Traditional Cosmologies and Cyberspace. Topography Attempt of the Imaginary

Abstract

In traditional societies the idea that invisible things are more important than things that can be seen needed no demonstration. In our world, in which objects pro­liferate to the point where they begin to be rated ahead of humans, making such a claim automatically places us in an eccentric orbit relative to the current trend. Reflections in recent years around the imaginary and technologies tend to prove the old principle is right. Even in a world choked with objects, primacy belongs to the invisible. But it is no less true that we have succeeded, as a civilization, in creating a new, technologically mediated collective imaginary. This study is an attempt to situate it in relation to earlier experiences of Mundus imaginalis.

The internet is our new heaven-hell. The user of this technologically mediated cosmology is therefore heavenly-hellish, his sense of discernment being no longer useful in a universe without center and hierarchies, whose powerful-powerless god is himself, between count­less gods. Once the creator of this fantasy world, he’s now the creation of his own independent cosmology. What was once a space of escape, is now home. As in a Balzacian novel, the technological man resembles the space he inhabits.