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It wasn’t even the “major cathedral” there in Regensburg. That would be St. Peters, a structure along the classic gothic lines of St. Stephens in Vienna. This was St. Emmeram, a 13th century Abbey. We had opted to take the afternoon as “free time” to wander around and explore the truly delightful Christmas Market that wrapped around the Abbey - far the best market of the cruise. My boyhood favorite Kristkindle Mart in Vienna had sadly gone the way of county fairs. I mean, cotton candy and Disney figures? Really. But that is another story.
Back to St. Emmeram - which is now more widely known as the Castle of Thurn and Taxis as the result of a Medieval Cathedral Naming Rights Deal in the 1500s. From the outside it looked, well, very "13th centuryish.” We came in what turned out to be a side door, rough plaster covered the outside corridor which held a wide variety of carved plaques filled with Latin. We stepped inside - the only two people in a staggeringly beautiful, breath-taking space. Arches swept up - and I try not to exaggerate - fifty feet to ornately frescoed ceilings. The alter which seemed miles away - okay, so I do exaggerate - glittered like a fairy tale treasure trove. But no dragon stood guard over this golden hoard. Rather we walked past a host of saintly statutes, each seeming more elaborate than the one before. Golden gild and brilliant colors enveloped us. There was no haze of incense or murmured Latin liturgy - but it didn’t take much imagination to supply them both.
It wasn’t long until some other 21st century souls invaded our private audience, so we tiptoed out, heading for the equally delightful but far more prosaic indulgences of the Gulgwein and cosy open fires of the Christmas market.
Later that night I was reading up on St. Emmeram’s Abbey and learned that among the highlights of its long history was the fact that it was the site of the first Mass ever conducted in German. Fresh on the heels of our visit to St. Emmeram’s, that little factoid made me realize anew that for centuries the Catholic church was a purely visual experience for all but the priestly class versed in Latin. For everyone else in the community, God was virtual reality experience. The priest would tell the faithful Bible stories, walking amidst lavishly illustrated artistic wonders like those that adorned St. Emmeram’s. And what did God sound like? Well, like Latin, of course.
That is until that first German mass, right there in the abbey of St. Emmeram. Suddenly "God's words" were intelligible to people other than the priests. And when words can be understood, people will create questions. I don’t know exactly how many years transpired between that first German mass and Martin Luther’s impertinent accusations at the Diet of Worms in 1517, but the road between Regensburg and Worms is a direct path.
And what, you may well ask, does that have to do with the “death of the Internet?”
Well, you sort of have to work with me here. Prior to the "vernacular articulation” of the Catholic liturgy, faith for that community was a tangible, visual reality. Faith was made real in places like St. Emmeram’s Abbey. With the coming of religious texts that were accessible to all literate individuals, questions, even doubt, invaded that formerly inviolate sphere. It is important to note that Christendom did not die off with the coming of the vernacular liturgies and Bibles. The Catholic Church flourished alongside upstarts like Luther’s new reading of faith. But the church changed - radically. That huge community of “the faithful” now spans a spectrum ranging from ultra-conservative evangelicals through Catholic and Protestant traditionalists to very flexible Unitarians. But that innocent trust reflected in the purity of the Abbey of St. Emmeram has, if not vanished, been significantly reduced.
It would seem an equal display of naivety to still consider the Internet an “information superhighway.” When Brin and Page set out to “organize” all human information, there was an implied purity to the undertaking. Google’s first mantra “Don’t be evil,” now rings with the simplicity of a fairy tale. If there is a single notion that remains solid throughout the study of human communication it is that information equals power. And an equally consistent corollary is that a major portion of that power derives from the ability to define truth and reality.
The first Obama election revealed to America, and its politicos and pundits, that the Internet was a powerful tool for shaping and driving political action. The controversies surrounding the recent Trump election reveals that it is an equally powerful tool for shaping the body politic’s perception of reality. Last December an armed young man from my home state of North Carolina barged into a Washington pizzeria because he had read a “news story” on the Internet that Hillary Clinton was running a child slavery/pedophile ring out of the establishment. Facebook currently finds itself embroiled in a controversy driven by its seemingly lackadaisical approach to allowing such “fake news stories” to be posted on its site - a site that, were it a country, would be the 2nd largest country in the world. And a site that, along with other corporately and politically motivated Internet entities, is increasingly influencing our perception of reality and our definition of truth.
And that is what I mean by the day the Internet died. When the fictional illuminations of "seemingly real" events distributed over the Internet overwhelm scientific and social scientific evidence in the competition to define "reality," the Internet, as originally conceived of as an objective repository of humanitity's accumulated knowledge, died.
Obviously, the Internet is not going away. If anything our dependence on interconnected digital technologies will increase. What needs to change is our perception of “it.” First, we must abandon the St. Emmeram-like notion of some type of "pure truth" out there on the “Internet.” There simply is no singular entity that is "the Internet." Rather there are innumerable entities creating their version of the truth, of reality, each seeking to win us to their banner. And they have tools at their disposal that make St. Emmeram’s Abbey look like tinker toys. Two related items:
Item 1: I was standing in the check-out line at Michael’s Art Supply store yesterday and I noticed, hanging there by the now ubiquitous memory sticks and phone chargers, Virtual Reality viewers. True they were versions of the old Google cardboard viewers. But at $3.75 a pop they provide, in conjunction with most smartphones, a nifty realistic experience of limited content.
Item 2: I read earlier today that United Airlines is going to provide Virtual Reality viewers - the real deal immersive type stuff - to travelers in their Business Class waiting lounges. No, I don’t know what they would be watching. Maybe travel videos of their destination which would have been relayed to the VR device via their phones. I dunno.
Remembering that “the Internet” is simply a massive collection of vested interests seeking to define reality for target audiences, Virtual Reality brings a whole new dimension - or perhaps three or four of them - to the game. If “virtual reality” becomes a normal adjunct to “old-fashioned reality” how do we know which is which? As Charlie Brown would say, “Arrrrrrrgggh!”
But before you look around for high places off of which to fling yourself, let me perhaps surprise you by saying, “Wait. This is not all bad news.” As a matter of fact it could be great news. Think about it. What happened when those folks back in St. Emmeram’s heard the mass in German? Right. They had to think about it. They began to consider alternative interpretations. They began to take an active role in the construction of their reality, in their notion of faith and truth. As we begin to realize the ease with which technology allows any group to portray a particular notion of reality, we must become evermore curious as to “what’s in for them?” Increasingly the internet is the only game in town when it comes to presenting “truth” or “reality” to large numbers of people. And while, yes, that does create unparalleled opportunities for hucksters and haters, it provides the same opportunities for what I still believe is the majority of people around us - people with a shared desire to create a better, kinder, more harmonic world.
There is a great old movie from 1969 - Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid - which, thanks to "the Internet,” you can watch whenever you want. There is a scene in which Butch and the Kid have used every trick they know to dodge a pursuing posse. Looking back over the wasteland they have just traversed, they see the telltale dust cloud of the pursuing posse. Butch turns to the Kid and says: “Who are those guys!?”
That, more than anything else, needs to be our guiding light as we consider the seemingly limitless number of alternative realities presented to us by the evolving digital world: Who are those guys? What’s in it for them, and how does that mesh with the world I believe in and wish to help create? To whom do I attend, and who do I ignore? We may never return to the simple world of St. Emmeram, but if we learn to become thoughtful, critical consumers of today's “Internet" we may actually find our way to a better world for all.
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