Paper-Mediated Experiences at Custard In The Ether

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Paper-Mediated Experiences

By admin | May 27, 2009

I have recently been grappling with a question:

Is it possible to have an authentic spiritual experience mediated by a computer?

Several of the papers I have been reading raise this issue, particularly with reference to online rituals. Aside from there being no sure way for social scientists to determine an authentic spiritual experience (only an apparently authentic one), there are concerns over whether the nature of the Internet - with its “conspicuous reflexivity” and being a “too exclusively ocular, image-driven, textural, change-orientated, individualistic, detached and disembodied medium”(1) - is particularly conducive to spiritual experience.

For the purposes of my research (more on this to follow) I should be focussing on this issue, but instead I have found myself wondering why we don’t question our paper-mediated experiences in the same way? In fact, do we even think about the fact that many of our experiences (whether they be spiritual or otherwise) are mediated through paper? Why do we use this type of language to describe communication and experiences through a computer, but not through other channels?

I particularly wonder this whilst standing in church, watching everyone scramble through their order of service to get to the right page for communion each week. I am lucky enough to be blessed with the kind of memory that allows me to recite most of the Church of England liturgy given the first word as a prompt (if that can be considered a blessing), so rarely even open the order of service. But for those that do - are they having an authentic spiritual experience? Even though they need to have a piece of paper with some printed text in their hand to do it?

Now, I can’t answer that question. However, I must note that I am of the opinion that, for instance, reading the bible can be just as spiritual and as revealing an experience when read on an iTouch as on traditional paper. What interests me is the focus on the medium through which the ideas or stimulus for the experience is delivered. Why don’t we question paper mediated experiences in the same way as we question those mediated via computer?

The answer is probably complacency. We are used to paper. The computer is still working its way into parts of our lives in new ways, so we question the change.

I suppose what I would like to see is us reaching a point where we consider computer-mediated experiences equally and objectively alongside other physical mediation tools. When we can talk about paper-mediated communication and compare it to computer-mediated communication, paper-mediated rituals vs computer-mediated rituals, then we will have reached a point where the bias is dissolved and we can start making more meaningful, descriptive comparisons which may help inform the evolution of things like online rituals. The aim being to have more authentic experiences - no matter how they are mediated.

Maybe then we can figure out what “authentic” experiences actually are….

(1) Dawson. L.L (2005) ‘The mediation of religious experience in cyberspace’, in MT Hojsgaard & M Warburg (ed) Religion and Cyberspace, Abingdon, Routledge

Topics: christianity, internet, language, religion |

One Response to “Paper-Mediated Experiences”

Mick Says:
May 27th, 2009 at 11:37 am
Hi Kirsty, great to see you blogging, writing and regularly flexing your undoubted talents. IMHO as with most questions, solving can be a challenge but initial framing / definition of the question itself tends to be the most treacherous part - experiments with zenetic computing offer cultural experiences mediated by computer - how we in th the west define spiritual and religious experience is somehow related to consciousness - check out this link which may influence your thinking about your question, rather than provide any kind of answer: http://www.faculty.virginia.edu/consciousness/

Paper-Mediated Experiences

One Response to “Paper-Mediated Experiences”

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