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 internetâs 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.
Table of Contents
Introduction1: Amazon Can Read Your Mind: A Media Archaeology of the Algorithmic Imaginary2: Information Theory of the Soul: Spiritualism, Technology, and Science Fiction3: The Return of the Sonic Ghosts: Phonographic Revenants and Digital Reanimations, from Paleospectography to Hauntology4: I play, therefore I believe: Religio and faith in digital games5: Ritual Magic and User Generated Deities on Instagram6: Instant Karma and Internet Karma: Karmic Memes and Morality on Social Media7: Disciples of the New Digital Religions: Or, How to Make Your 'Fake' Religion Real8: Where Soul Meets Technology: Catholic Visionaries and the Stanford Research Institute as Precedents for Human-Machine Interfaces and Social Telepathy Apps9:Plurality through Imagination: The Emergence of Online Tulpa Communities in the Making of New Identities10:UFOs, ufologists and digital media in Brazil11:Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and Religion: Past, Present, and Future12:Algorithm Magic: Gilbert Simondon and Techno-animismAfterword: Religious and digital imaginaries in parallel lines
