New potential AI-as-Religion feature just dropped: Meta patent to simulate immortality. File in "afterlife" section of my book #TechAgnostic.
As an author arguing Zuck & friends are creating today's largest religion—I so appreciate their support of my work 🙏
www.businessinsider.com/meta-granted...
Flying during the Super Bowl! Important request: if any tech company commercial seems to state or imply that the tech Co is creating its own religion, please tag me and my book #TechAgnostic! Thank you and may the AI Gods bless you and make you immortal, with or without 200 immortality pills a day
Just got really excited about how new writing is coming along for the first time since I finished working on #TechAgnostic. The new (related! but *also* a totally new direction for me!) book proposal is getting good...
I'm in month 5 of a 6-month self-gifted sabbatical from social media posting—but allowed myself a LinkedIn life update—I'm in a NYT article on "Techno-Religion" as NYT's Cade Metz calls it. 🎯 what my 📔 #TechAgnostic is about! Check out my post on LI & @bcmerchant.bsky.social's great writeup here.
Painting
Too much stress. I’m cutting out an hour early to paint and read. #techagnostic #art #books
So for over a week I had no idea @rns.org named #TechAgnostic one of the Best Religion and Spirituality books of 2024! Hmmm...Porchlight also named it one of the best business books of '24. Can't imagine that's a frequent combo, especially for a book by an atheist?! religionnews.com/2024/12/24/t...
They say art imitates life; I wrote a book on how Silicon Valley tech today imitates religion so effectively, it now outdoes the original as the most powerful, sometimes most fanatical form of worship in the world. So why *wouldn't* churches now try to imitate the imitation? #ImagoDei #TechAgnostic.
👀👀 This @rns.org deep dive into Elon Musk's shallow dive into Christianity is so good. I'm...rejoicing?...to say that, beyond just the "Prophet in Chief" headline, I have like a whole sermon's worth of commentary in here, informed by my #TechAgnostic research 🚀👾⛪✝️
religionnews.com/2024/12/03/h...
Nothing like the day before the busiest travel day of the year for the EV you paid too much for— purely for climate conscience/green tech reasons—to die mysteriously. (Not a Tesla!! Subaru! Problem is EVs that affordably & reliably transport an entire family don't really exist.) #TechAgnostic #Sigh
Why was that my first thought? I was talking with @juliaangwin.com for our recent @alltechishuman.bsky.social #TechAgnostic conversation, and when we got to discussing the many EA billionaires, I spontaneously blurted out, "some of them aren't even in jail yet!"
We don't have pets (allergies) so here's a non-faces, grainy (privacy) pic of my kids hugging in the woods. They're talking about the Silicon Valley religion and whether tech oligarchs are fulfilled. #TeamHuman #TechAgnostic www.teamhuman.fm/episodes/304...
Grateful to Douglas Rushkoff (@rushkoff.bsky.social) for hosting me on his #TeamHuman podcast this week. We discussed the religion of tech, and why it's especially important right now to grieve our losses and find the others. Life milestone moment. #TechAgnostic www.teamhuman.fm/episodes/304...
On LinkedIn @nytimes.com tech policy columnist @juliaangwin.com says—spoiler alert—tech IS the new religion. So...I can stop my #TechAgnostic book tour now? But I won't. Pictured: Julia asking "who is tech's Jesus?" The answer could determine SoftBank's next winner! www.linkedin.com/posts/julia-...
#TechAgnostic: How Technology Became the World's Most Powerful Religion, and Why it Desperately Needs a Reformation
Such a ride sharing this new book this month amid...everything, and when Elon Musk and others are making my point for me, a bit more forcefully than I wish they were.
Reintro: I'm an atheist/Humanist chaplain @ 2 little schools in Cambridge, MA. 2 📔s: #GoodWithoutGod, on the positive values of nonreligious people; #TechAgnostic on how tech has become a religion that needs reform. ✍️ @TIME & many others on tech...& staying human? Dad x2. ❤️s NYC. Roots 🇨🇺🇵🇱. Rabbi. 🇵🇸.
Heck yeah I DID give a @bsky.app shoutout @ my MIT Museum #TechAgnostic book talk tonight! Thankful for the elders here giving me/us a social media site to feel kinda reasonably good about these days. 🙏🟦☁️
Here's @hypervisible.bsky.social at the Museum's 3D textile exhibit on data and redlining.
This was such a fascinating conversation. Follow @kateoneill.bsky.social and put her in all the starter packs. #TechAgnostic #TechHumanist
Same, @mehdirhasan.bsky.social! People should subscribe & pay for @zeteonews.bsky.social: There's no interviewer like you, as I've experienced.
In my new 📔 #TechAgnostic I argue tech is now the world's most powerful religion. X=the Tower of Babel. This is more like a nice campus Interfaith center.
Post 👇 (skeet?) in honor of @hypervisible.bsky.social. I'm honored he's flying from MI today to talk w/me @ MIT about my 📔 #TechAgnostic, esp. a chapter where he gives me a tour of his work on "luxury surveillance" in Detroit & we non-coincidentally end up interviewing Thanos's creator, Jim Starlin
This is the 1st time I've felt 'at home' @bsky.app! As a very active dad of 2 young kids, I post sparingly on weekends. But ❤️d talking to @justinhendrix.bsky.social, whose @techpolicypress.bsky.social was a great source of intel for a chaplain on a 6-year deep dive into tech to write #TechAgnostic.
As I was finishing my book #TechAgnostic several months ago, I realized I would need to make a prediction about what would happen tonight, since the book was slated for publication at the end of October.
Here's what I wrote:
@zitron.bsky.social I'd love to talk with you about it, and send you a book, with admiration for your work. But anyway, FYI the piece of #TechAgnostic with Hassan in it will be published as an excerpt, by MIT News, in the coming weeks.
Printed @geoffreyfowler.bsky.social's post 👇 out on one of those ancient scrolls known as paper—to wave around and yell about at my launch events tonight, for my book #TechAgnostic. Trillion-dollar companies injecting absolute nonsense into countless millions of people's lives, at the WORST moment.
VANITY CHECK—I have back-to-back #TechAgnostic book launch events tomorrow. Fancy private one w/Jill Lepore & @mitpress.bsky.social, then drive to bigger one w/Chanda Prescod-Weinstein & Harvard Book Store, @ Cambridge Public Library. Change clothes between 👍👎?!...And does gender impact your answer?
I'm so happy with how this piece in The Guardian covers my new book #TechAgnostic. No small thing at a time when the media is either melting, panicked over Trump/Harris, or both. Out Tues: when you pre-order, the angel on the cover puts down its phone & gets wings
www.theguardian.com/books/2024/o...
"Greg Epstein wants you to be skeptical about tech's heavenly promises."
...Why yes. Yes. I. do.
Really nice, fun piece for @katetuttle.bsky.social's Boston Globe "Story Behind the Book" column. More about my book #TechAgnostic to come in the next few days!
www.bostonglobe.com/2024/10/24/a...
Yeah sounds great, I DMd you!
I'll just point out publicly since it's the main reason I'm even still on social media anymore, that this whole topic is 🎯 what my new book #TechAgnostic is about. It's out next week! So strange to be trying out a new app for such discussions, while preparing for that
Over on the Hellsite, I made up a little jingle about this fun #TechAgnostic book Q&A I did with @politico.com. I know you're not gonna make me re-post that, right? Bluesky is a healthier environment where you know I just have to share stuff like this. rIgHtTtT???
www.politico.com/newsletters/...
The "religion of tech"? Don't publish a book on that topic this season (10/29!), they said, political media won't have time. But win or lose, it's a needed conversation.
To be discussing #TechAgnostic @politico.com today makes me so glad we went for it tinyurl.com/m35m9b2n
🙏 @mitpress.bsky.social
