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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.
List of contents
- Introduction
- 1: Amazon Can Read Your Mind: A Media Archaeology of the Algorithmic Imaginary
- 2: Information Theory of the Soul: Spiritualism, Technology, and Science Fiction
- 3: The Return of the Sonic Ghosts: Phonographic Revenants and Digital Reanimations, from Paleospectography to Hauntology
- 4: I play, therefore I believe: Religio and faith in digital games
- 5: Ritual Magic and User Generated Deities on Instagram
- 6: Instant Karma and Internet Karma: Karmic Memes and Morality on Social Media
- 7: Disciples of the New Digital Religions: Or, How to Make Your 'Fake' Religion Real
- 8: Where Soul Meets Technology: Catholic Visionaries and the Stanford Research Institute as Precedents for Human-Machine Interfaces and Social Telepathy Apps
- 9:Plurality through Imagination: The Emergence of Online Tulpa Communities in the Making of New Identities
- 10:UFOs, ufologists and digital media in Brazil
- 11:Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and Religion: Past, Present, and Future
- 12:Algorithm Magic: Gilbert Simondon and Techno-animism
- Afterword: Religious and digital imaginaries in parallel lines
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.
