Has Apple cornered the market on finding the holy ghost in the machine?
The world has always seemed divided between two kinds of people those who welcomed the divisions and those who did not. For much of recorded history, the world's religious conflicts served as proof that such a cleavage was endemic to the human condition. But in this Age of the Computer, technology was to be the great leveler, ending schisms by transforming the world into a global village where equal access is a keystroke away
Then, this past summer, the iPhone hit the market.
The iPhone is the latest computing epiphany from Apple founder Steve Jobs, who has been hailed as a virtual messiah by techies, or at least those inside the Apple fold. Once again, Jobs did not disappoint his flock. The iPhone is a technological marvel that integrates a cell phone, multimedia player, camera, email, and Web-browsing functions -- all in a sleek, scratch-proof casing. Moreover, all this wizardry is made available to humans thanks to the hocus-pocus of an advanced multi-touch screen and a virtual keyboard that responds as if by magic.
No wonder Apple is marketing the iPhone under the slogan "Touching is believing." And no wonder the long-awaited release of the iPhone was greeted with hosannas that seemed to channel the fervor of a Second Coming.
The religious analogy is not simply for effect, nor is it hyperbole. The gadget itself was dubbed everything from "the God machine" to "the Jesus phone," and partisans were routinely described as "true believers" or cultists. Newcomers to the fold are, of course, "converts." David Kuo, the former White House faith-based official and born again Christian, went so far as to proclaim, with the complacency of a Mac, a new faith of "Appleism." Kuo reassured his readers that he could be both a good Appleist and a disciple of Christ. What he could not be, of course, is one of the unwashed heathens in the Microsoft-based PC system.
Indeed, the outpouring of this iPentecost seemed to have the clear purpose of demonstrating, once again, that Apple really is the one, true operating system -- the final word on technological salvation. And it raised the disturbing question of whether technology is the new frontier of religious warfare.
The prospect of such a bitter schism was heralded more than a decade ago, most notably by the Italian semiotician Umberto Eco, who saw in the emerging Mac versus PC debate a clear echo of the Reformation divide that has marked Western civilization. Eco perceived in the binary world of computers the legacy of a religious mindset that seems to be hard-wired into our psyches and constitutes, in his words, "a new underground religious war which is modifying the modern world." For Eco, it was clear that Apple users (of the Macintosh variety that Eco preferred) were Catholics and PC types (using the old DOS system, since superseded by Windows) were Protestants.
"Indeed," Eco wrote, "the Macintosh is counter-reformist and has been influenced by the 'ratio studiorum of the Jesuits. It is cheerful, friendly, conciliatory, it tells the faithful how they must proceed step by step to reach if not the kingdom of Heaven the moment in which their document is printed. It is catechistic: the essence of revelation is dealt with via simple formulae and sumptuous icons. Everyone has a right to salvation."
The DOS, or Microsoft world, on the other hand, "is Protestant, or even Calvinistic. It allows free interpretation of scripture, demands difficult personal decisions, imposes a subtle hermeneutics upon the user, and takes for granted the idea that not all can reach salvation. To make the system work you need to interpret the program yourself: a long way from the baroque community of revelers, the user is closed within the loneliness of his own inner torment."
Naturally, there are counter-arguments to this thesis. The Catholic Church did not always view technology so kindly, as Galileo found out. And was it not the introduction of moveable type printing by Gutenberg that helped foment all this schism and division? On the other hand, it has been convincingly argued that the illuminated manuscripts adorned by medieval monks are akin to primitive Web documents; their marginalia acting like hyperlinks that direct readers to other helpful texts, much as Google does today. Then again, apropos of those funky Apple commercials, Catholicism would seem to be the geeky, un-hip fellow whose stodgy old operating platform is slow to the point of freezing. His Mac counterpart is a cool dude who projects Protestantism's so-called emerging church movement.
Still, Eco's template seemed to be confirmed last year when the staff of Vatican Radio gave Pope Benedict XVI a 2GB iPod nano, white (of course) and pre-loaded with classical music. "Computer technology is the future," the pope said.
The question is, will this future retain some of the uglier aspects of our sectarian past? It would not be surprising if it does. According to Heidi Campbell, an assistant professor of communications at Texas A&M University who writes about the intersection of media and faith, religion "is still the place we go for images and metaphors to help explain our society." But more than just symbols, it is also important to understand that technology is also appropriating the values that were once ascribed to religion. "The basic belief in contemporary society is that progress and efficiency are key moral values, the ultimate good," Campbell explains. "So if I can show that my technology is the most efficient or the most developed, then I can show that mine is the best."
In such an environment, control over the sources of knowledge -- computer codes and operating systems and the like -- becomes all-important. Hence the long-running "religious wars," as they are called, between Apple and Microsoft, but especially between Bill Gates and advocates of the open-source computer coding program Linux.
It is certainly tempting to see Linux, with its free software and horizontal, populist approach as an appealing, Reformation-like alternative to the closed, hierarchical system of the Microsoft universe. Yet it is also important to ask whether we would be having these arguments, or whether there would be so many alternatives to choose from, if there had been no technology schisms.
Back in 1954, when apples still grew only on trees, a young German priest and theologian named Joseph Ratzinger wrote in his dissertation on Saint Augustine that every great theology emerged from "a polemic against error." In fact, he said a "movement of a living, spiritual kind is hardly thinkable" without error. Joseph Ratzinger would later become a cardinal famous for battling heresy, and in 2005 he was elected pope, taking the name Benedict XVI. Coincidentally (or not?), on the very same day that Steve Jobs was unveiling his iPhone and proclaiming it the "Next Best Thing Ever," the pontiff signed off on a document that re-asserted the primacy of the Roman Catholic Church as the "one, true Church of Christ" and all other Christian bodies as "wounded" groups that were not real churches at all but "ecclesial communities" at best.
Not surprisingly, Protestants and Orthodox Christians, in particular, chafed at the Vatican's claims. R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, went so far as to say that "any church defined by the claims of the papacy is no true church." Yet Mohler also said that the Vatican's statement did not offend him, principally because it set out the differences for everyone to see "and thus it presents us with an opportunity."
If all religious disputes were engaged so dispassionately, perhaps the world would be a safer place for believers and non-believers alike. Similarly, if the odium theologicum -- theological hatred -- that historically inflamed religious wars is confined to the high-tech arena, perhaps the resulting advances, heralded by machines like the iPhone, will tempt those of us who grew up in the Church of Microsoft to finally convert.
David Gibson is an award-winning religion writer. He is the author most recently of The Rule of Benedict.
