Pontifications

Pontifications

Is the iPhone Catholic? Is the PC Protestant?

posted by David Gibson

iPope Orange.jpgThese 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?



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Comments read comments(4)
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Nancy Danielson

posted July 10, 2008 at 5:33 pm


I enjoyed your essay David. Unlike God, who exists outside time and space, technology is evolving. The iPhone may be the next best thing ever, that is, until, the next best thing comes along.



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Anonymous

posted July 10, 2008 at 10:21 pm


Right you are, Nancy…But of course I’d agree since you liked the piece! Peace. David



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Charles Cosimano

posted July 10, 2008 at 10:21 pm


Perhaps that is why I have no desire for an Iphone. It somehow offends my childhood, calvinist sensiblities.



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priceofliberty1776

posted July 11, 2008 at 8:28 am


I would have thought it the other way around that the pc was catholic and the new devices were protestant.



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