The Digital FlaneurReligion in an Information Saturated Marketplace

Information Saturation: A Moving Target

Volumn Metrics: - from emergence of literacy to 2003 5 exabytes (5 followed

by 18 zeros)

- in 2015, 5 exabytes every two days

- the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope in Chile (a single project): when it comes online it will collect 15 terabytes per night of operation

“The World’s Most Advanced Digital Camera”

Storage Capacity Metrics- 1986 (dawn of public awareness of the internet) total

storage of 2.6 exabytes

- 2000 (hot technology at the time? CDs) total storage of 54.5 exabytes

- 2007 (hot technology of the time? First Iphone) total storage 295 exabytes

- 2015 (hot technology of the time? Cloud Computing) No one is entirely sure

Server Farms

Traffic or Throughput Metrics- in 1986 the web mediated 432 exabytes

- in 1983 the web mediates 715 exabytes

- in 2007 the web explodes to 1.2 zettabytes

- in 2015 again exceeds our capacity to measure

(numbers calculated from one-directional data transfers)

American Religious Landscape in Full Churn

Since the agricultural revolution and the formation of the Neolithic village, religion has depended upon localized data curation, canalization, selective exposure, and segregation. In other words, it depended in large part on an informational

scarcity market

Geographical Isolation as an Information Control System

The Big Three of Secularization

1. Educational attainment (exposure)

2. Income

3. Internet usage

All three of these factors are closely associated since increases in one are strongly correlated with the presence of the other two.

Youth and Expansion of Secular Domains

Silent Majority (1928-1945) 11% are “nones”Baby Boomers (1946-1964) 17% are “nones”Gen X (1965-1980) 23% are “nones”Older Millennials (1980-1989) 34% are “nones”Young millennials (1990-1996) 36% are “nones”

Correlations but not Causations to Date

Pew Research Institute is the principal agency tracking both Internet Usage and Changes in the Religious Landscape. Lee Rainie, Director of the Internet Project makes the correlation of internet usage and disaffiliation explicit. He plans a data collection initiative. (2014)

One study published in MIT’s arXiv (Downey, 2014), uses data from General Social Survey and finds that internet usage accounts for 20% of religious disaffiliation.

Self-Reports of Religious Attitudes of the Nones

Disaffiliation is only one measure of secularity. Among the disaffiliated a 2012 survey found that 18% still thought of themselves as religious and 37% preferred spiritual but not religious label.

55% of all disaffiliated are neither hostile nor indifferent to religion. So what are they?

The Digital Flaneur of Cultural Memes

19th century gentleman of leisure (chiefly a French trope) who idled away the days wandering the streets of urban landscapes.

Among networked individuals who have feasted as a birth right of a data saturated world, institutional structures of authority (performance of cultural policing) lose credibility. Informational isolation cannot be sustained.

Are you going to investigate mylifestyle and its pleasures,or what?

But a digital flaneur of religion?

Does religious information allow for playful dabbling?

Is it a playful handling, but “a serious form of play”?

Is it an epistemologically superior position? A sign of post-industrial decadence in liberal democracies? Or is it both?

Should we worry shallowness, cultural dilettantism?

Only New Age Type Bricolage?

Pedagogical Opportunities

Can we imagine a world religions survey text (insert discipline - specific survey material) where each unit is a VR running on an Oculus Rift?

Gamify the learning objectives with puzzles, interviews, embedded texts, whatever is appropriate to engaged learning. Attend to the utility for assessment demands.

Gaming levels with exit tests before the student can level up.

Embed immersive VR sims as part of this text

Launch Interface for Music History and Appreciation

Audience Awareness

Comprehend student intelligences and harness those aptitudes for academic work

No need for embattled humanities diatribes. Rather, a display of the strengths of humanities the class of digital flaneurs.

Encourages students who straddle the boundaries of humanities and digital technology (the so-called “Creatives”)

Avoid the Big No-No

Humanities advocates in particular are prone to generate charges of colonization of their disciplines.

- extreme extrapolation exercises designed mostly to create critical distance and space to defend uniqueness claims

- unique content and competencies are obvious in all disciplines and to make that point there is no real need revert to end-times prophecies or stale false dichotmies