Bell, G. (2006)

Genevieve Bell: No More SMS from Jesus: Ubicomp, Religion together with Techno-spiritual Practices. Ubicomp 2006: 141-158

Bell uses the phrase "techno-spiritual practices" to reverberate the increasing ways inwards which people are using applied scientific discipline to back upward their religious practices.

She writes, "These techno-spiritual re-purposings are of import for the ways inwards which they highlight alternate paradigms for applied scientific discipline creation, deployment, consumption together with resistance, every bit good every bit pointing to dissimilar communities, practices together with habits that could live supported."

The other of import takeaway is that this tendency highlights the ubiquity of computing, i.e. the ways inwards which it has extended fifty-fifty into the hitherto private, spiritual realms of our lives.

Bell's ethnographic report sought to "critically interrogate the ways inwards which cultural practices were shaping people's relationships to novel ICTs inwards urban Asia." She found that, "narratives of applied scientific discipline (and life) carried potent references to religious practices, spiritual life together with ritual."

She argues that "we demand to blueprint a ubiquitous computing non merely for a secular life, but also for spiritual life, together with nosotros demand to blueprint it now!" In part, this is because the 2 are already intertwined, together with it makes feel to cater to that acquaint need. But she also suggests that electrical flow ubicomp evolution may inadvertently "preclude of import spiritual practices together with religious beliefs."

She points out that organized religious belief together with applied scientific discipline direct maintain non ever been at odds, every bit religious institutions were oft the starting fourth dimension to adopt (citing The Religion of Technology, past times Noble). Noble writes that inwards fact it was entirely when technologies were invested amongst spiritual significance that they took off.

She quotes Geertz: organized religious belief is "a organization of symbols which acts to flora powerful, pervasive together with long-lasting moods together with motivations inwards men... past times formulating conceptions of a full general social club of existence together with article of apparel these conceptions amongst such an aura of factuality that the moods together with motivations seem uniquely realistic." Bell rephrases this as: "religions are a bird of cultural logic of patterning that makes unique together with distinct feel inside a detail cultural context; religions are also an appear of those cultural contexts." Further, she explains organized religious belief every bit a cultural script. Similarly, applied scientific discipline non entirely do technical work, but also cultural work.

Examples of techno-spiritual practices mentioned inwards the newspaper include:
1. Commonwealth of Australia Bible Society (2003) - offered the bible every bit SMS text messages, inwards SMS vernacular (e.g. for God hence luvd da world); a CD-ROM could live downloaded hence a mortal could broadcast these texts out via their mobile's Bluetooth.
2. Pew Internet together with American Life Project - found that "64% of online Americans direct maintain also used the cyberspace for religious or spiritual purposes," which outnumbers those using it for gambling, spider web auctions, trading stock or doing online banking.
3. Buddhist temples volition bless your mobile telephone inwards China.
4. Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 Russian mobile service provider allows you lot to identify a prayer text at the Wailing Wall inwards Jerusalem.
5. People inwards the Philippines sent their confessions via text message, electronic mail or fax to have absolution (until the practise was ended inwards 2003).
6. People tin subscribe to the Pope's thoughts via text message for $0.15 per day.
7. Muslims tin locate Mecca via their mobile phones via a 'm-qiblat' service.
8. Muslims tin also download the Koran to their palm pilots together with synchronize it to local prayer times some the globe.
9. Spiritual messages of all kinds are available via text message (Lent messages, Gospel verses, religious band musical note hymns, Rosary together with Station of the Cross inwards coffee applications, Feng-Shui together with star divination on your phone).
10. Chinese traditions of burning valuables together with coin at a funeral direct maintain forthwith included burning televisions, fans, air-conditioners, mobile phones, together with computers.
11. Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 specifically Muslim-catered mobile service points users to Mecca, informs them of local prayer times, calculates Ramadan, together with has a mosque-function that prevents your telephone from ringing during prayer.

The concluding instance highlights the ways inwards which applied scientific discipline needs to live designed to live sensitive to the activeness of the user, together with disconnect if necessary, rather than beingness constantly acquaint (i.e. ubiquitous). Does this suggest an impossible tension betwixt applied scientific discipline together with spiritual life? Does beingness spiritual actually hateful beingness able to switch off?

The Archbishop of Salerno thought hence when he proposed inwards 2002 that Good Fri live text-message free: "I'm yell for this piddling sacrifice to my faithfuls to brand clear the church's position... In a basis dominated past times the civilization of possession, nosotros should attempt to focus to a greater extent than on meditation, together with leaving behind our mobile phones for a 24-hour interval volition for sure help." Bell also witnessed a sign inwards a Seoul church building that read, "turn off your prison theatre cellphone telephone together with withdraw heed for the telephone telephone of God."

Online manifestations of techno-spiritual practise include:
1. eighth Feb, 1996: 3 Tibetan Buddhist monks inwards a monastery inwards Ithaca, New York blessed the internet, saying, "We pray to cut down the negative things that may occur inwards cyberspace together with to growth the positive things.... When nosotros bless soemthing, nosotros are seeking to alter its disposition - to eliminate negative things that come upward from that detail object - together with nosotros generate the motivation that the work of that object volition live rattling positive together with beneficial.... The mortal using the Internet has the choice. Whether the Internet becomes stuff 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 move far to church building regularly.

Technologizing of sacred spaces is also a growing trend. Most churches direct maintain a spider web presence, some offering virtual pilgrimages; a church building dedicated to the Hindu diety, Ganesh, allows people to buy religious artifacts. But then, at that topographic point is some other means of conceptualizing this coming together of applied scientific discipline together with sacred spaces every bit the sanctifying of the technological. For example, "the monks who back upward the website 'nextscribe.org' believe that the cyberspace every bit a network tin live read every bit a course of report of church."

So applied scientific discipline has clearly been appropriated for religious purposes, but it was never designed amongst the intention of beingness inwards whatever means spiritual. Bell raises the query of why it is the instance that spirituality together with organized religious belief direct maintain been ignored inwards the evolution of technology. I would advise that it's because the 2 are founded upon dialectically opposed worldviews (which hence hit conflicting value sets, e.g. technology's beingness speed together with efficiency). The query hence is whether or non these 2 tin ever live reconciled, or if their overlapping volition ever live somewhat artificial. Is at that topographic point a meaningful integration of the two?

Bell writes, "Religious systems' cultural logic necessarily touching on the rattling ways inwards which novel technologies are created, consumed, indeed rejected. Our wishing to convey novel technologies into our homes; the persistence of values such every bit simplicity, grace, humility, modesty, together with purity; together with ideas virtually modernity, subjectivity, together with the self are all implicated inwards shaping the contexts for novel technologies. And if nosotros ignore them, nosotros shortchange both our ain experiences of the applied scientific discipline itself, every bit good every bit our understandings of what it could live for others."