Full Description
Believing in Bits advances the idea that religious beliefs and practices have become inextricably linked to the functioning of digital media. How did we come to associate things such as mindreading and spirit communications with the functioning of digital technologies? How does the internets capacity to facilitate the proliferation of beliefs blur the boundaries between what is considered fiction and fact? Addressing these and similar questions, the volume challenges and redefines established understandings of digital media and culture by employing the notions of belief, religion, and the supernatural.
Contents
Introduction
1: Amazon Can Read Your Mind: A Media Archaeology of the Algorithmic Imaginary
2: Information Theory of the Soul: Spiritualism, Technology, and Science Fiction
3: The Return of the Sonic Ghosts: Phonographic Revenants and Digital Reanimations, from Paleospectography to Hauntology
4: I play, therefore I believe: Religio and faith in digital games
5: Ritual Magic and User Generated Deities on Instagram
6: Instant Karma and Internet Karma: Karmic Memes and Morality on Social Media
7: Disciples of the New Digital Religions: Or, How to Make Your 'Fake' Religion Real
8: Where Soul Meets Technology: Catholic Visionaries and the Stanford Research Institute as Precedents for Human-Machine Interfaces and Social Telepathy Apps
9:Plurality through Imagination: The Emergence of Online Tulpa Communities in the Making of New Identities
10:UFOs, ufologists and digital media in Brazil
11:Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and Religion: Past, Present, and Future
12:Algorithm Magic: Gilbert Simondon and Techno-animism
Afterword: Religious and digital imaginaries in parallel lines
