Capricology: Divine Madness
This week’s episode asks big questions about psychology and religion, and reminds us that a dog is a robot’s best friend.
Read Moretechnology
Capricology: Television, Tech, and the Sacred
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
Capricology: Tattoos, Blood, Cyber-Dating
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
Capricology Week 5: Fathers, Funerals, and the Ethics of Gaming
Tamara, the girl who is dead but doesn’t know it, who exists only within the “magic circle” of a virtual game, takes center stage in this week’s episode, and in our commentary.
Read More
Extra-Terrestrial Kitsch: Capricology #4
Among other clues to this sci-fi opera, our Caprica watchers took particular note of a bobbleheaded bull on the dashboard of a Tauron killer. What can we learn from the possibility that Capricans can be as kitsch-obsessed, cigarette-addicted, and as reckless with civil liberties as earthlings can be?
Read More
Capricology: Week 3: Apotheosis, Anyone?
More on the sci-fi TV show that imagines monotheists rebelling against a polytheist society, speculates about the nature of the human soul, and asks, “Can you be free if you’re not real?”
Read More
Sacred Texting: When Religious Writ Gets Wired
The Vatican’s Web site considers a patron saint of the internet, Muslims debate divorce by text, and Jews pray by email; How does the inevitable transition to the virtual realm affect religious experience across the world?
Read MoreA Religious History of American Neuroscience
On the “God-spot,” the psycho-phone, and mapping the mystical brain.
Read More
Twitter of Faith: Microblogging the Divine
Religious groups are discovering that Twitter can help to build a portable church, where believers can obey the timeworn injunction to “pray without ceasing”—or is it “tweet without ceasing”?
Read More
Virtual Islam: Peace, Love, and Some Understanding?
After spending a year exploring life in digital Islamic communities, a new project finds that people are building new narratives to find ways to coexist; their report even includes a policy recommendation for the Obama administration’s diplomacy efforts in the Middle East.
Read More