Catholic Cosmotechnics for the AI Age

Catholic Cosmotechnics for the AI Age resurrects Marshall McLuhan’s prophetic insight that “the medium is the message” and baptizes it in the sacramental imagination and liturgical wisdom of the Church. The result is a principled framework for technological creativity in the AI age that draws equally on Thomistic semiotics, media ecology, and human-computer interface design. Where Silicon Valley sees users to capture, the authors see participants in a cosmic leitourgia—a common work of returning creation to its source.

Written by a diverse team of scholars and practitioners including designers, educators, radio hosts, and theologians, this profoundly interdisciplinary work bridges liturgy and technics, devotion and design, papal teaching and new media scholarship. The authors demonstrate how liturgical signs—from stained glass to sacred architecture to the gestures of the Mass—embody the paradoxical qualities of epiphany and asceticism, standing in stark contrast to the addictive, “frictionless” interfaces dominating our lives. Ranging from the semiotic structure of human-computer interaction to practical examples in community gardens and Catholic education, this book charts a path beyond the design mantras and attention economies that dominate the technocene.

It is a summons to rediscover technology as poiesis—creative making in service of the Kingdom—and interface design as a site of liturgical participation. In an era of doomscrolling and algorithmic manipulation, Catholic Cosmotechnics for the AI Age reclaims the option of tending to the human face through a practice of interface design rejuvenated by the liturgy.