If a hard drive crashes alone in the forest, does it make a sound? Prayer for Lost Information by D. Trull Enigma Editor dtrull@parascope.com You've traded in your moldy old computer for a spiffy, high-powered screamer. You've installed the fancy new upgrade to Microbloat WordWhizz version 9.0. You've deleted oceans of junk e-mail and reformatted freebie sign-up floppies from online services for personal use. You may think of these as inconsequential acts of computer geekery, but are they really that harmless? Does anyone ever stop to think whether it's right to cast information so callously into oblivion? Where is there any decency and compassion to be found in all this senseless destruction of human data? These are the unsettling spiritual questions being raised by a Buddhist priest in Japan, who believes computer users should pay proper respects to their dearly departed info. Shokyu Ishiko, chief priest at Kyoto's 400-year-old Daioh Temple, says that our technology-driven culture has created a "spiritual void" in desperate need of enlightenment. But unlike other religious leaders, who are wont to prescribe throwing your godless computer gadgets out the window and living your life the good old-fashioned luddite way, Ishiko thinks high-tech advances are a great blessing. The problem, as he sees it, is our negligence of the spiritual side of modern technology. Daioh Temple has its own web site and enthusiastically embraces the Internet. Ishiko is planning to conduct the first ever Buddhist service in cyberspace, and the focus is to be a "Prayer for Lost Information." The wired holy man reportedly conceived of the ceremony after noting the frustration and discord that information technology has sown in our society, particularly among young people. We have not adapted spiritually to a world in which the facts that compose reality can be eliminated at the touch of a button. The following passage from Ishiko's web site contains a wonderfully zen elaboration of the predicament: "After the effort of transforming all [our present] knowledge into electronic information has been completed, is it enough then to say that we are finished? And from there, can we truly make effective use of that which we have created? Sometimes, the answer is 'no.' To provide an example, there are many 'living' documents and softwares that are thoughtlessly discarded or erased without even a second thought." It's a latter-day pestilence that brings a whole new meaning to the term "damned data," way beyond anything Charles Fort could ever have imagined. When a piece of software is upgraded to a new version and effectively blotted out of existence, the original programmer has never had an adequate means of dealing with his unique bereavement. Similar losses are suffered by e-mail that never reaches its intended recipient, and web pages abandoned by their servers. To heal the wounds wrought by information super-highway roadkill, Ishiko is soliciting prayer requests from anyone whose electronic works have been replaced, rejected, forgotten, corrupted or otherwise shuffled off this mortal tesla coil. With submitted microchip mournings in hand, Ishiko will preside over a Buddhist service for lost information at Daioh Temple on October 24, with the intention of making it an annual event. He selected that date because of the number of bytes in a kilobyte: 1024. Ishiko's plan for the service is to chant and perform ceremonial rites over a collection of titles belonging to all the trashed data. He reports that his announcement has already garnered 5,000 requests for prayers, with about half of them hailing from outside Japan. In addition to the yearly service, Daioh Temple can also arrange to place monuments to lost information on the temple grounds, and is providing a 3-D "virtual temple" web site which "is not discriminatory against other Buddhist sects or other religions from placing 'information pages' on its homepage." As it happens, a number of Ishiko's peers from those other Buddhist sects have questioned the validity of his infoprayer. Venerable Pannyavaro, the webmaster of the Australia-based Buddhanet, argues that the notion of prayer per se is "totally irrational" in Buddhism, and that information has no intrinsic sacred value. Dundrup Tsering, a member of a California sect, explains that Buddhists believe that "all this information comes from and returns to the vast, open, unlimited, void, radiant, mind essence, and therefore can never be 'lost.'" Maybe the critics are right, and grieving over gone gigabytes has no place in orthodox Buddhism. But by gosh, Ishiko's noble efforts ought to have a place somewhere. The unfortunate millions who've sacrificed unsaved files to the vicissitudes of silicon should draw strength from his information commiseration. We may find some measure of redemption united in the face of electronic ephemera. If a hard drive crashes alone in the forest, does it make a sound? Sources: Daioh Temple of Daioh Mountain web site; Wired News (c) Copyright 1997 ParaScope, Inc. More Fortean Slips! Share your views in the message boards!