This is a cutting-edge collection of essays that brings ethics to the heart of today's Areopagus. Historically, the Areopagus was a place near the Acropolis of Athens where the Council of Elders met. John Paul II, in Redemptoris Missio, referred to mass media as “the first Areopagus of the modern age” (§37)—and today, cyberspace is the new Areopagus where the world meets, for weal or woe. A one-of-a-kind collection that confronts the religio-ethical issues that arise from human engagement in cyberspace, particularly gender issues in the Asian context, this book addresses the following questions: How are computer-mediated information technologies transforming (gender) relations and (religious) cultures? What are the ethical, religious, and feminist challenges in the use of new information technologies?

Setting its study and research in the sociocultural contexts of Asia, the book divides its content into four sections. The first section, “Exclusion, Inclusion, and Collusion,” analyzes the ways that the new media, although supposedly creating a broad space open to all persons, maintain the exclusion or marginalization of women, the elderly, and the poor. The second section, “Women, Work, and Family,” takes up the topic of women negotiating their familial and social roles as they face both the opportunities and the challenges of the digital revolution. The third section, “Religion and Cyberspace,” shows how feminists can create an alternative space for feminist politics and other liberative engagements in the area of religion. The fourth and last section, “Spirituality in the Digital Age,” reflects on how cyberspace can break boundaries and become a ubiquitous sacred space of God's presence, where hyperaccelerated modern life can find a pause for spiritual nourishment and transformation, and where cyborg spirituality can become a new way of being.

The articles in all four sections discuss the perils as well as the promises of the global human engagement made possible by cybertechnology. Perils include the hypersexualization and commercialization of women and their bodies in animated cartoons and sexual games, and the commodification of human beings, such as foreign domestic workers who are not only sold and purchased like products, but even come with guarantees of replacement if the buyer is not satisfied. Moreover, while cyberspace is an open global space, the “informatics of dominance” imposes marginalization based on class, gender, and race. There is a divide between the “information rich” and “information poor,” and there are also gender constraints imposed by patriarchal societies. Although cybermasquerading can be employed to protect one from cyberbullying and harassment, it is also used to deceive and exploit. A particular issue is cybermasquerading of workers in call centers, to avoid deprecating ethnocentric remarks from Western clients—a vestige of racism and cultural erasure.

While there are perils, there is also hope. Cyberspace is a place where women can reconfigure their power equation with men. The virtual world offers them a liminal space for resistance against the boundaries imposed by patriarchy in real space. In this virtual space, women can create communities of inclusion and mutuality, and open new networks of compassion and solidarity. From a faith perspective, cyberspace can be turned into sacred time and space, where God is encountered. Using the praxis of photography, a spiritual pause is offered for creative transformation. Feminist cyborg spirituality reimagines the human relationship with technology, basing it on a new theological anthropology that sees the cyborg as reflecting God's image and possessing spiritual kinship with his/her tools and machines.

The book as a whole brings its readers to a whole new realm of discourse, beyond that of traditional theological ethics. Both creative and critical, the articles provoke and evoke fresh insights about the variety of ways of being human in the cyberworld. The book has started the conversation about cyborg anthropology, and it is the way to go from here, because the cyberworld is and will remain the world in which we live. I envision a further mapping of the contours of cyborg anthropology, which will constitute the base of a new understanding of the elements of foundational ethics and spirituality. For this reason, this book is groundbreaking, as it will force a reimagination of our previous concepts and images.