Technology can be like a drug. It is becoming so intoxicating that people are imagining it can do things it clearly cannot. The supporting rhetoric seems credible and is certainly seductive, but does it make sense?

I have encountered two questionable schools of thought; I am sure there are others. The first claims that the Internet and 'virtual reality' technology can somehow reconfigure personal identity. For some people, playing with online identity allows you to adopt an opposite gender personality or even a neutral or genderless form of interaction. It is a fascinating proposition and there is no doubt that online life can be an emotionally engaging experiment. Psychologist Sherry Turkle is one of the key researchers in this area, and Howard Rheingold has spoken for the online forum and online community. However, the proposition or the idea is not equivalent to the actual experience. This semantic fact is easily blurred when you combine technological sophistication with intellectual abstraction. Like a cocktail of drugs, the sum effect is more than its constituent parts. But as with all drugs eventually the effect wears off, you have to face the reality of your situation, and the question arises "why were you or are you trying to escape it anyway?".

Intoxicating as online life can be, life is rooted in a (gendered) physical body that has to be fed, washed and kept warm. Technology only mediates human communication, and online encounters do not substitute for real life physical and emotional contact. We sometimes engage with cars, computers or boats affectively, i.e. with emotional content. It does not mean our human needs can be transferred into a symbolic or simulated expression. Attempting to do so indicates a sad or troubled life.

Virtual reality technology has also become linked with notions about transcending physical limitations. If my nervous system can experience a reality that is not located in the room where I sit, it suggests this technology liberates me from those physical definitions. Yet as with the Internet, the reality is I remain anchored within my body and no computer wizardry can change that. VR is a tremendous aid for the military, flight training, architectural prototypes and medical training. It is like a computer game, not a means of transcending physical fact. Indeed, for many people the disparity between the apparent experiences of VR and physical fact creates discomfort and nausea.

Losing your physical reference point is not liberating but deceiving. And why would anyone want to escape their reality? There is a new genre of art where people attach themselves to computers and machines in various ways; sometimes just to combine the aesthetic of circuitry etc with the human body, sometimes to create a human-machine interaction. What does this say about their relationship with their own bodies, and their corresponding mental health?

The second trend I have observed is projecting religious or spiritual values onto cyberspace. Margaret Wertheim argues that cyberspace is the latest form of transcendent spatiality, in a tradition which includes Dante's ideas about non-physical place. The problem here is that people have only a superficial grasp of spiritual metaphysics, and attach it to the new technology. Their expertise lies elsewhere; the enquiry has to be raised to a higher plane.

I find the word 'spiritual' very hard to define, and I am aware that people define it in many different ways. I particularly struggle with the expression 'spiritual person' because from what I can see, it usually refers to some beliefs attached to certain kinds of behaviour. Yet 'spiritual' has a deeper and more universal significance. It suggests the following:

1) Transcendence.
Spiritual aspiration is grounded in some awareness of human constraints. We are born, we live and struggle, we die; people suffer. The question arises, is there anything more to life than this? If there is, it necessarily has to transcend all the human problems and limitations of daily life. Spirit is usually equated with concepts like peace and stillness, where endless movement is a recognised characteristic of matter. Can action discover stillness?

2) Causation
Spirit is usually regarded as a reality that precedes or causes obvious physical life. Can I discover or realise spirit through the machinations of thought or the fluctuations of emotion? Is it possible for the effect to understand the cause? Metaphysically, spirit is 'faster' and 'bigger' than matter and like the toe or finger trying to understand the entire body - it cannot be done. A common metaphor to express this is fitting the ocean into a thimble.

3) Non-physical reality
Spirit is by definition non-physical. A computer is physical, and so is the network that we call the Internet. This network allows a new and extraordinary capacity for human communication. But why should this be qualitatively different from other kinds of communication? Anyone who knows the Internet well recognises that it is a reflection of human life. It ranges from the depraved and illegal to the utilitarian and commercial, to the beautiful and inspired. It is only 'spiritual' if mundane daily life is spiritual - by which I mean physical, emotional and mental experience.

4) Freedom
Body, mind and emotions are all physical, in relation to spirit. If all I discover is 'more' mind or 'more' emotion - however pleasurable or fulfilling it may be, it is by definition not spirit. Like the flow of blood, thoughts and emotions never stop moving, while we are alive. They are experiences and therefore impermanent, and for this reason are limited. Spiritual discovery cannot be an experience but a realisation that is permanent. For it to be permanent, it follows that it cannot consist of mental or emotional 'matter'.

In Techgnosis, Erik Davis notes how romantic, idealistic and spiritual ideas have often been projected onto new technological forms. I suggest that the spiritual enquiry is valid, but what we have to do is distinguish between the idea and the fact, the simulation and the reality, the menu and the food.

In the 1960s, Timothy Leary advocated that we 'turn on, tune in and drop out'. In the 1990s that became 'turn on the computer, tune in to the bit-stream, and drop out'. He regarded the Internet as the new form of cultural transcendence. Neither chemicals nor silicon circuitry offer a doorway into spiritual truth. Yet this legitimate aspiration has been projected onto both.