Last Friday I had the opportunity to attend a lecture given by Dr Genevieve Bell of Intel. Dr Bell is the Director of User Experience in Intel's Digital Home Group. She's an anthropologist and looks at technology through its impact on people rather than a purely technical point of view.

The lecture was titled "The Digital Divide: A Critical Exploration of the Intersection of Spiritual Practice and New Technologies. The crux of the talk, in my view, was that religious groups are amongst the strongest adopters of technology despite being largely ignored by the creators of tech.

This is an area of great interest to me. I'll be commencing a theological degree next year so I'm looking closely at where technology and faith meet.

Some of the applications of technology in faith Dr Bell mentioned were interesting but, as is usually the case, some of the failures were even more so. One example, a virtual church that might be an antecedent of the wildly popular "Second Life", had to be shut down when someone managed to access and hack the source code, introducing Satan into the church. To my mind, it was a shame that the site closed and avoiding discussion of Satan and evil is a weakness in many modern churches.

On the mobile side of things there were some great examples of where technology has complemented religious worship. For example, there's a mobile phone app that helps Muslims find the direction to Mecca or Medina so that they can pray in the correct direction at the appointed time. Similar aids exist for Christians and other faiths.

SMS has been exploited as well. The Vatican has been sending text messages of Bible verses and, on occasion, messages from the Pope. There was even a "SMS from Jesus" service running in Scandinavia although that's not running anymore.

Personally, I've been a long time user of Laridian's Pocket Bible which provides me with several translations of the Christian bible, reference books and other guides. More recently, I purchased an audiobook version from the iTunes Store so I can listen to a passage I'm studying while I'm in the car or just chilling out.

It's not all that surprising that organised religion has jumped onto the technological bandwagon. After all, the first book printed on Gutenburg's printing press was the Bible. What is surprising is that this prolific use of technology has been largely ignored - incredible considering that about two-thirds of the world's population identifies itself as belonging to a religion.

Even in cultures where religious practice is obvious and overt the application of technology is largely ignored. It makes me think that tech companies, other than a few smaller, niche businesses, don't know how to market in a way that is sensitive to religious groups and that they're scared to try. Sounds like an opportunity lost to me.

Postscript

A member of iMug alerted me to this story. It seems a group called the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) reported that "an Islamist website posted a message alerting Muslims to what it claims is a new insult to Islam". It seems that Apple's flagship store on New York's Firth Avenue "is meant to provoke Muslims" because it is called the "Apple Mecca" and "is intended to be open 24 hours a day like the Ka'ba, and moreover, contains bars selling alcoholic beverages."

I'm pretty sure that Apple stores don't serve alcohol. They do have "Genius Bars" but all that's served is Mac advice.

Is this really an offence or is someone just being provocative in the name of faith?