"The network is the church" is the motto of the Next Scribe, an organization in New Mexico that conducts the research and development to assess and develop the long term potential of ubiquitous personal digital networks to enrich human relationships and spiritual community. The aim is to develop the spiritual potential of social digital networks. From what I could gather, they advocate for making digital media the instrument of spirituality (as explained by Genevieve Bell from intel in a report for the IFTF).
NextScribe's mission to develop the Network Centric Church began in 1994. NextScribe brings to this task a multidisciplinary expertise that is unique in the world:
- Spiritual Experience: A mission born in the purely contemplative monastic experience of the desert — informed by a 1,500 year tradition of community and spiritual life — that has been further extended by work with international, multi-denominational expressions of spiritual life and community;
- Technological Expertise: Long term, ongoing development of the multiple components of the Network Centric Church, including:
- systems research and architecture
- web and database design and programming
- internet-based collaborative systems
- IM system design and programming
- wireless device integration
- digital privacy and security
- human/computer interaction research and design;
- Focus: a singular, long-term focus on developing technology to serve the spiritual life and community.
Why do I blog this? first because connection between technology and religion is kind of odd (especially for westerners where the catholic religion is quite conservative, especially with means of communication means that already fostered some problems for them, think about gutenberg and the reform). Second because I find this curious, especially when it's about AI and religion!