Has Big Tech Turned into a Religion?

At Harvard University’s commencement ceremony this year, humanities professor Greg Epstein gave a non-religious benediction.

“Breathe deeply, not because you’ve earned it,” Epstein said. “You never have to catch your breath. You deserve that because you are human.”

Epstein’s book, Tech Agnostic: How Technology Became the World’s Most Powerful Religion, and Why It So Much Needs Change? (MIT Press, October 2024) makes a strong case for our collective commitment to this belief.

The (public) religion of technology

Technology is not the first world institution to be labeled as a religious practice with all its rituals and traditions. In 1967, theologian Robert N. Bellah coined the term “American public religion” in an article that stated, “there is a well-organized and well-organized American public religion alongside the churches. .”

When I tried to argue that there is a “Silicon Valley Public Religion” in graduate school, I looked for a book like Epstein’s for my research. Turns out he was still working on it, and it came out two years too late for me to cite in my paper. Epstein’s book has been years in the making. His research on this topic goes back 20 years, and he has conducted over 100 interviews on this topic.

Epstein says: “It begins the year I arrived at Harvard as a new professor of humanities and a graduate student at Harvard Divinity School. “And that’s the same year that Mark Zuckerberg left Harvard for Silicon Valley to run Facebook full-time and grow it into the behemoth it has become.”

Epstein realized that technology had become a world religion at the same time he was thinking about how to create a world society that was secular in nature.

Epstein says: “I realized that it had already been done.” “I started to think about the mission and vision of organizations like Facebook, which is now Meta. And realizing that the event was not only winning my congregational project, but it was more than religion in summary.”

A different approach to religious practice with robots

Anna Puzio, Ph.D., is a faculty member in the departments of Behavior, Management and Social Sciences and Philosophy at the University of Twente. His research focuses on the anthropology and ethics of technology, and one of his academic interests is robotics.

Puzio says there are about 20 religious bots around the world, and their practice is most common in atheistic religions. They are different from social robots, which are designed to interact with people (although you can add religious functions to some social robots, such as the Pepper robot, which is often used to support Buddhist funerals in Japan). But there are a few experts focusing on the role of religion in robots.

Puzio says: “All the literature that we have about religious robots is speculative, like thinking about robot souls. “I wanted to talk to people and ask them if they want to have religious robots. First, explain what they are, what they want and what ethical standards should be there.”

Puzio remembers when he brought the robot to the participants and how people found it fun and beautiful.

Puzio says: “There was also a child at this meeting, and the child really liked the idea that the robot could be part of their religious education. “The child had the idea that the robot could show the children how to kneel or pray because the robot could also be funny and entertaining.”

Religious practices of technology workers

It’s debatable, but there are aspects of the way we interact with our technology that reflect religious practices and traditions. A 2023 survey conducted by Reviews.org reports that Americans check their phones 144 times a day.

In his book 2022, The Work Prayer Code: When Work Becomes Religion in Silicon Valley, UC Berkeley sociologist Carolyn Chen, Ph.D., argues that the act of working itself has become a religion in Silicon Valley.

There is definitely a culture of working yourself to the death to balance your creativity and dedication to developing your product. Elon Musk has bragged about sleeping on Tesla’s floor and reportedly told Twitter employees to sleep in the office, going so far as to install bedrooms in the company’s San Francisco headquarters.

It’s often said that Google offices encourage innovation by connecting work and play, but there may be more to it than that. When my father worked at Google, my mother used to smile wryly and say, “They make the office a nice place to be so you stay there longer.”

Google itself has its own celebrations and teachings, from their slogan “don’t be evil” to the Noogler hats they send to their new hires as a kind of baptism, or perhaps, election.

Selected technical personnel

When we think about the culture and practices of tech workers, we also need to think about the support system, which includes the people who deliver food to the office and the invisible “spirit workers” who train the AI ​​that produces what we love. a lot. Religion often takes the idea of ​​”chosen” or “chosen people,” which can apply to big technology as well.

Epstein is a rabbi, which often surprises people who think he is an atheist or an agnostic.

Epstein says: “I was chosen to be a rabbi in a Jewish religious organization called personal Judaism which shows from the beginning that the idea of ​​choosing is a kind of human invention. “In my work as a professor at Harvard and MIT, I see not only many students, but also an entire academic culture based on the idea that there is a kind of selection to be the kind of students who are experienced and who top talent at a place like Harvard or MIT.”

Perhaps Bellah, who called America “the city on a hill” would have argued that today’s Silicon Valley is this city. And often, even as we praise the meritocracy of dropouts like Mark Zuckerberg starting businesses like Facebook, it’s important to note that even though Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard, he still enjoyed the privileges that come with being there, even temporarily.

Changing the religion of technology

Epstein’s idea for a revolution in technological religion is to create a kind of agnosticism, as his book is aptly titled. Applying personal practice to technology can help us move away from worshiping technology and towards new ways to improve people’s lives. And he decided to call out experts like Meredith Broussard and Ruha Benjamin, who are working to challenge technology and make it more equitable.

“There are a lot of people in the world who practice a kind of agnosticism and tech humanism,” says Epstein. “This book is very much about the stories of people from disadvantaged backgrounds leading to what I hope will be a better technological future.”

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