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As technologies that work by computing numbers, digital media apparently epitomize what is considered scientific and rational. Yet people experience the effects of digital devices and algorithms in their everyday lives also through the lenses of magic and the supernatural. Algorithms, for instance, are discussed for their capacity to "read minds" and predict the future; Artificial Intelligence is seen as an opportunity to overcome death and achieve immortality
through singularity; and avatars and robots are accorded a dignity that traditional religions restrict to humans. The essays collected in this volume challenge and redefine established understandings of digital media and culture by employing the notions of belief, religion, and the
supernatural.
About the author
Simone Natale is a Lecturer in Communication and Media Studies at Loughborough University, UK.
Diana Walsh Pasulka is a Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington and chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religion.
Summary
Believing in Bits advances the idea that religious beliefs and practices have become inextricably linked to the functioning of digital media. How did we come to associate things such as mindreading and spirit communications with the functioning of digital technologies? How does the internets capacity to facilitate the proliferation of beliefs blur the boundaries between what is considered fiction and fact? Addressing these and similar questions, the volume challenges and redefines established understandings of digital media and culture by employing the notions of belief, religion, and the supernatural.
Additional text
Believing in Bits is a guide to why media technologies are magical: they create beliefs, manipulate thoughts, make us see things. After reading this wonderful collection of essays, you realize why the most natural thing about media is that they are supernatural. This book is full of media archaeological joys and insightful contemporary readings.
