Pastoral and spiritual care in a digital age: the future is now

Abstract

The last three decades have witnessed unprecedented growth in both the neurobiological and computer/information sciences. These discoveries and innovations are challenging, sometimes radically, our long-held understandings of human nature and our future as a species. Pastoral and Spiritual Care in a Digital Age takes on several challenges emerging from advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and the spread of social media as well as their impact on our physical and spiritual selves. We human beings, Bingaman argues, are approaching, or already upon, a tipping point, a singularity, in our relationship with digital worlds in an irreversible transition from homo sapiens to techno sapiens. As computer technologies achieve ever more astonishing speed on smaller and smaller devices, we are witnessing the rapid acceleration of a process which promises to alleviate human suffering, make knowledge universally accessible, and enhance human functioning beyond the limited resources of the contemporary human brain. This same movement threatens to rob us of much that makes us essentially human. With an apocalyptic urgency, Bingaman suggests that technology has replaced biology as the driving force in evolution. To make matters worse, we have only a small window of opportunity to preserve what is most distinctly human about ourselves before the direction and quality of our futures are determined by AI. At stake are our ‘attentional control, relational intelligence, and a deeper mindful and contemplative awareness’ (Bingaman 2018, x).