I wanted to try a slightly different angle with this post and create a call-out for discussion surrounding a particular topic: does social media negatively impact spirituality?
I wanted to try a slightly different angle with this post and create a call-out for discussion surrounding a particular topic: does social media negatively impact spirituality?
It’s a real cliché these days – ethics. Ever since the financial crisis, businesses and top-level management have been throwing around the word (and others such as values, integrity, sustainability) like rice at a wedding. All of a sudden, everybody’s got a conscience.
There was a very exciting announcement recently that synthetic life had been created in a laboratory through the wonderful applications of scientific advancement. Rather than my usual commentary on the ethics of this situation, I thought I would try something different and provide a spiritual parable of sorts about synthetic life. I hope that you enjoy it.
You could call Philip K Dick one of the main reasons why this blog even exists; not only because he is my most beloved author, but also due to the fact that his thoughts about technology and social progress were so ahead of their time that the level of foreshadowing they present is just remarkable. Tonight I was granted the wonderful opportunity to see a ’sneak preview’ screening of the most recent adaptation of a Philip K Dick novel, Radio Free Albemuth, at the Sci-Fi London film festival.
With today’s post I’m going to explore a common issue in the realm of futurist thought, and one that has been regularly examined in science-fiction literature and film over the past fifty years or so: sentient androids. Are they possible? What would it mean if they were? And how is it going to impact our own sense of identity? More acutely, I’m also going to ask whether or not a belief in metaphysical reality will impact our reaction to such advancement.
With the absolutely overwhelming boom of various forms of social media it has often been said that we now know our friends more than ever. You know how they feel when they wake up, who they went out with on the weekend (and who they got particularly close to…), and the various interests and associates that you may never have otherwise realised you had in common. But there is an elephant in the room here, and that is that we are all crafting our digital identities (to a greater or lesser extent) to portray the us that we want people to see.
With today’s post I want to embark a bit more upon this new direction that I spoke about last week, a direction that was going to be infused with more of a spiritual understanding and voice in an attempt to move away from the purely neutral ‘Wikipedia’ tone that some of my news posts were guilty of. What I’ve picked as a topic to start this new tone is one that has always interested me and is becoming increasingly more important and central to modern life in the developed world: secular spirituality.
It’s always interesting looking back at work that you have done, trying to gauge whether or not it should be considered successful or worth continuing with. Recently I’ve been going through this process with Future Conscience, wondering just how it will continue into the future and whether or not any changes should be made to the writing style and content.
Muhammad Tahir ul-Qadri, a prominent Islamic leader is going to issue an incredibly detailed fatwa tomorrow in London that denounces terrorism and suicide bombing in the name of Islam.
So we’ve come to the final installment in my ‘10 sectors to watch’ series, and I can definitely say that it’s been difficult cutting down the list to just ten. I’m going to finish today with two sectors that both represent social changes rather than merely technological ones.