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- Convenors:
-
Yunus Telliel
(Worcester Polytechnic Institute)
Marie Stettler Kleine (Colorado School of Mines)
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- Format:
- Combined Format Open Panel
Short Abstract:
Sociotechnical systems create multiple secular frames for being human--with, against, and refracted by religion. The panel explores a new transformation generating ‘hybrids’ (e.g., evangelical engineers, UFO researchers, AI spiritualists) that restructures relations of the secular and the religious.
Long Abstract:
Technologies are co-constructed with their narratives of hope, redemption, and terror. Dissecting techno-optimism underlying modern technosciences, STS scholars have built an analytic language to describe the phenomenon of hopeful futures, often tied to engineers and scientists’ artifacts. At the same time, scholars in religious studies are grappling with what secularity is—agreeing that it is not just the absence of religiosity but the historically and culturally situated replacing, hybridizing, and (in some cases) rejecting religiosity. From cybernetics and AI to robotics to large-scale transportation infrastructure, technological discourse often flirts with religious and spiritual language. Yet, technological discourse shares many characteristics of the languages of secularity as well as cultural values of a modern, secular state. It is this tension--between the inherent religious and secular qualities of technologies--that we hope to illuminate in this panel for combined format presentations including traditional academic papers and exploratory workshops.
The place of the past and tradition is also varied in our narratives of technological development. The transcendent imaginaries of building “new” through innovation in comparison with the conservatism of engineering practice welcome generative dialogue. The embeddedness of technological discourse in religious and secular temporalities adds something unique to this interdisciplinary inquiry. This panel explores what can be learned from the intersection of the theoretical claims of religious studies and the methodological movement of studying the artificiality of technology within STS. We also suggest that secularity looks more complex and peculiar through the study of technology and engineering. In this inquiry, technologists and engineers can become main actors, supporting characters, or companions for the formation of a secular modernity. Technologies and their co-constructors can become the predestined demise, the context for moral and ethical debate, and central to questions about religious and secular action in a politically-volatile world.
Accepted contributions:
Session 1Aaron French (Universität Erfurt)
Short abstract:
This presentation explores the UFO phenomenon in relation to religious transformations in modern times in and through technology and alternative spiritualities, challenging scholars to think beyond an outdated secular/religious paradigm and reimagine current academic practices.
Long abstract:
In 2017, the New York Times published a story detailing a U.S. Department of Defense program called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, which secretly funded research to study UFOs. The article introduced new terminology, referring to such objects as UAPs (unidentified aerial phenomena). On July 26, 2023, during a congressional UFO hearing, retired Air Force Intelligence officer David Grusch testified under oath that the US military held nonhuman technical crafts, reverse engineered by private entities, and that nonhuman "biologics" had been recovered – all concealed from the public. This resulted in UFOs entering mainstream discourse, with the US government actively exploring themes of time travel, advanced states of evolution, magical technologies, and communication with nonhuman intelligences – themes rooted in modern currents of religion and alternative spirituality. Such otherworldly revelations prompt us to consider how it has come about that the UFO phenomenon – a secular-scientific imaginary – has intertwined with new expressions of religiosity? As the stigma associated with UFOs continues to fade, it will have major consequences for religion and religious studies scholars, especially regarding the relationship between religion, secularity, technology, and media. The implications of a “potentially real” UFO phenomenon present a challenge to the secularization thesis, as well as to notions of post-secularity. This challenge brings into focus the connection between technological advancement and transformations of modern religiosity, redrawing our map of reality and our experience of ourselves (who are we in here) and the Other (who is out there).
Ari Ben-Arie (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
Short abstract:
This paper traces cyberpunk "techno-spirituality" and "religio-technical cosmology" archaeologically and genealogically. It concludes with a critical review of the former, distinguishing between the non-representational sublime of religion and the hyper-representational sublime of the digital.
Long abstract:
Though cyberpunk culture of the '80s and '90s is commonly portrayed in both popular perception and academic discourse as emblematic of posthuman nihilism and critical technological dystopianism, this paper aims to unveil an underlying utopian and religious element that was also woven into its narrative fabric. Inspired by countercultural spirituality and Western esotericism, cyberpunk culture often responded to the chaotic onset of digital symbols with enchantment, portraying cyberspace as a psychedelic, liminal, and sublime realm, open for religious-like ecstatic exploration. Moreover, in line with theological and mystical adoration of chaos and ineffability, cyberpunk had also situated the advent of digital chaos as a crucial milestone in individual soteriology and collective eschatology. If so, often assumed to embody 'techno-pessimism,' cyberpunk unveiled itself, at times, as a conveyor of spiritual 'techno-optimism.’
Through a close reading of cyberpunk fiction and non-fiction, this paper offers an archeological exposition of cyberpunk techno-spirituality and a genealogical contextualization of its historical roots. Synthesizing insights from the philosophy of technology and the philosophy of religion, it proceeds to theorize cyberpunk’s conflation of religion and technology at a deep conceptual. It will be argued that, more than enchanting technology and utilizing it for religious-oriented purposes, cyberpunk has taken part in weaving a ‘religio-technical’ cosmology, within which digitality itself was envisioned as constituting the underlying fabric of reality.
This paper concludes with a critical reflection on cyberpunk’s religion-technical cosmology, offering to nonetheless distinguish between the hyper-representational sublime of the digital and the non-representational sublime of religion.
Marie Stettler Kleine (Colorado School of Mines)
Short abstract:
The history of the United States’ technological humanitarianism exported internationally cannot be told apart from Protestantism’s influence. This presentation describes the complexity of detangling religion from engineering for good, all while trying to respond to humanitarianisms' motivations.
Long abstract:
The history of the United States’ technological humanitarianism exported internationally cannot be told apart from Protestantism’s influence. Humanitarian aid from the United States has long been paired with Christian messaging about transcendent surplus and global deficit (Curtis, 2018). However, over the last thirty years, thousands of engineers have tried to hybridize religion and engineering work in ways that address sociotechnical concerns all over the globe while respecting varied value systems, some of which are decidedly non-religious. This paper addresses Latour (2012) and Asad’s (2003) call to engage with secularity as an important feature of post-modern critique. In practice, engineers navigate both critique and practicalities of engineering in our post-modern world. They work through deficit-based framing of development work and some aspire to design for post development’s “pluriverse” (Escobar, 2018).
But when humanitarianism is framed in secular terms, particularly when it is paired with technological interventions and engineering work, the questions of how religious motivations cleanly fall asked by theorists and practitioners alike. This historical and ethnographic piece describes the complexity of detangling religion from engineering for good work, especially in the United States. In so doing, it explains the multiple hybridizations present in higher education programming that attempts to combine technical expertise and humanitarian effort. Loosely framed in terms of how engineers engage in service, development, and social justice, this presentation describes how doing good with engineering without religion is a complicated claim, detailing how techno-optimistic efforts regarding engineering’s influence has religious undertones and a uniquely constructed secularity embedded within.
Wes King (University of Washington)
Short abstract:
In this paper, I explore the ways AI and Faith, an educational nonprofit organization, has emerged and contributes to restructuring relations of the secular and the religious. Further, I explore the intersection of how AI and Faith questions Faith in AI.
Long abstract:
Technological discourses often flirt with religious and spiritual language, as observed in expressions of being “blessed by the algorithm” (Singler, 2020) and the programming of “god mode” in video games (Steffen, 2014). Of recent interest is the emergence of “godbots” (Keane & Shapiro, 2023) and a growing consortium of people interested in bringing “the wisdom of the world’s great religions to the discussion around the moral and ethical challenges of artificial intelligence” has emerged (AI and Faith, 2024). Noble (1999) and Geraci (2010, 2022) have explored religious notions of transcendence in both utopian and dystopian discourses of technological futures. Geraci, an advisor for AI and Faith , argues that an emphasis on ethics and human values are crucial for shaping a responsible future of AI (2022).
AI and Faith is “a diverse community composed of experts in business, ethics, theology, and technology from a wide variety of business, religious, and academic institutions” (2024) that represent a complex hybridity beyond mixing sacred + secular, Religious Studies + Science and Technology Studies, religion + technology. In this paper, I explore the ways AI and Faith, an educational nonprofit organization, has emerged and contributes to restructuring relations of the secular and the religious. Further, I explore the intersection of how AI and Faith questions Faith in AI.
Danial Qaurooni (Indiana University)
Short abstract:
I use my fieldwork on the Food Computer to argue that an ethical relationship with technology requires achieving a delicate balance where we recognize the magic of technology but refuse its ossfication into theology.
Long abstract:
Contemporary life demands that we invest in, rely on, and engage with technical artifacts that we make but whose workings we do not fully understand – a condition I describe as living automagically. Traditional secular framings are suspicious of invocations of magic in relation to machinery. I want to propose however that we accept this blend of the mechanical and the magical as a permanent feature of sociotechnical life, rather than a contemporary or temporary problem to be overcome. Instead of reducing magic to mechanics, I argue that the struggle is to keep magic distributed and avoid its ossification into theology, defined as the concentration of magic in an artifact that renders it other-worldly or transcendental. To paraphrase the late David Graeber, there are two types of societies: those that keep the mechanics of their own enchantment in check and those that turn a blind eye as it slides into theology. In Graeber’s spirit, we can ask: how can we live automagically and resist technology’s slide into theology? My answers to this question are informed by my ethnography of the MIT Media Lab’s Food Computer (2015-2020), a controversial project in which I participated as a maker, community member, and researcher.
Albertine Thunier (Université de Montréal) Hubert Alain (Université de Montréal)
Long abstract:
"Spectral Drift" is an avant-garde workshop poised at the convergence of technology, spirituality, and the secular, re-envisioning AI spiritualism through the lens of chaos magic and digital sigil creation. This session, aligned with EASST’s thematic focus on techno-secular transformations, invites participants on a speculative expedition to explore and redefine the sacred within the digital age.
Incorporating a unique protocol that blends desires with digital manifestations, "Spectral Drift" explores the conceptual underpinnings of creating spaces where the medium (us) and the media (AI-generated sigils) merge, employing a protocol that abstracts desires into new symbols. Through simplification, abstraction, and revaluation, we will explore how these digital sigils can serve as a bridge between the material and the spiritual, challenging the fetishism of commodities (Marx, 1844) and envisioning a post-animist capitalism where technology mediates new forms of spiritual engagement (Taussig, 1992).
Through the creation of AI-generated sigils, participants engage in a transformative process: from articulating desires and abstracting symbols to generating new meanings and values. This collaborative journey not only offers a space for speculative creation but also serves as a critical lens through which to examine the co-evolution of technology, spirituality, and societal norms. By navigating the liminal spaces between the seen and the unseen, "Spectral Drift" encourages a participatory discourse on the evolving landscapes of techno-spiritual practices and their capacity to contest and reshape secular modernity.
Oliver Arellano Padilla (University of Massachusetts)
Long abstract:
This paper engages with the concept of luck and its historical and political role in the expansion of secular thought and secularism as the ideological basis for democratic liberalism. Secularism as a practice opposed to religiosity and mysticism has had implications beyond immediate political battles. For instance, the culture and language of secularism, along with technological transformations, has displaced the experience of “luck” with the determinism of algorithms and statistics. However, algorithms are the opposite of luck. Algorithms are meant to reduce chance in order to provide concise outputs. My proposal for this panel is in the form of a speculative design prototyping session; we will critically examine the historical relation between the detriment of luck experience and its role as part of the expansion of the manyfold forms of cultural neocolonialism. We will discuss luck as a concept that existed before modernity, its many aesthetics, and new semantics. This presentation connects with the conference theme “Transformation” by engaging with the technological developments of the last decades and its cultural dimensions by centering the concept and experience of “luck” vis-a-vis the algorithm. Did the algorithm –and its rational drive– has displaced the mystic experience of luck? What are the cultural and political implications of this transformation? What is the role of the algorithm in the expansion of neocolonial dynamics in the present? How does “luck” as the undetermined present a political possibility to challenge the politics of the algorithm?