In a reflective and insightful paper, Geneviève Bell, a highly respected anthropologist and director of user experience at Intel, analyses the use of technology to support religious practices. Putting People First reports.

“Bell argues that ‘the ways in which new technologies are delivering religious experiences represent the leading edge of a much larger re-purposing of the internet in particular, and of computational technologies more broadly, that has been underway for some time.’

‘We need to design a ubiquitous computing not just for a secular life, but also for spiritual life, and we need to design it now!’ she claims.

… There has been up till now ‘an ideological and rhetorical separation of religion and technology’, which says a lot about ‘the implicit understanding of the kinds of cultural work’ that technology should enable. Instead Bell positions: ‘If it is indeed the case, that religion is a primary framing narrative in most cultures, and then religion must also be one of the primary forces acting on people’s relationships with and around new technologies - one could go as far as to suggest that there can be no real ubiquitous computing if it does not account for religion.’

In a reflective and insightful paper, Geneviève Bell, a highly respected anthropologist and director of user experience at Intel, analyses the use of technology to support religious practices. Putting People First reports.
“Bell argues that ‘the ways in which new technologies are delivering religious experiences represent the leading edge of a much larger re-purposing of the [...]