Lately I’ve been talking a lot about the fourth wave of research into religion online. In this wave it’s recognised that “nobody goes online anymore”, in the sense that the Internet is not something that we intentionally access, necessarily, but that it’s constantly “on” and on the fringe of our daily actions and interactions. It’s also acknowledged that, given our increased access to not just read online text, but to both create text and shape its design and structure, we are capable of making the Internet look like us. Online identities are not shaped just by what information we upload, but by the information we read, share, tag, filter, etc. Researchers into religion online should just think about religion in the religious texts that are created and dispersed in the ether. Rather they should think about what is religious about the Internet that we cultivate.
I am thinking that these issues become more salient when we think about Internet access through mobile technologies, such as phones and e-readers, yet this has been neglected in my own research. I’ve recently been given the opportunity to collaborate on a research project on the iPhone as an object through which religious experience is accessed and mediated. I have some preliminary thoughts which revolve around four key words:
Device – how does the iPhone as an object that is seen and held by its users create the aesthetic conditions for religious experience? Historically, our Internet experiences have been framed by the technology that has sat on desks in private work or study rooms, family rooms, on our laps. It shouldn’t be overlooked that the location of these devices have played a part in the total sensory experience of being online. The pocket-sized, hand-held device, then, changes that experience.
App – how does the applications’ software, based on the operating software of the device, frame the religious text that is produced, consumed and exchanged between connected users? The graphic user interface of the home computer has provided us with vehicle for interactions with others and with the technology, and there has always been an aesthetic dimension to this.
Mobility – given that the iPhone is a personal device, how do users feel a connection to an aesthetic community away from the community’s physical place? Online communities are noted for their lack of place, rather defined by shared symbols and languages than by geography. This is not new. Evidence of community formations through communications beyond place even exist in the Bible. What becomes salient for mobile-mediated communities may be the way that people interact with this sense of place. A friend who is Catholic priest told me of a baptism he conducted recently at his local church. The congregation was full of twenty-somethings, who he believed weren’t really present, given they spent most of their time at the ceremony tweeting, heads down, thumbs a-tapping. After the ceremony ended, these congregants mentioned to him what their online friends thought of what was happening during the service, through the replies to their tweets. My friend discovered there were more people at the service than he could physically see and speak with, but who were nonetheless “there”, and involved in what was going on. Mobile technologies allow people to interact online with people away from their computers and back in churches, and allows people not in churches to interact with people who are.
Cloud – to what extent is physical place known and valued to users, given that all religious text is stored in the “cloud” (i.e. on a server in an unknown location)? “Cloud” has joined our growing set of metaphors for connecting online. More and more, we are dependent on our connection to remote servers to store information and do daily tasks, in order to keep our devices small and more mobile. While the “cloud” simply refers to a computer in a location we may be unaware of, the use of the term brings many connotations that will impact on how we think and act with our devices.
