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The Web as Will and IdeaEugene SchwartzIn the summer of 1984 I was invited to the Goetheanum bythe Section for Belles-Lettres 1 to help lead an English-languageconference on the influence of Albert Steffen in the West.Throughout the conference week the leaders would gather inthe evening in the office of Hagen Biesantz, the Section leader.One night, after a long and lively conversation, we made readyto leave, only to discover that we were locked inside the building.Even in those pre-9/11 days the Goetheanum had a vigilantsecurity team who, though they saw us walking through thehallways, had no intention of releasing us. The sight and soundof those men in brown uniforms calling out commands to theirpolice dogs in harsh Swiss-German, evoked some unpleasant associationsin the mind of this Jewish boyfrom Brooklyn. I was relieved when Dr.Biesantz said that he knew of anotherway out of the building.Down, down, down we went into passagesso constricted and labyrinthinethat they seemed to confirm the Goetheanum’sstature as a modern mysterycenter. The exit was in sight, but beforewe came to it Dr. Biesantz drew us tothe nondescript door of a storage room.“Come in,” he said, unlocking the portaland switching on the light, “Look!”There it rested, immutable, bland,and mostly plastic: the Goetheanum’sfirst (and only) computer. “We don’tknow what to do with it,” Dr. Biesantzconfided to our pale and shaken group(first the police dogs, and now . . . . this.And it was 1984!). He went on. “It is theunmentionable,” he intoned, and placedhis forefinger against his lips. We understoodthat we were pledged to silence.Today, of course, the idea of a solitary computer is all butunthinkable. In the Goetheanum, as in many centers of anthroposophyworldwide, computers work in tandem, whetherthrough internal networks or the internet. In spite of the remarkableproliferation of computers throughout the anthroposophicalmovement (compared, say, to devices such as televisions oriPods) very little has been written about them. We must thereforebe especially grateful to Sergei Prokofieff for “The Being ofthe Internet,” an article that appeared in the English-languagePacifica Journal three years ago. 2 The article is no less germanenow than it was in 2006, and with the hope of making it knownto a wider audience I offer the following elucidation.As is only to be expected, Prokofieff’s article is concise and1 This section is now known in the USA as the Section for the LiteraryArts & Humanities.2 Editor’s note: Pacifica Journal noted prior publication in the newsletterof the Anthroposophical Society in Great Britain. The first USE-News pointed the article out online last spring, and the San MiguelBranch newsletter in San Diego reprinted the article this fall.well researched. He touches on so many important points insuch a compressed way that it would be far beyond the scope ofthis article to speak to them all. Therefore, in this commentary Iwant to address only three of the myriad issues he raises:1. Who stands behind the internet?2. The question of the compression of spiritual content.3. Our responsibility vis-à-vis the internet.The Imagination of the Spiderweb“It is frightening,” Prokofieff writes, “how poignantly RudolfSteiner describes this spirit world in comparison with the worldsituation of today,” and he then presents a lengthy quote fromPerspectives on Human Development, aMay 13, 1921 lecture. Because this lectureis not readily available, I, too, willquote his excerpt in full:And from the earth will well up terriblecreations of beings who in their characterstand between the mineral kingdom andthe plant kingdom as automative beingswith a super-natural intellect, an immenseintellect. When this development takeshold, the earth will be covered, as witha web, a web of terrible spiders, spidersof enormous wisdom, which, however,in their organization doesn’t even reachthe plant status. Terrible spiders whichwill interlock with each other, whichwill imitate in their movements all thatwhich humanity has thought of with theirshadowlike intellect that was not inspiredby a new imagination, through that whichis to come through Spiritual Science. Allman’s thoughts of this kind, which areunreal, will come alive. The earth will becovered […] with terrible mineral-plantlike spiders, which will link up with empathy but evil intention.And man […] will have to unite with these terrible mineralplantlike spider creatures.Prokofieff goes on to say,These spider creatures will be of a distinctly ahrimanic character.When you read these prophetic words of the spiritual scientisttoday, in an era of world wide connections via computerand the internet you may be disheartened to find how quicklythis prophecy has become a reality on earth. It is as if RudolfSteiner, with his spiritual gaze, described today’s internet frombeyond the threshold, categorically warning humanity that ina not too distant future, with the unification of the moon andearth, this whole internet-computer-web and in fact everythingconnected with the development of artificial intellect will suddenlycome alive . . . .Steiner’s 1921 lecture is unusual for its strongly prophetictone. As if the nearly apocalyptic picture of the spider webs andtheir spinners were not enough, Steiner also spoke of “Supermen,”super-human beings who began to descend to the earthFall-Winter 200915