My favorite podcast these days is To the Best of Our Knowledge from Wisconsin Public Radio. The January 23 episode "Hive Mind" is a great example of the show's interdisciplinary cross-section of knowledge, ranging from biology to technology, religion and sci-fi. Segment 3, an interview with Jaron Lanier (credited as the "founding father of virtual reality"), caught my attention because Lanier describes the mentality engendered by web 2.0 and its creators as a religion. He refers to this new "digital religion" as "singularitarian" or "post humanism," and it might also be called "hive mind." I'd like to call it technologism. The "religion" is based on the notion that humans and computers/machines/digital technology are essentially the same, and will be merged into a singular mind, which will allow for the immortality of humans and machines. This is theoretically opposed to humanism, which focuses on our unique traits as humans apart from animals or machines. Humanists believe that we our unique type of consciousness allows us to use rationality to care for one another and solve the unique problems endemic to the human condition.
How are these new moral, ethical, religious or spiritual debates about technology related to the more general pop-culture secular zeitgeist of consumerism/capitalism/cosmopolitanism?
Perhaps one could argue that this popular culture, combined with the rapid proliferation of technology in daily life, have left individuals and communities with a variety of problems and questions. For example, globalization gives rise to a dissonance between identities. And Larnier argues that social media, such as Facebook, demand constant maintenance (especially among younger users) to maintain social identity. This leads to both cognitive and behavioral dissonance, mainly in the sense that we are increasingly confused about life's big questions and distracted in our daily lives.
The truth is that I don't know the answer to the above question with any certainty, and the speculative ramble here is just a draft idea that will likely continue to be refined through debate and discourse. Moreover, the debate surrounding technologism and humanism (sparked in popular consciousness through movies like Star Trek with the Borg and The Matrix)) will be part of an ongoing debate as humans face more and more difficult decisions about the appropriate role of technology in our world as long as our current environment (natural and technological) persists.
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