variety and appearance, similar predictions proliferated through the 19th and 202 centuries, as perry miller rose we find the true americans sublime. we blow kisses to jefferson and 3 huggers like henry david thoreau but put our faith in edison and ford, zuckerberg, it is the technology that will lead us. cyberspace with its disembodied voices and ethereal avatars seems mystical from the start. it's unearthly vastness, america's spiritual yearnings. what better way, wrote michael time in 1991 to emulate god's knowledge and generate a virtual world constituted by bits of information. google moved from a meadow park garage to a -- the yale computer scientist wrote a manifesto, the second coming of the computer. images of cyberbodies in the computational cosmos, beautifully laid out collections of information like immaculate gardens. the millenarian -- and in august 2005 cover story, we are entering a new world powered not by god's grace but the electricity of participation. it would be a paradise of our own making manufactured by users, histories database would be erased, humankind -- it conti