The Glass Bead Game 

Almost everyone is familiar with the author Hermann Hesse by way of his more popular books such as Steppenwolf and Sidhartha, but few people I know managed to make it through his most mature work, Magister Ludi, aka The Glass Bead Game, in which Jungian archetypes are used extensively. This is too bad, because I believe this book is a treasure trove of good thought, literary invention and prophecy. In particular, I believe Hesse can be credited with a vision of the Internet way before it was ever invented in his conception of the Glass Bead Game. This is pretty remarkable given the fact that he dreamed it up in 1936, about fifty years before it came about, almost by accident, due to the rapid, organic expansion of the experimental ARPANET. (His readers will perhaps remember Hesse's similar prophetic inklings of the rise of Hitler's dark powers in Demian.)

Hesse's vision of the Glass Bead Game which is played in his eponymously-titled book is somewhat vague and quasi-mystical. It is not a complete vision, but then no prophecy ever is. In my opinion, the 'miracle' of this particular prophecy is that he wrote it down, a task assisted by his literary and intuitive genius.

The glass bead game is a 'game' members of the monastic  Castalian society play for self-fulfillment and salvation. Although it is described sparsely, one gets the feeling that it is the most important thing that they do in their lives.[1]

Self-fulfillment and salvation. Two of the most important concepts in the Universe. And how well those who understand the Internet know that this magical luminous Thing, this Internet, is capable of allowing the Individual to achieve both.

 The parallels between the Internet and the Glass Bead Game are numerous.

To name three examples, both the Internet and the Glass Bead Game allow the individual the possibility of limitless self-improvement, a merging and satisfying of all higher needs. It serves as a central memory where all thoughts and words ever spoken are recorded. (Bill Gates' vision.) And both have in common the fact that the needs served by the "players" are intellectual and spiritual and not sensual.

 That the Internet is not primarily a sensual experience despite its sounds and images is obvious to anyone who has ever used it. Perhaps someday, in the far distant future, the Internet will be telesensual and  will offer the user an experience comparable to real life but not in the foreseeable one.  Hesse gets around the embarrassment of the non-corporeal, non-sensual aspect of his vision, his utopian Glass Bead Game, by having the Castalians[2] who learn it and play it in thoughtful meditation being a lonely priest caste cut off from normal society (even though by being the most important caste they are at the hub of that society). In this way Hesse is also able, dramatically, to deal with the familiar dichotomy between the real world and the world of platonic ideals, between the worlds of the Ivory Tower and the hurly-burly of everyday life.Between the sacred and the profane.

One way in which the Internet seems to be different from Hesse's conception of a game of thoughts reflecting the human imagination is in its limiteless potential for commerce and money-making. In Hesse's work, although he never comes out and describes the mechanism in detail, one gets the impression that the Castalians are supported financially in the traditional manner of organized religious institutions by donatives, tithes, bequests, etc.

Thus the Internet provides self-fulfillment in another way: the possible means to provide a living for one's self, and to keep body and soul together.

So with perhaps one main, beneficial distinction we might see the Internet developing according to the wonderful vision of Hermann Hesse's Glass Bead Game, with huge numbers of the world's population being made happy, secure, fulfilled and empowered in a non-violent way, a trend accelerated by the coming, much-heralded telecosm which presumably will soon place enormous global information bandwidth in the hands of all citizens.

But there is another model which the Internet's further development could take and that is The Tower of Babel.  This model doesn't need much explaining. Basically, it is the path of maximum confusion and senselessness where a multitude of vain, clashing voices rise in conflict and all meaning is lost. That the Internet has the potential to develop along these lines also seems obvious. Clearly the "Achilles Heel" of the real, modern Internet is the one thing that distinguishes it from the idealistic glass bead game which is its commercial dimension. It's obsequiessness to government is also another, minor influence.

So which path will the Internet's take? And how can we help it to gather momentum toward fulfilling the happy, serene, central vision of Hermann Hesse's Glass Bead Game and steer it away from the catastrophic, chaotic abyss of the Tower of Babel? I believe this is enormously important for us to consider at this time and in the first few years of the new millenium. Indeed, it will always be an important to consider due to the inherent multi-faceted structure of this far-reaching medium, which is of course a mirror of the human dimension of the Universe..