God and Technology

Digital media and technological innovation are associated with religious imagery and ideals, so technologies are seen as spiritual tools.

This Element brings work from the philosophy of technology into conversation with media, religion, culture studies, and work in digital religion studies. It seeks to create a platform for scholarly study and critical discourse on technology's religious and spiritual representation in digital and emerging media cultures and contexts.This Element brings work from the philosophy of technology into conversation with media, religion, culture studies, and work in digital religion studies to explore examples of how popular media and emerging technologies are increasingly framed and understood through a distinct range of spiritual myths, metaphors, images, and representations of God. Working with three case studies about how internet memes, popular films, and media coverage of public philosophy link ideas about God and technology, this Element draws attention to common conceptions that describe a perceived relationship between religion and technology today. It synthesizes these discussions and categories and presents them in four distinct models, showing a range of ways in which the relationship between God and technology is commonly depicted. The Element seeks to create a platform for scholarly study and critical discourse on technology's religious and spiritual representation in digital and emerging media cultures and contexts through this work.