God and the Chip: Religion and the Culture of Technology

A.J. Pell is rector of Christ Church in Hope, B.C., and a lecturer in
the Anglican Studies Programme at Regent College in Vancouver.

The author of this compelling volume, a professor of the sociology of
religion, regards society’s treatment of technology, particularly the
computer, as a form of “technological mysticism” that has achieved
the status of an “implicit religion.”

The book is divided into two parts. The first part, “A Critique of
Technological Mysticism,” consists of five chapters that examine how
we use and talk about technology, and how our attitudes and actions
relating to technology strongly recall religious practices and
structures. Stahl’s research into reporting on computers in Time
magazine in the years 1979–88 reveals a journalistic boosterism that
is akin to religious fervor. Our faith in technology is such that it is
seen as a magical solution to all our problems; it is a faith, Stahl
asserts, that invariably disappoints.

The second part, “Redemption Technology,” begins promisingly with a
chapter on the technology-related writings of George Grant, Frederick
Ferre, and Ursula Franklin. Based on these writings, Stahl develops a
set of six principles that provide “a guide for the cultural aspects
of a redemptive technology practice”: search for the common good,
commitment to justice, creativity, respect for limits, reciprocity, and
holism. The final chapter, which ends with “an invitation to talk,”
seems anticlimactic.

Despite the weak ending, God and the Chip is an impressive study of how
technology has come to be deified (with Bill Gates et al. serving as its
high priests).