a range of Internet and spiritual "experts" whose eclectic views do not always coincide with his own…
…Rabbi Yosef Y. Kazen explains that a minyan (the 10-man Jewish prayer quorum) can't take place on line because "each person has a spark of godliness within them, which is the soul." When 10 men gather in person, "you're bringing down a higher level of godliness." …
Voices from 'The Soul of Cyberspace'
"Any time you've got a large number of people going somewhere where they can't take their bodies, you are engaged in spiritual activity. It's that simple .... It's not quite what we had in mind, but something is happening."
- John Perry Barlow, Electronic Frontier Foundation co-founder, former Grateful Dead songwriter
"Is TCP/IP (the dominant Internet communications protocol) another name for God? Because in essence, this is a way that you're finding a unity between people .... There's a concept of good and light in the world, and (the Internet) can be the means toward that end."
- Orthodox Rabbi Yosef Y. Kazen, Chabad-Lubavitch in Cyberspace (http://www.chabad.org/)
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