Divine Meets Digital - by Di Di (Paperback)

About the Book

Divine Meets Digital reveals how tech workers navigate religious worldviews, embracing religion's ethical and cultural dimensions while distancing themselves from controversial aspects. Based on nearly 100 interviews with tech workers in the U.S. and China, this book explores how meaning, morality, and belief take shape in today's tech-driven world.

Book Synopsis

What role does religion play in the tech industry? Based on nearly one hundred interviews, Divine Meets Digital uncovers the ways tech workers engage with religion and make sense of their work through religious and spiritual worldviews. While most identify as nonreligious, they are far from antireligious. Instead, they navigate competing religious and nonreligious views, often distinguishing between what they see as the controversial elements of religion--such as belief in the supernatural in China and its politicized and dogmatic aspects in the United States--and its more noncontroversial aspects. In doing so, they justify their religious engagement by embracing religion's noncontroversial elements while distancing themselves from its controversial features. This book offers a powerful new lens for understanding one of the most influential industries of our time, inviting readers to better understand the people who live and work at the intersection between science, religion, and technology.

Review Quotes

"Di Di has brought real empirical data to the question of how religion and new technologies might intersect in a global world. Divine Meets Digital is the book that we have been waiting for. Anyone who cares about the future impact of technology and the ways it shapes the religious lives of technology workers--really all of us--should read this work."

--Elaine Howard Ecklund "Herbert S. Autrey Chair in Social Sciences, Rice University"

"With incisive analysis, Di Di debunks simple myths that tech and religion are incompatible. Through her robust data, she demonstrates the complex and nuanced ways that tech workers embody a sense of

'nonreligious religiosity' differently in China and the United States. Divine Meets Digital should be at the top of the reading list for anyone interested in religion, technology, and science."

--Carolyn Chen "author of Work Pray Code: When Work Becomes Religion in Silicon Valley"

About the Author

DI DI is an associate professor of sociology at Santa Clara University in California. She is the coauthor of Secularity and Science: What Scientists Around the World Really Think About Religion.