These and other questions will press in on the true believer as Apple releases its new and improved version of the iPhone. Or perhaps this “Second Coming,” as the NYTimes’ tech writer David Pogue puts it in his column, isn’t the rapture many expect.
Part of the problem may be the very religious sentiments that this technology inspires. The Jesus phone, as it is called, is merely the latest epiphany of a techno-religion that is supplanting the old faiths. But which faiths? There is a longstanding debate as to whether Apple’s technology represents a Reformation sensibility or in fact is a return to an older, more organic Catholic sensibility.
I would of course opt for the latter interpretation, as I explored in this essay for Science & Spirit magazine. The problem is two-fold for me: I am still PC-bound (my wife is an iPhone fan, and I regularly try to find flaws in her admittedly specatcular device) and yet I am a Catholic. And two, I already converted once. Would going over to Mac make me a religious boulevardier?