Phones are no more worshipped in a religious sense than printed Bibles were worshipped in Gutenberg’s era. They are technological vectors for idea transfer that facilitate ideologies/worldviews/religions, not those things themselves. Being distracted by your phone doesn’t come with an entire metaphysical picture about the nature of life and death, proper social roles, or most of the other things religious systems typically come with.
Also - Durkheim is name dropped here, with the incorrect tense (he doesn’t argue, he argued, as he’s been dead for a long time.)
https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/510247/use-of-pr...
https://style.mla.org/literary-present-tense/
Though I agree that the jargon use of "religion" here is misleading. It is how a sociologist might understand the term, and drawing the connection can lead to some insight, to to say it is religion outside of that academic context sheds no light. It is absolutely not "literally worship" in the etymological sense of "declaring something to be worthy".
This phrase is so common it's practically correct. Search for "Plato argues" online for example.
In fact, that's how language works. Whatever emerges from organic use is correct language. We the people decide what proper English is, collectively, not a prestigious university or renowned scholar or classic textbook.
Probably an unnecessary quibble to have, and I shouldn’t have included it.
Sometimes, putting long words together doesn't make you right about a topic that you really want to fancy talk about.
This phrase, nor the key words "obsessed" or "irrational", does not appear in the text.
> Being distracted by your phone doesn’t come with an entire metaphysical picture about the nature of life and death, proper social roles, or most of the other things religious systems typically come with.
I would argue that, for most people under 40 and quite a lot of people over, if they have questions about those things, they're going to mediate them through the phone. Whether that's from philosophy youtubers, social media, or asking chatgpt.
Phone use doesn't feel very spiritual, but what do people do on social media? Moralizing. Preaching. Dogma.
Consider the history of "random+interpretation" fortune telling methods, like Tarot and I Ching. For the sorts of questions you might have asked your fortune, people are now asking LLMs. And treating the answer with the same kind of authoritiveness.
The section about "algorithm" reminds me of Carl Sagan's phrase "the demon-haunted world". Algorithmic social media is extremely important, but it's not understandable by the public (because the workings are confidential!). So superstition creeps in. This is where things like "unalive" come from: people are avoiding saying "death" or related words because "the algorithm" will bring them bad luck (bans or shadow bans).
Another word to bring in: idol. And idolatry.
People have been moralising, preaching, dogmatists in the Letters to the Editor since whenever "Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells" was coined — I don't think that's enough to have made The Daily Mail or The Sunday Times into an idol, nor the newspaper preference into a denomination (even if there's that quote from Yes Minister).
But we are busy making Golems and Húsvættir, and you are right that superstition still plagues us.
I wonder how much academic familiarity one really needs to recognise the rather obvious vernacular effects. I've studied religion and mass communication effects somewhat as well as being a practising Christian, and as I see it the word "religion" commonly applies to the orthodoxy and its big, visible impacts that are social and psychological, rather than the personal, spiritual realm of gnostic metaphysical faith.
The OP seems right in the sense that the SV technology cargo cult has all the bad mind-narrowing sides of orthodoxy and none of the good. Observe; suspension of critical thinking, credulity, superstition, arcane symbolism, charismatic leaders, secret knowledge, obsessive rituals and tics, insularity, smug self-righteous and strident proselytising, attacking and denigrating "unbelievers", defensiveness, fear of exclusion, dehumanisation of others, mass hysteria....
Digital tech (smartphones plus corporate social media), as presently configured, presses all the same buttons for psychological and societal harm that cults have for millennia. Moreover, it so pitifully fails to offer any positive social benefits, like a sense of real community, shared values, comfort and stability, or certainty. Instead it overlays a shallow and unreal facsimile of those things. "Idolatry" is probably a great way to frame it.
Like historical religions it spawns a super-wealthy elite who exploit the confused masses. It has a small cadre of extremely vocal "true believers", disciples and acolytes, who cajole and bully along the enormous middle mass who are actually ambivalent "pretenders", technological agnostics who mostly can't be bothered to argue. They go along to get along, to avoid feeling persecuted ("left behind" - the modern equivalent of Hell).
Real religions may span thousands of years and have subtantial continuity, but cult-tech presents a flimsy facade of being "deep, essential, enduring and universal". In reality, any thoughtful computer scientist can tell you, it's a heterogeneous assemblage of the arbitrary or, as Graeber observed, a world we can "remake in any way we choose".
Working in cybersecurity, carefully observing genuine attitudes in peoples' unguarded moments - in contrast to their "official/professional" positions - makes me sure that were the entire telecommunications network of the planet to explode tomorrow, other than for food riots as payment and supply chains adjust, most people would have one bad week, shrug, and get on with the next thing. That's to say "it's all a game" but one that we're all very, very invested in trying to preserve... to the extent we're prepared to terrorise others into sharing our worldview to keep it so. Isn't that a sure hallmark of a religion?
"Each scroll becomes a kind of prayer, submitting to the whims of an omniscient entity for the promise of reward." relates to the link between religion and dopamine/epinephrine.
https://www.wired.com/story/mormons-experience-religion-like...
One can almost link the rise of the internet religion with the demise of the traditional religions.
Yes, I'm afraid that some of the techbro's obsessions are indistinguishable from religious worship. Walks like a duck, talks like a duck etc.
Phones are worshipped in the sense that many people are lost or will panic if they had to do without them for an extended period of time. Using worshipped evokes an image that is apt.
You can’t rely on the gravity of the word religious while also disregarding it.
And beyond that, the author explicitly made the reference to religion as a concept and to religious sociology by bringing up Durkheim. He made the analogy to actual religion.
Well, yes, and as a religious person, I would suggest that the metaphor is more accurate than you think.
To the pagans, a god is a supernatural force that demands worship, sacrifice, attention, effort, appeasement. To a Christian, a false idol is something that steals from the worship and sacrifice that is due to the One True God.
You can spot a modern American pagan by the deference and attention they give to their false idols. What sort of priority is ceded to our devices that detracts from truly transcendent and holy things in life? When I approach my church I've developed a ritual for taming and shutting down my phone -- yes, a ritual to put it in its place! But most days, the devices and the Internet are taking charge and telling us what we want and what we can do with ourselves.
False worship and pagan gods are slavery and bondage for us. The liberation from Egypt is a parable for today. If we cannot break free from our devices and scrolling the Internet, then Pharaoh will take away the straw and make us forage for ourselves. Our labors and the pains of bondage will increase.
Perhaps irreligious people are sensitive and defensive when others suggest that they may indeed be religious worshippers of false idols. This is an ancient phenomenon that, it is felt by the irreligious, belongs to the realm of anthropology and archaeology. Religious worship of a graven image -- it can't possibly be something done by a guy on his phone on the street corner! But it is. I assure you, it is real.
It is possible to engage the modern world without being trapped in this pagan worship, but it is not necessarily easy.
“The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist” — Charles Baudelaire
Just want to point out that abuse of other religions, and using “pagans” as a disparaging term, continues to be done casually in the Christian-influenced sphere, basically legitimizing the history of colonialism and the wiping out of other traditions. Keep it to yourself man! In other contexts terms like “casual racism” and “hate speech” would apply. As another religious person, I can assure you that no, the GP is right and the analogy with religion is weak; being obsessed with phones is not in itself like a “pagan” religion either, which too is about the “truly transcendent and holy things in life” (just with less of a binary distinction between the sacred and the mundane, so that one can go about one's daily life while staying in touch with what's truly valuable, which again is the opposite of the stated effect of "scrolling").
https://www.anthropic.com/research/tracing-thoughts-language...
anthropic is doing great work, that understanding models blog post was really ground breaking.
Agree to disagree. Regardless I don't think their points are about religion. It seems like they're just complaining about memic and ritualistic behavior that happens on phones. Using the religion label feels more meant for click bait than as a fitting metaphor.
Which is how many people approach technology, and virtually all of us approach LLMs.
We just shouldn’t try to apply these gods outside their wheelhouses.
I often wonder whether the earliest religious leaders (think Egyptian pharaoh era), knew what they were doing, and figured that telling people why tombs needed to be built was much better than building them, so they got to the right side of the table.
Today, I wonder if that's what is really going on with business leaders: they know it's all crap, but if they say that, there is a risk they're going back to the open plan office with the rest of the schmucks.
Ah; this looks relevant to a topic I met through Kegan's model of adult development. Apparently around 66% [0] of the population doesn't think in a way where "retaining [their] individuality" is even seen as possible, let alone desirable. They'd probably equate it to teenage impulsiveness.
It explains a lot of politics, practical dealings and provides a very neat model for understanding what religions are actually doing. This sort of call to action from the article is fundamentally misguided as general advice because it misses that people are socially designed to just follow that crowd in a way that can be quite astonishing. Their strategy is, nearly explicitly, to be manipulated by whatever actors rise to the top of the heap. Good, bad or other, they won't (in a practical sense can't) judge.
[0] https://brucesreflections.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Keg...
Basically almost always your frontier is also their frontier, the people you are trying to replace. You aren't acting on your own, for example in the US the western expansion depended heavily on connection to sophisticated trade networks, financial technology, and straightforward military support. Individual action is only one small part of what makes this process work, but is the part most highlighted after the fact by the winning side.
Just call it a popularization of the esoteric. Like what happens to science, medicine, auto-repair...
A strange subject, dumbed down and framed in metaphor for the uninitiated. Turned unto a big mess. It happens all the time.
Or even just ask them to change “denominations” from an ICE car to an electric car.
After, I'm not addicted to my house or my air conditioner, or my refrigerator. But I definitely don't want to live without them
