Religion Dispatches
Facebook and Elon Musk have recently announced ventures that could transform what it means to be human. The potential is enormous—but so are the risks.
Read More
The following essay contains some minor spoilers. – eds. Imagine a world where robots look,…
Read More
Artificial intelligence is taking over—at least in Hollywood. In 2013, there was Spike Jonze’s acclaimed…
Read More
There are places you never expect to be in life. For me, this was certainly one of them…
Read More
Scientists like roboticist Hans Moravec and inventor Ray Kurzweil advocate uploading our minds into robots or virtual reality so that we can live forever. They believe that our minds can be replicated outside of our brains if we simply copy the pattern of neuro-chemical activity taking place in our bodies. That pattern, rather than the brains in which the pattern takes shape, “is” the personality. If it can be transferred to a digital medium, it can be made immortal. Surpassingly intelligent robots—our Mind Children, according to Moravec—will populate the universe, converting physical reality into a cosmic interweb of thinking machines.
Read More
As the half-season closes on this sci-fi epic, we take inventory on where the show has gone, and gone wrong. Among the robots, avatars, and people who love them, there are a lot of big ideas, but not enough story.
Read More
Is it the inhumanity of the machines that will prove to be the tragic pivot in this science fiction world, or will it the inhumanity of the humans? Again we find ourselves asking: where does human consciousness begin?
Read More
This week’s episode asks big questions about psychology and religion, and reminds us that a dog is a robot’s best friend.
Read More
Welcome to the first installment of our ongoing coverage of television’s latest contribution to the cultural intersection of science and religion, with bonus themes to include: the body, artificial intelligence, paganism, original sin, immigration, and race. Join Diane Winston, Anthea Butler, Salman Hameed, and Henry Jenkins every week as they delve into deep exegesis of Caprica.
Read More
In the ever more dystopian world of Syfy Channel’s Caprica, teenage girls inhabit robot bodies, or live eternally without bodies at all, human bodies are marked by memories, and all the while there is blood flowing in the virtual streets.
Read More