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Short abstract:

This paper traces cyberpunk "techno-spirituality" and "religio-technical cosmology" archaeologically and genealogically. It concludes with a critical review of the former, distinguishing between the non-representational sublime of religion and the hyper-representational sublime of the digital.

Long abstract:

Though cyberpunk culture of the '80s and '90s is commonly portrayed in both popular perception and academic discourse as emblematic of posthuman nihilism and critical technological dystopianism, this paper aims to unveil an underlying utopian and religious element that was also woven into its narrative fabric. Inspired by countercultural spirituality and Western esotericism, cyberpunk culture often responded to the chaotic onset of digital symbols with enchantment, portraying cyberspace as a psychedelic, liminal, and sublime realm, open for religious-like ecstatic exploration. Moreover, in line with theological and mystical adoration of chaos and ineffability, cyberpunk had also situated the advent of digital chaos as a crucial milestone in individual soteriology and collective eschatology. If so, often assumed to embody 'techno-pessimism,' cyberpunk unveiled itself, at times, as a conveyor of spiritual 'techno-optimism.’

Through a close reading of cyberpunk fiction and non-fiction, this paper offers an archeological exposition of cyberpunk techno-spirituality and a genealogical contextualization of its historical roots. Synthesizing insights from the philosophy of technology and the philosophy of religion, it proceeds to theorize cyberpunk’s conflation of religion and technology at a deep conceptual. It will be argued that, more than enchanting technology and utilizing it for religious-oriented purposes, cyberpunk has taken part in weaving a ‘religio-technical’ cosmology, within which digitality itself was envisioned as constituting the underlying fabric of reality.

This paper concludes with a critical reflection on cyberpunk’s religion-technical cosmology, offering to nonetheless distinguish between the hyper-representational sublime of the digital and the non-representational sublime of religion.