Cyber Zen

Cyber Zen PDF Author: Gregory Price Grieve
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317293258
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
Cyber Zen ethnographically explores Buddhist practices in the online virtual world of Second Life. Does typing at a keyboard and moving avatars around the screen, however, count as real Buddhism? If authentic practices must mimic the actual world, then Second Life Buddhism does not. In fact, a critical investigation reveals that online Buddhist practices have at best only a family resemblance to canonical Asian traditions and owe much of their methods to the late twentieth-century field of cybernetics. If, however, they are judged existentially, by how they enable users to respond to the suffering generated by living in a highly mediated consumer society, then Second Life Buddhism consists of authentic spiritual practices. Cyber Zen explores how Second Life Buddhist enthusiasts form communities, identities, locations, and practices that are both products of and authentic responses to contemporary Network Consumer Society. Gregory Price Grieve illustrates that to some extent all religion has always been virtual and gives a glimpse of possible future alternative forms of religion.

Cyber Zen

Cyber Zen PDF Author: Gregory Price Grieve
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317293258
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
Cyber Zen ethnographically explores Buddhist practices in the online virtual world of Second Life. Does typing at a keyboard and moving avatars around the screen, however, count as real Buddhism? If authentic practices must mimic the actual world, then Second Life Buddhism does not. In fact, a critical investigation reveals that online Buddhist practices have at best only a family resemblance to canonical Asian traditions and owe much of their methods to the late twentieth-century field of cybernetics. If, however, they are judged existentially, by how they enable users to respond to the suffering generated by living in a highly mediated consumer society, then Second Life Buddhism consists of authentic spiritual practices. Cyber Zen explores how Second Life Buddhist enthusiasts form communities, identities, locations, and practices that are both products of and authentic responses to contemporary Network Consumer Society. Gregory Price Grieve illustrates that to some extent all religion has always been virtual and gives a glimpse of possible future alternative forms of religion.

Cyber Worship in Multifaith Perspectives

Cyber Worship in Multifaith Perspectives PDF Author: Mohamed Taher
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 9780810852570
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 348

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Book Description
Cyber Worship in Multifaith Perspectives, as is implied by its name, explores worship (i.e., Prayer, Praise, Scripture, Sacrament, Rituals, Confessions, Eucharist, Rites, Pilgrimages, Reflection, Contemplation, etc.) on the Internet. It is not an 'everything you need to know' guide about the subjects of faith and belief, religions-online, religions on the Net, or religions in cyberspace. Rather, it is a book about religious and spiritual experience under the rubric, cyber worship, which is the variety of ways religious devotion is performed and carried out on the Internet. The term 'Cyber Worship' is a catchall phrase, which includes variants such as online worship, virtual worship, electronic prayer, cyber puja, cyber synagogue, and so on. Dr. Mohamed Taher has thus assembled a quick reference for two groups: those communities that are involved in Cyber Worship and business Webs that collaborate in sustaining wired environments. As such, this book provides an interesting and current perspective on a practice that will continue to grow in the future.

Virtually Sacred

Virtually Sacred PDF Author: Robert M. Geraci
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199344698
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
Robert Geraci argues that virtual worlds and video games have become a locus for the satisfaction of religious needs, providing many users with communities, a meaningful experience of history and human activity, and a sense of transcendence.

Cyberspace Odyssey

Cyberspace Odyssey PDF Author: Jos de Mul
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443821934
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 355

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Book Description
The emergence of the hominids, more than five million years ago, marked the start of the human odyssey through space and time. This book deals with the last stage of this fascinating journey: the exploration of cyberspace and cybertime. Through the rapid global implementation of information and communication technologies, a new realm for human experience and imagination has been disclosed. Reversely, these postgeographical and posthistorical technologies have started to colonize our bodies and minds. Taking Homer’s Odyssey and Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey as his starting point, the author investigates the ‘informatization of the worldview’, focusing on its implications for our culture–arts, religion, and science–and, ultimately, our form of life. Moving across a wide range of disciplines, varying from philosophical anthropology and palaeontology to information theory, and from astrophysics to literary, film and new media studies, the author discusses our ‘cyberspace odyssey’ from a reflective position beyond euphoria and nostalgia. His analysis is as profound as nuanced and deals with issues that will be high on the agenda for many decades to come. In 2003 a Dutch Edition of Cyberspace Odyssey received the Socrates Prize for the best philosophy book published in Dutch.

The Sacred Gaze

The Sacred Gaze PDF Author: Susan Pitchford
Publisher: Liturgical Press
ISBN: 0814635687
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
Eight hundred years ago, Clare of Assisi advised a correspondent to gaze into the mirror of the crucified Christ and study her own face within it. A hundred years ago, sociologist Charles Horton Cooley said we can know our self only as it is reflected to us by others. Contemplation is the choice to find our reflection in the divine Mirror. In The Sacred Gaze, Susan Pitchford explores how a false self is created by distortions in the mirrors around us. Drawing from the mystical and sociological traditions, and with practical suggestions for how to begin, Pitchford shows how gazing into the face of Christ can reveal to us who we really are. When the true self is known, and known as God s beloved, the way is opened to radical freedom and joy.

The Soul of Cyberspace

The Soul of Cyberspace PDF Author: Jeffrey P. Zaleski
Publisher: Harper San Francisco
ISBN:
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
In a pioneering journey to faith's new frontier--cyberspace, where traditional religions are reinvented and new ones are created--the acclaimed coauthor of "Transformations: Awakening to the Sacred in Ourselves" charts technology's radical impact on the ways in which the world prays, worships, preaches, and believes.

The Changing World Religion Map

The Changing World Religion Map PDF Author: Stanley D. Brunn
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 940179376X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 3858

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Book Description
This extensive work explores the changing world of religions, faiths and practices. It discusses a broad range of issues and phenomena that are related to religion, including nature, ethics, secularization, gender and identity. Broadening the context, it studies the interrelation between religion and other fields, including education, business, economics and law. The book presents a vast array of examples to illustrate the changes that have taken place and have led to a new world map of religions. Beginning with an introduction of the concept of the “changing world religion map”, the book first focuses on nature, ethics and the environment. It examines humankind’s eternal search for the sacred, and discusses the emergence of “green” religion as a theme that cuts across many faiths. Next, the book turns to the theme of the pilgrimage, illustrated by many examples from all parts of the world. In its discussion of the interrelation between religion and education, it looks at the role of missionary movements. It explains the relationship between religion, business, economics and law by means of a discussion of legal and moral frameworks, and the financial and business issues of religious organizations. The next part of the book explores the many “new faces” that are part of the religious landscape and culture of the Global North (Europe, Russia, Australia and New Zealand, the U.S. and Canada) and the Global South (Latin America, Africa and Asia). It does so by looking at specific population movements, diasporas, and the impact of globalization. The volume next turns to secularization as both a phenomenon occurring in the Global religious North, and as an emerging and distinguishing feature in the metropolitan, cosmopolitan and gateway cities and regions in the Global South. The final part of the book explores the changing world of religion in regards to gender and identity issues, the political/religious nexus, and the new worlds associated with the virtual technologies and visual media.

Mapping Cyberspace

Mapping Cyberspace PDF Author: Martin Dodge
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113463899X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
Mapping Cyberspace is a ground-breaking geographic exploration and critical reading of cyberspace, and information and communication technologies. The book: * provides an understanding of what cyberspace looks like and the social interactions that occur there * explores the impacts of cyberspace, and information and communication technologies, on cultural, political and economic relations * charts the spatial forms of virutal spaces * details empirical research and examines a wide variety of maps and spatialisations of cyberspace and the information society * has a related website at http://www.MappingCyberspace.com. This book will be a valuable addition to the growing body of literature on cyberspace and what it means for the future.

Sacred Cyberspaces

Sacred Cyberspaces PDF Author: Oren Golan
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0228015197
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 174

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Book Description
In recent years every major institution has had to adapt to the fast-evolving technologies of the digital age or risk being left behind. Amid a global crisis of faith and declining levels of religious participation in places around the world, the Catholic Church has likewise come face to face with the challenges and possibilities of new media. Sacred Cyberspaces reveals how long-standing conflicts over power, influence, and legitimacy within religious organizations are being waged in the digital realm. Oren Golan and Michele Martini describe the tensions that arise as religious groups seek to reach the faithful in online spaces where traditional clerical authorities have less expertise and control. Focusing on the Catholic world, they examine the rise of devotional digital entrepreneurship and the roles of lay religious webmasters: the video makers, app developers, and web designers who devote their lives to evangelization and who literally run the show. The book also explores the nature of religious experience as it pivots to online platforms: cyberculture, prayer, ceremonies, pilgrimage, proselytization, and the relation to the transcendental. From live-streaming at world-famous sites in the Holy Land to the Instagram feed of Pope Francis, Sacred Cyberspaces evaluates the contemporary media strategies of the Catholic Church and sheds light on the future of religion online.

Cybertheology

Cybertheology PDF Author: Antonio Spadaro
Publisher: Fordham Univ Press
ISBN: 0823257029
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 126

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Book Description
Because the Internet has changed and is changing the ways in which we think and act, it must also be changing the ways in which we think Christianity and its theology. Cybertheology is the first book to explore this process from a Catholic point of view. Drawing on the theoretical work of authors such as Marshall McLuhan, Peter Levy, and Teilhard de Chardin, it questions how technologies redefine not only the ways in which we do things but also our being and therefore the way we perceive reality, the world, others, and God. “Does the digital revolution affect faith in any sense?” Spadaro asks. His answer is an emphatic Yes. But how, then, are we to live well in the age of the Internet? Spadaro delves deeply into various dimensions of the impact of the Net on the Church and its organization, on our understanding of revelation, grace, liturgy, the sacraments, and other classical theological themes. He rightly points out that the digital environment is not merely an external instrument that facilitates human communication or a purely virtual world, but part of the daily experience of many people, a new “anthropological space” that is reshaping the way we think, know, and express ourselves. Naturally, this calls for a new understanding of faith so that it makes sense to people who live and work in the digital media environment. In developing the notion of cybertheology, Spadaro seeks to propose an intelligence of faith (intellectus fidei) in the era of the Internet. The book’s chapters include reflections on man the decoder and the search engines of God, networked existence and the mystical body, hacker ethics and Christian vision, sacraments and “virtual presence,” and the theological challenges of collective intelligence.