My Hereticon Talk - Spiritual Technology

Technologists are obsessed with reaching god (lower case g) AS technology

Instead reaching God (upper case G) THROUGH technology

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.

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.

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 techn... See more