Joe Allen, SingularitybWeekly, 8/27/24
Some see God in the Machine. I can’t help but see a Devil leering back at me. You might say that’s a personal quirk, but it’s every writer’s duty to transfer neuroses to a captive audience. So stay with me here.
For the past three years, my tech coverage has been an elaboration on David Noble’s incisive 1997 book The Religion of Technology. Anything I’ve contributed was a mere update to his core insight—that technology is religious—which Noble himself owed to centuries of previous thinkers. With careful attention to detail, though, he documented the historical evidence, weaving together an incredible story. My job is to add gloomy adjectives and smartass remarks.
This innate spiritual principle is so apparent, you’d think there’s no reason to mention it at all, but it bears repeating. Technology emerged from religious culture, and so naturally, our ideas about technology are essentially religious. In the end, technology itself has become a source of religious authority and an object of religious devotion.
For a recent example, see the AI-generated image of Jesus superimposed on the Shroud of Turin. For many centuries, Catholics revered this sacred object according to their faith. Today, they look upon it through an inverted tech-gnostic lens.
Even atheists can’t help but see the world with a religious aura. Left to their own devices, they desperately grasp for the divine. I believe it’s due to an eternal longing within our souls. They’d probably say that’s just how humans are wired.
Whatever. You say “toe-MAY-toe.” I say “angels and demons.”
At the risk of oversimplification, allow me to lay out four ways the human spirit responds to high technology: 1) the devout believer who clings to techno-optimism; 2) the atheist techno-optimist counterpart; 3) the pessimistic atheist who rejects technology; and lastly, 4) the devout believer who sees the Devil in the Machine.
I touched on these viewpoints in a previous article, albeit from a different angle. This religious landscape is also covered in my book, often within rhymes and riddles. Since one or two of you have not yet read Dark Aeon, though, I should lay down a solid foundation here. It’ll be useful going forward.
Devout techno-optimists see the Mind of God creating technology by way of human hands. Cities, steamships, guns, televisions, antibiotics, atom bombs, planetary surveillance grids—all of these are built according to divine will. Therefore, our tools are essentially good, even if some people might turn them toward evil ends. “Technology is neutral,” we hear again and again. It’s unclear if that includes torture devices.
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What an amazing mental agility this author has, and the intellectual prowess to cite numerous witers and their approach to their subject.
It’s totally absurd to think that an artificial creation could replace a person, since it can’t have an interconnected soul, heart, and mind. The soul has its its unique identity which is informed by the heart and mind. The heart is known as the seat of the emotions which emotes and confers a “heartfelt” conscience. It informs the mind to distinguish good from evil, right from wrong, love from hate, and the gamut of human emotions. And that includes the self- knowledge to recognize gender differences – male and female.
Without such human characteristics the artificial gadget remains a computer generated program with only machine logic – a cold, dead computer thing.