Discovering the Invisible Internet : Methodological Aspects of Searching Religion on the Internet

Oliver Krüger discusses some empirical problems of Internet research in his contribution. Analysis of online discussion groups within the Wiccan and neopagan movement that refer to rituals indicates that new social and hierarchical structures also emerge within the ”online community”. Nonetheless, only subsequent interviews with users of those discussion forums could reveal some basic aspects of online communication and its social dimension. This gives rise to some further questions. How much can we tell about communication on religious Web sites? What are the limits of an immanent analysis of Web sites? What can we tell about social structures within online communities and about individual user preferences in a ritual discourse? How can we deal with the problem of identity of Internet users? What is empirically invisible for us? Acknowledging the limits of our conclusions on postmodern religion and religious people derived purely from online research, Krüger advocates combining online research with classical empirical fieldwork, such as quantitative surveys or qualitative interviews with users and Webmasters

Methods and Theory for Studying Religion on the Internet : Introduction to the Special Issue on Theory and Methodology

Introduction to the Special Issue on Theory and Methodology

Gaia, God, and the Internet - revisited. The History of Evolution and the Utopia of Community in Media Society

The question of religious content in the media has occupied many scholars studying the relationship between media and religion. However, the study of recent religious thought offers a promising perspective for the analysis of the cultural perceptions of various media technologies. After the Internet spread in the middle of the 1990s, a variety of religious or spiritual interpretations of the new medium emerged. The far- reaching ideas see the Internet as the first step of the realisation of a divine entity consisting of the collective human mind. In this vision, the emergence of the Internet is considered to be part of a teleological evolutionary model. Essential for the religious and evolutionary construction of the Internet is an incorporation of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s model of evolution – especially the idea of the noosphere, and its adoption in media theory by Marshall McLuhan. The connections of these ideas to James Lovelock’s Gaia theory illustrate the notion of the Internet as an organic entity. The article outlines the processes of the reception of religious and evolutionary ideas which led to the recent interpretations of the Internet as a divine sphere

The Suspension of Death. The Cryonic Utopia in the Context of the U.S. Funeral Culture

This article outlines the history of cryonics, starting with fictional novels and movies and the actual formation of the cryonic movement in the 1960s. Cryonics has been considered – by its advocates – to overcome religion by offering a technological way of immortality. Since cryonics never gained serious attention outside the United States it is promising to ask for the specific frame of American funeral culture as a condition for the emergence (and the limitations) of cryonics

The ‘Logic’ of Mediatization Theory in Religion:

The concept of mediatization was introduced to research on religion a decade ago by several scholars of communication: Hepp, Hjarvard and Sá Martino. The approach is controversial and has been debated in religious studies and beyond. This article critically analyses the core elements of mediatization theory in religion. These elements are the dating and measurement of mediatization, the secularization and the concept of ‘banal religion,’ the understanding of ‘religion’ and of ‘media,’ and the process of deterritorialization. This analysis questions the empirical evidence for and the theoretical consistency of the mediatization approach. Finally, some alternative research perspectives are presented

“The Singularity is near!” Visions of Artificial Intelligence in Posthumanism and Transhumanism

Over the past 20 years, the idea of singularity has become increasingly important to the technological visions of posthumanism and transhumanism. The article first introduces key posthumanist authors such as Marvin Minsky, Ray Kurzweil, Hans Moravec, and Frank Tipler. In the following, the concept of singularity is reviewed from a cultural studies perspective, first with regard to the cosmological singularity and then to the technological singularity. According to posthumanist thinkers the singularity is marked by the emergence of a superhuman computer intelligence that will solve all of humanity’s problems. At the same time, it heralds the end of the human era. Most authors refer to the British mathematician Irving John Good’s 1965 essay Speculations Concerning the First Ultraintelligent Machine as the originator of the idea of superintelligence. Individual elements of the singularity idea such as the impenetrable event horizon, the frontier and the ongoing acceleration of progress are contextualized historically and culturally

„Ritual” und „Agency” : Legitimation und Reflexivität ritueller Handlungsmacht

Der Begriff „Agency“ bezeichnet ein sozialtheoretisches Konzept, das einen paradigmatischen Wechsel von strukturfunktionalistischen zu praxistheoretischen Erklärungsmodellen eingeleitet hat. Es geht Ritualforschern vermehrt um die Frage, inwiefern in den beschriebenen Ritualdiskursen und Ritualpraktiken, unterschiedliche Konzepte von Handlungsmacht und Subjektivität zum Vorschein kommen. Ausgehend von Bourdieus Habitus-Begriff wird beispielhaft ein historischer Aushandlungsprozess von Agency und ihrer Legitimation im antiken Griechenland vorgestellt. Im anschließenden Teilkapitel geht es um eine Typisierung ritueller Agency, während sich der letzte Teil mit Bezug auf Giddens Agency-Begriff dem Thema Reflexivität und Ritual widmet