2.3. Cyberia: the Discovery of the Fourth Dimension

The connotations of Cyberia are even stronger than the one of cyberspace. "Cyberia is the place alluded to by mystical teachings of every religion, the theoretical tangents of every science, and the wildest speculations of every imagination. Now, however, unlike any other time in history, Cyberia is thought to be within our reach. The technological strides of our postmodern culture, coupled with the rebirth of ancient spiritual ideas, have convinced a growing number of people that Cyberia is the dimensional plane in which humanity will soon find itself." (Rushkoff 1994:17) The term 'Cyberia' is less technical because it does not only relate to electronic technologies. Douglas Rushkoff claims that one can "experience this same boundless, hypertext universe without the use of a computer at all. [..] Cyberspace can be accessed through drugs, dance, spiritual techniques, chaos math, and pagan rituals." (ibid.: 14)

But nevertheless 'Cyberia' again expresses the notion of a space, a continent as the term can be seen according to the term 'America'. In 1497 a new continent has been explored by Columbus, which immediately attracted people to talk of it in terms of new paradise/ new heaven that can be entered by humans. In a certain way the exploration of America added a third dimension to the world in proving that the world is a ball, and not a disc and started a train to the former edge of the world. This big train in direction of the wild and golden west with the slogan 'Let's go west' had to stop in California, the most western place in the whole world. If you try to go on from there in direction west, you come to Japan and that is far east. But where covered wagons and cars get stuck in three dimensions, the mind just travels on into another dimension, and so the slogan let's go west became a couple of hundred years later replaced by the slogan let's go cyberspace/Cyberia. California became the world wide centre of motion-pictures, psychedelics, virtual reality, New Age, Multimedia, electronic music etc. etc. Whereas somewhere else high-tech becomes developed in laboratories and closed areas "in California a cultural movement becomes involved, in which counterculture, visionary chaos theoretician, software-giants, movie-industrials, muscle beach boys, dopeheads, conspiracy theoreticians, New Agers, gene technologicans, artists, neurophysiologists, quanta-mechanists and eco-activists meet on a metaphysical level." (Bilwet 1994: 186 - transl. S.J.)

Where you cannot go any further in three dimensions, you have to create a fourth dimension and this can be done with media. "Media are containers with unexpected size. It seems as if the whole world can fit in. Mediatheory undertakes an exploration to fall off the edge of the media planet, though it knows that the planet is round." (Bilwet 1993: 273 transl. S.J.) The fourth dimension is by physicists described as time, parallel universes, the declination of light or the curvature of space (hyperspace). For a short introduction into one of the postmodern Physics-cosmologies click: Maarten Dillinger: Basics of a fivedimensional worldview [INLINE].

Like people a couple of a hundred years ago could not believe that the world is round, because one would fall off the other side, most people nowadays do not believe that the earth can have a fourth dimension without falling off. The connotation of the fourth dimension is just beyond our possibility of imagination though physicists proved that there is one. While New Age means that there is a new time arriving, there is a similar term 'New Edge', which means there is a new space to arrive in our imagination. New Edge on the other hand means a new border of thinking which is not allowed to be crossed without becoming crazy, just like Copernicus or Galilei were blamed to be crazy and excommunicated, when they claimed that the earth is not the center of the universe.

So this kind of fourth dimension or new continent is to be understood under the term Cyberia. "We are mutating into another species - from Aquaria to the Terrarium, and now we're moving into Cyberia. We are creatures crawling to the center of the cybernetic world."(Leary 1994: VII) And America is so heading to replace our cosmology and creation stories: "A worldpower like the United States has the possibilities and the technical means to create an own mythology of the 20th century. [..] The old european, chtonic creation-stories become this way replaced through galactic myths."(Bilwet 1994: 188 - transl. S.J:) This new mythology says that everything is digital. So let's get wired, let's enter the fourth dimension.