In 1997, Douglas Groothuis (Professor of Philosophy at Denver Seminary) published The Soul in Cyberspace. It was, as far as I know, the first Christian book that critiqued and contemplated the darker side of computer-mediated communication. Twelve years is a long time when it comes to technology (and digital technology in particular) but I recently read this book nevertheless, and was surprised by just how relevant it is, even today. Though cyberspace has changed and evolved a great deal, almost all of Groothuis’ concerns remain and almost all have grown even more pointed as the years have gone by.

I recently conducted a short interview with him, asking him to reflect on this book, twelve years on.

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One of your concerns in The Soul in Cyberspace was cyberspace taking the place of real, face-to-face human contact. You wrote, for example, of those who sought in cyberspace “the emancipation from the drag of the body?” How have your thoughts on this matter developed in the past decade? Have new innovations lessened your concern? Have your concerns been proven at all wrong?

With the rise of social networking—Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc.—the temptation to avoid the face-to-face world has increased. There are more toys to distract one from this mode of being. I wrote of simulated worlds in The Soul in Cyberspace, but they had not reached the proportions of SimLife or SecondLife, which are entire “cultures” for the disembodied.

In your book you wrote, “The compulsive search for diversion is often an attempt to escape the wretchedness of life. We have great difficulty being quiet in our rooms. … Cyberspace may be the greatest temptation yet offered to humanity to lose its soul in diversion.” And this was written long before YouTube. Have things gotten any better in the intervening years? Have things gotten worse?

Yes, things are much worse. The diversions are accelerating at an alarming pace. Consider laptops. I recently had to ban them from my classroom at Denver Seminary because so many students were multi-tasking—shopping on line, checking email, and such like—while I was pouring out my soul lecturing. Now that they are illegal, students look at me and at each other more. Somehow, they still remember how to take notes by hand. However, one student admitted using his pocket device to look of the definition of a word I was using. If he could do that, he could also use text messaging and get diverted from the learning environment of the classroom.

Yes, some students will be responsible and only use the laptop to take notes on the template that I distribute or use them for genuine research related to the lecture. But given the pandemic mindset of multi-tasking, I cannot count on this kind of responsible behavior; so I banned them.