The Third Culture

Read this paper today while working on my own for the Virtual Theology colloquium. Some interesting ideas on techno-culture becoming a third strand in Western civilization to stand with science and the arts. Thinking about how religion, especially Christianity, fits in here. Venn diagrams are beginning to come to mind. Is religion a set on its own, is a a subset of each culture or merely part of the humanities or arts?

EDGE 3rd Culture: THE THIRD CULTURE - by Kevin Kelly.

While science and art generate truth and beauty, technology generates opportunities: new things to explain; new ways of expression; new media of communications; and, if we are honest, new forms of destruction. Indeed, raw opportunity may be the only thing of lasting value that technology provides us.

It’s not going to solve our social ills, or bring meaning to our lives. For those, we need the other two cultures. What it does bring us-and this is sufficient-are possibilities.

I’d probably want to nuance that last part more (and Kelly does that in a more theological paper elsewhere) but the idea of techno-culture being driven by novelty looks a promising avenue for investigation theologically.