I have structured my research areas into three main pillars which I am calling (names subject to change): (1) industrialization and the disenchantment of the world, (2) techno-spirituality in our post-industrial society, and (3) media ecology and cognitive-behavioral adaptation. Right now, these are just areas that I find intensely fascinating and would like to explore more (even if they don’t all become immediately visible in my final project, they have already influenced my thinking).
Industrialism and the disenchantment of the world (name borrowed from Max Weber) refers to the ways industrialism and the scientific revolution replaced previous spiritual or ecological worldviews with more mechanistic thinking. The profligation of more ‘rational’ and ‘scientific’ modes of thinking, the acceleration of capitalism, etc all led to the loss of more magical and mysterious meanings associated with life and nature; spirituality became relegated to the personal sphere, rather than a way we connected with one another through community. Instead, secular ideologies like progress, nationalism, consumerism were created to fill the inherent spiritual void in us.
The next pillar, techno-spirituality, follows directly after this: if we as humans naturally long for meaning and connection, what does that look like in an age of digital abstraction? How have people been using digital technology in order to create a new form of transcendent or sacred experience? The old way of thinking positioned technology as inorganic and unemotional, but those views have already drastically evolved – now we are intertwined with our algorithms, and this is manifesting in strange, intimate, eerie ways.
Finally, media ecology and cognitive-behavioral adaptation underpins this entire phenomenon, phenomenologically investigating this evolution of our inner worlds and consciousness from a cognitive science lens. My undergrad was a B.S. in Cognitive Science so I have long been fascinated by how our cognitive processes are literally reshaped and modulated around the technology we use, a la Marshall McLuhan – whether it’s how our attention and focus gets fragmented with feed-based interactions, changes in memory formation and retrieval when info is stored externally, the effects of constant connectivity and notification-based interactions on our neuroplasticity, the cognitive dissonance of existing simultaneously in physical and virtual spaces, and of course - how social media influences identify formation and self-perception.