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Technology has always brought us twin gifts of delight
and fear: magical new powers inspire joy and exploration, but send us
further into the unknown to shoulder risk and unease. Today our skills
are powerful and mysterious: Information flows great distances, objects
move about under remote control or with a will of their own. Environments
are saturated by invisible data; encoded intelligence swarms around us,
carrying the story of our collective fate at the speed of light through
walls and across the depths of space. Increasingly, as we move our lives
online, large portions of our emotional universe have lost corporeal form.
Meanwhile virtual spaces, robotic pets and digital agents seek to cross
the uncanny valley and become part of our everyday experience. What does
this mean? Does this communion with the invisible devalue the spiritual
or encourage magical thinking? Does it represent the coming together of
a whole or an increasing divide? Do ghosts exist as part of the electromagnetic
spectrum? What of Demons or Angels?
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