Algorithm Magic

Drawing on Simondon’s vision of the primitive magical universe—the original harmonious mode of existence of the human in the world—the chapter proposes that a new algorithmic magical and animistic universe is in the making in our contemporary computational world. By framing the immersive experience of computation and its sensibilities, perceptions, and affects through Simondon’s magical unity, where humans are an integral part of a totalizing and harmonious whole, the chapter looks at the black mirrors of our digital screens as the portals into a new magical and animistic reticulation of the human and the nonhuman. This perspective locates the algorithm within a genealogy of the relationship between technology and magic, and reads it as a mysterious form of nonhuman intelligence performing in inscrutable ways. It is the increasing autonomous agency and digital uncertainty of algorithms that engenders a new magical and animistic universe.

UFOs, Ufologists, and Digital Media in Brazil

This chapter presents an ethnography of a Brazilian ufological community that focuses on the role of digital media on its constitution. The author offers a critique of the heuristic capacity of the notion of “belief” to interpret the socialities formed around extraterrestrial motives and proposes a move from the discussion concerned with the “secret of belief” to what has been termed the “pragmatic of secrecy.” Drawing on the idea of “pragmatic of secrecy” and on Bruno Latour’s analysis of science networks, the author discusses three processes: reduction, multiplication, and differentiation. When combined, they constitute ufology by translating the order of the supernatural into the realm of the “ultra-natural.”

Plurality Through Imagination

Starting around 2009, online communities envisioned and began practicing “tulpamancy”—the ability to imagine a sentient being, or “tulpa,” into existence through heightened states of imagination. Originating in Tibetan Buddhist mysticism and contemporary paranormal lore, online users create tulpas, which they sense as a distinct personality within their minds and bodies, for companionship. Advocates of the practice emphasize healthful and positive aspects, and the plurality of identity that can exist in one body. They promote their practice as a way to overcome depression, loneliness, and other issues of mental well-being. Tulpa creation and plurality arrived precisely because avatars, anonymity, and, perhaps most crucially, inward-focused creativity and collaboration in online environments enabled radical, free-form identity experimentation. Tulpamancy shows how online communities act as participatory spaces in which supernatural or trans-human possibilities are evaluated and repurposed.

Repost or Die

This chapter is concerned with the analysis of contemporary, community-based practices surrounding the user-generated deity Safety Kitty on the image-sharing platform Instagram. Users engage with Safety Kitty both as an image and through the associated hashtag #safetykitty to protect themselves from the existential threat of supernatural chain images shared on the platform. This chapter first demonstrates that the use of “magic” as a rhetorical tool by programmers and advertisers to describe the various mysteriously obfuscating and wondrously enabling qualities of information technologies has fallen out of popular use in recent years. Attention is then shifted to magical thinking as manifest within lay users’ participation on the social web. Drawing from early sociological approaches to magic in conjunction with new media theory, this chapter proposes that the Instagram-based rituals associated with protection from supernatural threats is indicative of a collective understanding of the unknowability of the processes behind our personal devices.

Afterword

In this afterword, three leading scholars, whose work explores the intersections of media, communication, and religion from different viewpoints, enter in dialog on the subject. Carole Cusack is a historian of religion and the author of groundbreaking works about the relationship between religion, imagination, and popular culture. Massimo Leone is a semiologist whose work has stretched the boundaries between the study of religion and the study of signs, both linguistic and nonlinguistic. Jeffrey Sconce is a scholar in film and media studies whose pioneering monograph, Haunted Media (2000), placed the theme of the supernatural at the forefront of studies in media and communication. Their responses provide a map of potential trajectories to further explore the connections between digital media and the supernatural.

Disciples of the New Digital Religions

This contribution expands and explores the concept of “hyper-real religions” through the case of the Disciples of the New Dawn (DOTND). A pure parody internet religion, DOTND is subtle and sly with its snark but quite real in its religious import and impact. Based on digital ethnographic observation on social media sites such as Facebook and on blogs, this contribution adds to the conversation about hyper-real religions and “authentic fakes.” Drawing on the literature surrounding these terms and interviews with individuals who share their perspectives and opinions about DOTND, this chapter reconsiders what an authentic religion is in light of authority, authenticity, community, identity, and ritual. By doing this with an “ambiguous fake” religion such as DOTND, this chapter helps enlarge the understanding of what constitutes “religion” in light of digital parody and the ambiguity of the features of religion online.

Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and Religion

This chapter seeks to survey the current landscape of religious uses of augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) applications and begin to answer the following question: In light of relevant AR/VR research to date, what impact might religious uses of AR/VR have in relation to three essential features of religion—myth, ritual, and faith? Surveyed examples of AR/VR range from immersive experiences of holy sites and objects (including reconstructed ones), prayer and meditation, sacred texts and objects, film and storytelling, and social interaction. Drawing on general AR/VR research that shows how immersive experiences impact human beliefs and behavior, the author suggests a number of possible impacts the technology could have on religious experience and raises additional questions that stakeholders—from developers to religious scholars to religious devotees—can begin to answer as the technology becomes more widely available.

Instant Karma and Internet Karma

This chapter examines the representation and interpretation of karma in social media, focusing on karmic memes and morality. Internet memes depict karma as a strict retribution, often occurring instantaneously, and occasionally revel in the possibility of witnessing or controlling karma. Memes serve as ways of meting out retribution online; by creating, sharing, and reposting karmic memes, people can engage in moral critique without appearing overly judgmental. The chapter also examines the notion of “internet karma,” which enables people to uphold their conscience and appear to be morally upstanding online, even though they may not act on such principles in their real life. It analyzes online discussions that debate whether the “karma points” accrued by such status updates, tweets, and upvotes should be seen as purely fictitious and imaginary, or whether they have positive effects that could support and motivate ethical action.

Information Theory of the Soul

This chapter examines the similarities between the techno-fantasies promoted by the modern spiritualist movement and the claims made by contemporary scientists and engineers with regard to the uploading of human consciousness onto computers. It argues that these similarities help to explain why spiritualist concepts, such as the survival of the soul after death and the possibility of communication with disembodied spirits, appear so frequently in contemporary science fiction narratives, which often depict the survival of human personalities as virtual subjects in cyberspace. Instead of celebrating these spiritual possibilities, however, science fiction narratives often represent simulated experience as a loss of true identity and agency, which more closely resembles the arguments made by the opponents of spiritualism in the nineteenth century. Spiritualist concepts thus remain relevant today because they continue to serve as a common language for representing and critiquing the effects of new information technologies.

Amazon Can Read Your Mind

The chapter interrogates how notions and concepts of occult and supernatural meanings are applied to describing and discussing digital media, focusing on the case of applications of notions of mindreading to computer algorithms. It examines the concept of mindreading as a keyword whose definition and meaning wavered between different forms of knowledge, from parapsychology to cybernetics and computer science. Popularized by parapsychology, the concept of mindreading has been employed to describe algorithms that recognize feelings and mental states of humans, or that anticipate the behavior of users and consumers, providing them with tailored offers and services. Excavating the media archaeology of “mindreading computers” helps provides a viewpoint into the ways notions and narratives related to the supernatural enter the cultural imaginary of digital media and technologies.