Alex Pang notes the advent of Kosher Phone, a basic cell phone to make and receive calls through a carrier that blocks a few thousand numbers such as porn sites. Rabbinical overseers maintain the filters. Similarly he notes the advent of Xianz (get it?, like X-mas), a "Christian-themed alternative to MySpace": it's HIS space.

From these examples he develops the idea that the internet will fragment into gated special interest communities.

. . . all . . . raise the question of whether the "future of the Internet" isn't a "future of Internets:" whether one of the big stories with the future of the Internet might be the creation of distinct arenas closed off not for commercial purposes (like the walled gardens of cell phone networks), but for the purpose of cultural and religious defense.

Well, yes, sort of. But it's worth reviewing what the internet is: a network of networks, the internetworking of many networks. It is already fragmented, always has been fragmented and always will be fragmented: by definition as well as fact. Only a part of the networked world is exposed to the internet, not only for commercial reasons. Developing virtual private networks over internetworked facilities is common. Gated communities within the network are old hat.

But Alex is really making a different point in an oblique way. He quotes from a Paul Saffo essay The Ghost Dances: Half the world is rushing toward the future and the other half toward the past. Both have weapons.

Iranian fundamentalists see no conflict in nurturing an aggressive nuclear program even as they rail against the corrosive effects of western ideas and technologies.... [At the same time], Techno--theoretic “extropians’’—believers in an unbounded technological future—argue that technology is not moving fast enough. While some ghost dancers desperately want to put on the brakes, these technological believers are convinced that redemption can be achieved only by stepping on the gas and fleeing into the future.

Philip points to a Telegraph opinion article by Charles Moore that contemplates the other half of the fundamentalist world that Saffo seems to overlook.

Tremendous rage is combined with tremendous lack of inquiry: Green ideas do indeed sleep furiously. . .

To those who like the idea that the state can control everything, it must have been a constant source of irritation that the weather could not be subject to five-year plans and government targets. If you accept climate change theories, it can be, indeed it must be. Without global governmental action, the doctrine teaches, we shall all perish.

At this point, the religious impulse forms an unholy - or rather, a holier-than-thou - alliance with the political. In every age, religions have tended to relate extremes of climate to sin. It was because the people were bad that God sent floods upon the earth, and it was because Noah was a just man that he was allowed to build the Ark, and put the leading representatives of creation into it.

Today, rising sea levels threaten to punish our greed and selfishness, say the Greens. . .

If I am right, the politics of climate change are bad. They attract the self-righteous and the self-flagellating, the controlling, the life-denying, the people who don't like people, the people who, like Private Fraser in Dad's Army, think we're "all DOOMED". And when I listen to many of the scientists who join in the argument, I often hear in what they say not the voice of science itself, but of the bad politics, thinly disguised by a white coat.

When people talk about "saving the planet", I think of the old graffito: "Jesus saves, but Moses invests." Salvation is not within human gift, but modest improvement is.

It isn't just formal religions that in Saffo's words "rail against the corrosive effects of western ideas and technologies". In many ways this is the established church of Europe with branches in the USA and other remote sites. That Islam feels much the same is instructive, though not surprising. If we poke around a bit more we find that the "extropians" and other "Accelerants" are a small minority.

This isn't new, nothing is more human than suspicion of change and resistance to progress - especially new fangled inventions. Noting the existence of such resistance isn't very insightful or useful. What might be useful is to study and compare the logic of the various systems of resistance. For example, the Old Order Amish communities of the world are known for being somewhat techno-phobic but when you speak with them about it they don't fear technology in general. They choose to avoid specific technologies that disrupt community life, such as automobiles and private phones that tend to isolate people from the community as a whole. Though I choose very differently I can understand and appreciate their logic, especially since they don't seek to impose their views on others. Just the opposite, they avoid imposing their views and even require their own children, once grown, to explicitly choose to join the community. The notion of trying to seize control of a society through either force or political majoritarianism - same thing really - and skewing things to their liking doesn't compute. They can't even use the current secret weapon of Islam, fecundity, to take over societies since they couldn't dominate even if they were a majority population. Choice is central.

Saffo completely fails to grasp the idea of conscious choice though his ranting seems instrumental, an expression of his own political preferences rather than reasoned analysis.

the Ghost Dance isn’t danced merely in Madrassahs, or fundamentalist churches, but throughout the Global Village, from American churches to Shanghai malls to halls of power in Washington D.C. and capitals around the world. It was Armageddon-obsessed Christians who helped elect George W. Bush. Prominent Christian pundits as well as some in the Pentagon have cast the Iraqi War as a holy war of biblical prophesy. The “strict constructionism” of American constitutional conservatives is a political Ghost Dance. Elsewhere, political uncertainty leads to other nostalgic looks back. Communism seemed discredited in the ’90s, but after a decade of corruption and widening divergence between rich and poor in the former Soviet Republics, a small but vocal minority advocates returning to the old order. . .

In every historical instance of the Ghost Dance, the common animus is uncontrolled and uncontrollable change imposed from the outside. Our modern Ghost Dance has no outsiders; we wreak the change on ourselves. Our modern wonders overwhelm us not with alien values; but with a vast and unnerving choice of our own creation as we are delivered to a horizon of terrifying freedom. We fear change, but we fear making the wrong choice even more. The temptation is to Ghost Dance the choices away. This is the appeal of religious fundamentalism, a strategy to arbitrarily restrict one’s options and outsource the choosing to an infallible higher authority. Young Muslim men are assaulted by a media blizzard of western images in their homes and neighborhoods and markets. Alternately lured and repelled by modernity’s siren song, they flee first to their mosques, then to the training camps where they take up the Ghost Dance.

Nonsense. We do not fear choice, we exercise choice, though we don't all make the same choices and we don't all choose well. Religious fundamentalism is no more arbitrary that Saffo's own belief system. That's a pointless accusation as well as a simple failure of scholarship. Attempting to smear Bush with the support of Christian groups fails. It makes no more sense to credit them with his victory than it does to credit the looney left with Gore and Kerry losses. If they were that powerful then a redneck roué like slick Willie Clinton wouldn't have won convincingly twice.

There's plenty of technology in Arabia, Israel, America and everywhere else. Technology isn't the issue. The conflicts are cultural. Those like Saffo who conduct culture war using technologies confuse resistance to their predations with resistance to the technologies. This is intentional to some extent since he isn't analyzing society so much as doing politics, seeking to befuddle constituencies to gain advantage. It's semi-stealthy advocacy of the sort Charles Moore attributes to greens: sleeping furiously - tremendous rage combined with tremendous lack of inquiry.

Rage isn't useful. Inquiry can be useful. The modernity Saffo cites as a "siren song" "assaulting" young Muslim men isn't technological, it is cultural. It's the message not the messenger that creates conflict. The norms and preferences of some westerners that have developed in the past few decades are rejected with prejudice by most of the world. Increases in the speed and extent of communication and transportation have increased exposure and so increased efforts to filter the spew. Who is surprised by this? Who objects? What could be more human and comprehensible?

Few societies so calmly and insightfully evaluate technologies as the Amish do. Most adopt every new technique with little thought about the implicit subversiveness of the technology, but have their own norms and preferences for the use of the technology. If the Rabbis think that phones are dandy but not very satisfactory for sex that's fine. If Christians want to associate with one another on the net, well, so does every other subculture. It seems pretty normal.

The technology will have its implicit impact even if they sanitize the content. It's useful, perhaps even important to grasp this. If progress is your objective then just spread the technology. There's no need to quibble about how it is used, no need to whinge about the Rabbis who tidy up the spew, since the technology will inexorably change societies that adopt it in ways that few anticipate.

Culture warriors like Saffo may even get a surprise and find that their cultural preferences wilt when exposed to world culture. We may be back here in future talking about the Saffos of the world trying to filter out content that they find offensive. Wait, we already have that don't we . . . Whatever.