Genevieve Bell: No More SMS from Jesus: Ubicomp, Religion and Techno-spiritual Practices. Ubicomp 2006: 141-158Bell uses the phrase "techno-spiritual practices" to reflect the increasing ways in which people are using technology to support their religious practices.
She writes, "These techno-spiritual re-purposings are important for the ways in which they highlight alternate paradigms for technology creation, deployment, consumption and resistance, as well as pointing to different communities, practices and habits that could be supported."
The other important takeaway is that this trend highlights the ubiquity of computing, i.e. the ways in which it has extended even into the hitherto private, spiritual realms of our lives.
Bell's ethnographic study sought to "critically interrogate the ways in which cultural practices were shaping people's relationships to new ICTs in urban Asia." She found that, "narratives of technology (and life) carried strong references to religious practices, spiritual life and ritual."
She argues that "we need to design a ubiquitous computing not just for a secular life, but also for spiritual life, and we need to design it now!" In part, this is because the two are already intertwined, and it makes sense to cater to that present need. But she also suggests that current ubicomp development may inadvertently "preclude important spiritual practices and religious beliefs."
She points out that religion and technology have not always been at odds, as religious institutions were often the first to adopt (citing The Religion of Technology, by Noble). Noble writes that in fact it was only when technologies were invested with spiritual significance that they took off.
She quotes Geertz: religion is "a system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive and long-lasting moods and motivations in men... by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic." Bell rephrases this as: "religions are a form of cultural logic of patterning that makes unique and distinct sense within a particular cultural context; religions are also an expression of those cultural contexts." Further, she explains religion as a cultural script. Similarly, technology not only do technical work, but also cultural work.
Examples of techno-spiritual practices mentioned in the paper include:
1. Australia Bible Society (2003) - offered the bible as SMS text messages, in SMS vernacular (e.g. for God so luvd da world); a CD-ROM could be downloaded so a person could broadcast these texts out via their mobile's Bluetooth.
2. Pew Internet and American Life Project - found that "64% of online Americans have also used the internet for religious or spiritual purposes," which outnumbers those using it for gambling, web auctions, trading stock or doing online banking.
3. Buddhist temples will bless your mobile phone in China.
4. A Russian mobile service provider allows you to place a prayer text at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem.
5. People in the Philippines sent their confessions via text message, email or fax to receive absolution (until the practice was ended in 2003).
6. People can subscribe to the Pope's thoughts via text message for $0.15 per day.
7. Muslims can locate Mecca via their mobile phones via a 'm-qiblat' service.
8. Muslims can also download the Koran to their palm pilots and synchronize it to local prayer times around the globe.
9. Spiritual messages of all kinds are available via text message (Lent messages, Gospel verses, religious ring tone hymns, Rosary and Station of the Cross in java applications, Feng-Shui and astrology on your phone).
10. Chinese traditions of burning valuables and money at a funeral have now included burning televisions, fans, air-conditioners, mobile phones, and computers.
11. A specifically Muslim-catered mobile service points users to Mecca, informs them of local prayer times, calculates Ramadan, and has a mosque-function that prevents your phone from ringing during prayer.
The last example highlights the ways in which technology needs to be designed to be sensitive to the activity of the user, and disconnect if necessary, rather than being constantly present (i.e. ubiquitous). Does this suggest an impossible tension between technology and spiritual life? Does being spiritual really mean being able to switch off?
The Archbishop of Salerno thought so when he proposed in 2002 that Good Friday be text-message free: "I'm asking this little sacrifice to my faithfuls to make clear the church's position... In a world dominated by the culture of possession, we should try to focus more on meditation, and leaving behind our mobile phones for a day will surely help." Bell also witnessed a sign in a Seoul church that read, "turn off your cell phone and listen for the call of God."
Online manifestations of techno-spiritual practice include:
1. 8th Feb, 1996: three Tibetan Buddhist monks in a monastery in Ithaca, New York blessed the internet, saying, "We pray to reduce the negative things that may happen in cyberspace and to increase the positive things.... When we bless soemthing, we are seeking to change its disposition - to eliminate negative things that come from that particular object - and we generate the motivation that the use of that object will be very positive and beneficial.... The person using the Internet has the choice. Whether the Internet becomes material for happiness or for suffereing depends on your mind."
2. The Catholic Church has been conducting a search for a parton saint for the Internet.
3. In 2004, the Church of England launched a "virtual parish" or i-church for those who cannot make it to church regularly.
Technologizing of sacred spaces is also a growing trend. Most churches have a web presence, some offer virtual pilgrimages; a church dedicated to the Hindu diety, Ganesh, allows people to purchase religious artifacts. But then, there is another way of conceptualizing this meeting of technology and sacred spaces as the sanctifying of the technological. For example, "the monks who support the website 'nextscribe.org' believe that the internet as a network can be read as a sort of church."
So technology has clearly been appropriated for religious purposes, but it was never designed with the intention of being in any way spiritual. Bell raises the question of why it is the case that spirituality and religion have been ignored in the development of technology. I would propose that it's because the two are founded upon dialectically opposed worldviews (which then produce conflicting value sets, e.g. technology's being speed and efficiency). The question then is whether or not these two can ever be reconciled, or if their overlapping will always be somewhat artificial. Is there a meaningful integration of the two?
Bell writes, "Religious systems' cultural logic necessarily impact the very ways in which new technologies are created, consumed, indeed rejected. Our desire to bring new technologies into our homes; the persistence of values such as simplicity, grace, humility, modesty, and purity; and ideas about modernity, subjectivity, and the self are all implicated in shaping the contexts for new technologies. And if we ignore them, we shortchange both our own experiences of the technology itself, as well as our understandings of what it could be for others."
A comment received via email:
ReplyDelete"The thrust of the paper, and most of the examples given, seem to be about using technology to do things that are explicitly ‘religious’ – sending out religious messages, downloading the Koran, or using technology to get prayer times and the direction of Mecca. Technology can, of course, be used in this way – just as it can be used for destructive or harmful purposes. But, I think this may be missing the point somewhat.
It seem to me that the challenge here is not so much about ‘what’ we do using technology (which clearly can be a huge variety of things) – but rather, ‘how’ we do things when we use technology – what is the nature of encounter with technology, what is the nature of ‘doing’ – and is the qualitative nature of the doing in accord with spiritual understandings and teachings about human fulfillment and happiness.
For example, many spiritual traditions emphasis things like:
· The importance of living fully in the present moment – not always thinking about (or worrying about) the future and what might happen, or regret things from the past.
· Single-point attention – concentrating fully on the task in hand, and doing one thing at a time (so that we fully engage, rather than being torn in different directions).
· The importance of silence and not subjecting oneself to the seductions and distractions of ‘worldly’ pleasures – which lead one away from ‘the narrow path’ and ultimately away from true contentment and happiness.
· And so on...
When we think about such values and priorities in the context of contemporary digital technologies, we immediately see major conflicts.
Current manifestations of technology (through their hardware and software) are endlessly distracting – from the ringing of a cellphone to the pop-ups on a website. The internet lends itself to endless (mindless?) browsing – jumping from one link or story to another and, with developments such as the iPlayer and YouTube, if possible to be endlessly and passively entertained. And, of course, the internet is also used to distribute a great deal of salacious material, there has been a rise in online gambling, and its also increasingly used to enable and encourage consumerism.
So if all these things are, in many respects, antithetical to substantive values and meaningful understandings of spirituality, then the question arises – what would an alternative be like? Is this even a valid question? If so, is it possible to imagine, and create, a version of digital technologies (interface, search engine, phone etc.) that allows mundane tasks to be completed, but in ways that are consistent to spiritual teachings? What would be the criteria for creating this? What would be its characteristics and qualities?
Such a direction differs considerably from using existing technology to do things that are ‘religious’ in nature."
A comment received via email (part 1):
ReplyDelete"The thrust of the paper, and most of the examples given, seem to be about using technology to do things that are explicitly ‘religious’ – sending out religious messages, downloading the Koran, or using technology to get prayer times and the direction of Mecca. Technology can, of course, be used in this way – just as it can be used for destructive or harmful purposes. But, I think this may be missing the point somewhat.
It seem to me that the challenge here is not so much about ‘what’ we do using technology (which clearly can be a huge variety of things) – but rather, ‘how’ we do things when we use technology – what is the nature of encounter with technology, what is the nature of ‘doing’ – and is the qualitative nature of the doing in accord with spiritual understandings and teachings about human fulfillment and happiness.
For example, many spiritual traditions emphasis things like:
· The importance of living fully in the present moment – not always thinking about (or worrying about) the future and what might happen, or regret things from the past.
· Single-point attention – concentrating fully on the task in hand, and doing one thing at a time (so that we fully engage, rather than being torn in different directions).
· The importance of silence and not subjecting oneself to the seductions and distractions of ‘worldly’ pleasures – which lead one away from ‘the narrow path’ and ultimately away from true contentment and happiness.
· And so on...
A comment received via email (part 2):
ReplyDelete"
When we think about such values and priorities in the context of contemporary digital technologies, we immediately see major conflicts.
Current manifestations of technology (through their hardware and software) are endlessly distracting – from the ringing of a cellphone to the pop-ups on a website. The internet lends itself to endless (mindless?) browsing – jumping from one link or story to another and, with developments such as the iPlayer and YouTube, if possible to be endlessly and passively entertained. And, of course, the internet is also used to distribute a great deal of salacious material, there has been a rise in online gambling, and its also increasingly used to enable and encourage consumerism.
So if all these things are, in many respects, antithetical to substantive values and meaningful understandings of spirituality, then the question arises – what would an alternative be like? Is this even a valid question? If so, is it possible to imagine, and create, a version of digital technologies (interface, search engine, phone etc.) that allows mundane tasks to be completed, but in ways that are consistent to spiritual teachings? What would be the criteria for creating this? What would be its characteristics and qualities?
Such a direction differs considerably from using existing technology to do things that are ‘religious’ in nature."
My response:
ReplyDeleteI completely agree. This - what Bell talks about - is certainly not what I mean when I describe "spiritual technology." (Though it's useful for lit review purposes as something to talk around.) Firstly, I think she confuses spiritual with religious, and I think this is an important distinction to make. Secondly, I find it revealing that the only example I could find of anyone even talking about these issues seemed to take the current technological as a given, as if religion had be somehow woven into our technological world. I think the paradigm of technological development needs to be challenged itself. And thirdly, I think the thing that's critical for me is the "experience of engagement" with the technology: is that experience spiritual? Having a phone that allows you to read the Koran does not make the technological experience a spiritual one.