Thesis Proposal
DMST 4850
Digital Divine: Exploring spirituality in an expanding infoverse
Conceptual Foundation
What is God, where can I find it, and why am I here? These are all questions that plague the minds and souls of humans throughout recorded history. I’m not talking about the dogmatic search for a church or the religious containment of belief and behavior. This is more about the collective tendency for humans to seek out and establish a relationship with a higher power or entity. Whether for salvation or enlightenment, the quest crosses geographical, racial, and economic boundaries and in the age of computers, Internet and mobile forms of digital media, the expansion of passageways to the divine has increased creating new ways to worship and made accessible a personal and individual digital connection with God no matter what religion encompasses the believer.
The term infoverse is both an idea of a universe of information as established by Argy Krikelis from Brunel University and new technology for liquid browsing developed by Carsten Waldeck from Darmstadt University for Media System Design. Conceptually, these two systems of thought, one spawned from the other, support the framework for my concept of Digital Divine.
Digital Divine is the term I use to define the search for god in the digital age. It is derived from the term digital divide meaning the gap between those with digital technologies and those without. In the context of my thesis, this gap is the same between humans and the divine and the closing of the divide is opening access to the divine. My understanding of what it is comes from an eclectic and somewhat eccentric collection of media and studies ranging from theological and philosophical scholarship to metaphysics, quantum theory and astrophysics. I find the electromagnetic spectrum and all it encompasses fascinating and find myself drawn toward the idea of manipulating visible and audible vibrations to enhance the spiritual experience. The possibilities of this as a reciprocal enterprise with a potential for commercial use and possible misuse is a small piece of the larger picture I would like to paint including a brief history of spirituality and practice, current trends for the digital connection to spirituality and future projections for where we may be heading both from the stand point of technology and the quest for connectedness to the greater whole.
Within the frame of historical reference I will examine various world practices and beliefs including the major monotheistic religions, Aristotle’s Metaphysics and how they relate to each other and translate into the idea of Digital Divine.
As I explore current trends and digital connectivity, I will look at the idea of divine experiences through mobile technologies including fun and games like City of Heroes and City of Villains, creation including mobile music, literature and other forms of digital art like video pod casts. I will also address the influx of commercial enterprises capitalizing on the desire for spiritual connection and anonymous worship via the Internet. I will also contemplate the closing of the digital divide due to mobile technologies making Internet contact more affordable to a broader audience and how this in turn creates spiritual connectedness. Example: Beliefnet.com’s daily horoscope via cell phone.
Under future projections I will look at brain function and states of consciousness in relation to spirituality, the possibilities of brainwave manipulation and the divine connection using current advancements in technologies like electroencephalography, radio telescopes, binaural beats, and other studies by institutions like Harvard University and The Monroe Institute.
In Jennifer Cobb’s CyberGrace: The Search for God in the Digital World, the link between god’s creation of us and our creation of machines like computers are one in the same and thus the connection between cyberspace and God are inherent.
"Living a life informed by the sacred amid a technological world poses our
greatest spiritual challenge. As we begin to actively engage this challenge, we
often come to believe that we must make a choice — spirit or machines. But as
computers such as Deep Blue have shown us, distinctions such as this are
becoming increasingly difficult to make. Nature has spawned us. We have spawned
machines. Any line drawn between these realms quickly becomes arbitrary, a
realization that seems to generate a great deal of confusion and fear. But this
does not have to be the case. As we reach into the future in search of the
age-old spiritual values of truth, beauty, goodness, and love, cyberspace can be
a powerful ally. Through the medium of computation, our spiritual experience can
be extended in profound ways. We can choose to embrace our cohabitation with
computers as a moment of vast evolutionary potential, guided by sacred
experience and ethical reflection."
Project Goals
Establish a framework within contemporary study to define and justify the idea of Digital Divine.
Articulate the potentials of digital media as a spiritual outlet and/or conduit for greater understanding.
Refine my personal perception of spirituality in the context of digital media.
Determine the essence of a spiritual experience.
Create a digital audio/visual project to represent the theory behind my thesis.
Outline/Timeline
Contact the department of Neuroscience at DU about options for audio/visual output via biological interface by end of October 2007.
Contact advisor for guidance by mid October 2007
Organize source materials into past, present and future by end of October 2007
Ready rough draft of proposal by November 2007 for feedback.
Implement feedback and refine sources by December 2007
Select committee by January 2008
Thesis Proposal submitted by January 2008
Work on Thesis and project January thru April 2008
Refine and submit Thesis and project May 2008
Abstract
The search for God in the digital age is as liquid as the Infoverse. The proliferation of mobile media and digital connectivity is expanding our understanding and access to spiritual experience through mobile music, literature and anonymous worship. This expanded spirituality delivered in waves of digital media circumvents dogmatic constructs and induces a meditative transcendence into various states of consciousness. Through exploration of theory and established technology, I hope to focus my own understanding of spirituality and gain insights into the human desire for divine connection. Using established conceptual framework and audio/visual representation of this connection, I will corral the current ideas of spirituality and establish a foundation for the Digital Divine.
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