My Hereticon Talk - Spiritual Technology
BE NOT AFRAID ~ Thank you Mike Solana and Hereticon for having me.
The following is a direct transcript of my talk.
THE START
I'll give you the TLDR in case you want to walk out earlier rather than later.
Religion has collapsed as a direct result of our technology's design.
We live in a technical environment that is inconsiderate of religious practice, tradition, and effects. A lot of what I'm going to say and reference will be from an American Christian perspective, as that's what I know best and I don't want to venture outside of that - but this idea of the hollowing out of religion due to our current technology, I believe, is a current physics. Not held within our specific culture.
The following talk was meant to be a conversation with my partners of this intellectual investigation - Daouda Leonard and Elon Rutberg - but I was selected as high priest for Hereticon so hopefully I do this initial probe justice.
FIRST DEFINITION - SecuTech
Secular Technology, or SecuTech is the current environment.
It is technology designed and embodied from a post-modernist perspective.
So to grok this we have to get with two ideas. One is what we believe design even is, and the second is a shared language around post-modernism.
Design, to take from industrial designer Naoto Fukasawa, is an embodiment of values. And thus products act as a built environment of value assertions. Both by their existence and in the case of many digital technologies - with their every use and app open.
Post-Modernism is a ever debated thing, but Hans Bertens offers us the following:
"If there is a common denominator to all these postmodernisms, it is that of a crisis in representation: a deeply felt loss of faith in our ability to represent the real, in the widest sense. No matter whether they are aesthetic, epistemological, moral, or political in nature, the representations that we used to rely on can no longer be taken for granted."
SecuTech's values that get embodied in design become clear in this lens, and we can map them directly to some of our most powerful companies:
Crisis of Representation - Social Media
Relativism - Information / Disinformation & Media Wars (this is feature NOT a bug of postmodernism)
Post Material Values - "you will own nothing and like it"-isms - These are the Ubers, Spotify, Netflix, and rent based culture
SO WHAT'S THE PROBLEM - THESE ARE ALL GOOD COMPANIES / INTERESTING ENVIRONMENTS THAT WE CAN ADVANCE FROM
Well, I believe the stakes are getting much much higher
What's at stake is the current existential crisis of technology - who will build the AI god (lower case g) first.
Technologists are obsessed with reaching god (lower case g) AS technology
Instead reaching God (upper case G) THROUGH technology
Because what they are searching for are, naturally, the holy properties of God - in the case of AI we search omniscience
The framework I use to analyze what's at stake is Marshall McLuhan's "Technology as Amputation"
AI = Omniscient = our own lobotomy
That should scare all of us.
I don't ever worry about AI alignment doomsday scenario in a traditional sense - I do worry about being a pile of useless limbs
LET'S GIVE ONE MORE EXAMPLE OF HOW TO LOOK AT TECHNOLOGY'S DESIGN IMPACT
I'll utilize McLuhan again, and the framework of the Tetrad.
Enhance - what does the technology amplify
Obsolesce - What does it make obsolete
Retrieve - What does it bring back
Reverse - What happens when pushed to its limits?
We can look at a lot of SecuTech in this lens to understand its effects.
One thing I'm personally disgusted by is the proliferation of Sports Gambling. I actually think there's an argument for it to be considered DemonicTech but let's not do that.
Mobile Sports Gambling amplifies sports watching. Gets your adrenaline up.
It obsolesces the gambling house and diamond district bookies a la Uncut Gems.
It retrieves personal stakes for events that don't involve you.
And it reverses tribal loyalty (it's not about the team/athlete, it's about my bet).
I hope that framework makes sense. I'm happy to chat about it with y'all 1:1 but let's keep rocking.
SO THEN, THE QUESTION SHIFTS - BEYOND AN ARGUMENT OF MORALITY, HOW HAS SecuTech ACTIVELY REDUCED RELIGION
"Behavior Crowding"
If we only make space for SecuTech we overpower the space for Spiritual Technologies.
AND WHAT ARE THOSE SPIRITUAL TECHNOLOGIES, LET'S LOOK AT AN OLD ONE.
One that I think most folks are familiar with here is the Catholic Rosary.
And what is the Catholic Rosary. What is the formula? The effect?
The Rosary is taking time out of day + closing eyes + chanting prayer + repetitive incantation + running fingers over beads + meditating on a mystery + achieving a palpable sense of calm and wonder about life = a far more graciously experienced day
THERE IS A GOD SHAPED HOLE IN OUR HEART, AND (THIS IS THE HERETICAL MOMENT) IN OUR ECONOMY
We know the millennial core answers to this God shaped hole. It's "Soul Cycle" and the like. But we can't reach God pedaling and not going anywhere.
There is a statue at the Met that I think about a lot. It's a woman standing incredibly casually, holding a crucifix. And the pose isn't lost by any of the guests that visit, as many of them take photos next to it holding their phone in the same pose.
I genuinely believe our true orientation is towards the divine. We've just been rug pulled for lesser substitutes - and the real devil within SecuTech is the fact no one has really defined it at a high enough abstraction to place Spiritual Technology on the other side of the match if you will.
The greatest trick the devil ever pulled is making folks believe he doesn't exist type vibe.
SO LET'S SAY YOU SEE THE PROBLEMS WITH SecuTech AND SEE OLD SPIRITUAL TECH - WHAT ARE WE MEANT TO DO NOW
The classical technologist in me would say "it's time to build"
But the McLuhanist in me says it's time to help others wake up to this framework. So we are looking to inspire more conversations and experimental probes here - particularly around connected hardware.
ONE PARTING POINT
I recently watched the film Conclave, about the electing of a new pope. And in the homily before they enter the session there's a really beautiful statement. That the sin the protagonist is most afraid of is certainty because certainty erodes the need for faith. And faith is the critical point of this.
I think the rational SF technologist is oriented around questions of certainty and truth, and mechanizing those things.
But the world is far more mystical. Our spiritual condition is real. And I believe the entire point of spiritual technology, from a serious venture lens, is that we need it to help orient us to the personal breakthroughs, so that we may unlock our broader progressive societal breakthroughs.
Thank you.
I don’t do edits really, so excuse typos and things that don’t make sense.
Thanks so much for giving me your attention. I hope it was worth it, if not… unsubscribing will not hurt my feelings, and will give you back time you literally cannot have back.
Much love.
Live in the light