Apocalyptic AI: Visions of Heaven in Robotics, Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality

My book on how intelligent robots circulate as a boundary object within technical and non-technical communities. In particular, I am concerned with how apocalyptic promises in pop science robotics and AI function in research communities, virtual reality communities, and in popular life.. From fieldwork as Visiting Researcher at Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Laboratory (summer 2007) and in the virtual reality game/world Second Life, I show how different communities use apocalyptic promises.

Religion, Science & Technology: Experiments in the Interpretation of Culture (editor)

At the instigation of a friend, I'm shopping an edited book that will provide a new set of methodological tools for the study of religion, science and technology. All too often, the study of religion and science founders in attempts to reconcile the allegedly converging truths of science and religion. This book avoids that problem by working through new ways to do research in the field. As is obvious from the title, I also hope to renew interest in the position of technology in the study of religion and science. The book also provides contemporary examples of non-western religious traditions' interaction with science and technology. Theoretical approaches come from anthropology, economics, history, religious studies, and theology. Confirmed contributors include Geoffrey Cantor, Stefan Helmreich, Jeff Horn, Stephen Kaplan, Bruno Latour, Stephen McGrath, Robert Nelson, Rabbi Larry Troster, and several others.

Religion and Science in the Practice of Daily Life

This is the chapter on religion and science for a three volume encyclopedia, Religion in the Practice of Daily Life, edited by Richard Hecht and Vincent Biondo (Greenwood Press, 2008).

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