Technologies of Transcendence

The technological breakthroughs and scientific megaprojects of the last century have all contained a religious or spiritual dimension, and each envisioned a future that was incommensurable with the present. The Manhattan Project introduced a novel and unprecedented source of energy that granted humanity the ability to hurl thunderbolts like Zeus or bring about unlimited destruction like Kali; the Apollo program slipped the bonds of Earth and engineered humankind’s technological ascent to the heavens; Bitcoin promises a new civilizational base layer and a world in which nothing will need to be adjusted for inflation ever again. While superficially technological, secular, and hyper-rational in nature, each endeavor represents a fundamental yearning or quest for transcendence, redemption, and salvation. This suggests that one way to identify future domains of technological progress is to identify their spiritual potential for transcendence.