Panel Statement

Panel: Revolution of the Public Sphere

Research on the historical relation of religion and technology in a cultural studies approach. Technology as eschatology (or the eschatology of technology) and the millenarian redemption of humanity. A critical investigation of inherent and archaic metaphors, such as the return from the suburbs to Paradise, the recovering of humankind’s lost divinity, the exercising of god-like knowledge and powers, the investing of technological acceleration with spiritual significance. The necessity for the rigorous re-examination of infatuation with unregulated technological advance and disdainful disregard for, even depraved indifference to, mortality. With reference to David T. Noble’s ‘The Religion of Technology: the divinity of Man and the spirit of invention’ (Knopf, N.Y, 1997).

On questions of ‘the religious sense’ and persons of vision who precipitate, produce the crises in dimension, in dimensions of meaning.

• Norma Wagner (Canada), Concordia University, Montreal.