Haunted By Algorithms?

This presentation discusses some theoretical issues concerning the close relationship between spirituality and media using the privileged view of memory. In particular, the aim is to present sketches of a socio-anthropological analysis on the relationship between media and individual and social memory, which highlights the fundamental role played by art, understood in a broad sense as an ‘object of cultural mediation’, able to objectify, fix and extend the social memory allowing its consolidation in the present and its projection into the future. A particular look will be given to the original relationship between artistic object, magic, and religion, to present a possible parallel reading of the social meaning attributed to the media also in contemporary societies. Art, like the media, performs a socio-anthropological function of building a relational bridge between yesterday and today, between the living and the dead, between the physical and the immaterial world, between the visible and the invisible. In this, art and the media are ‘cultural objects’, capable of conveying identity, meaning, expectations, hopes. This matrix can explain the trend, even in contemporary society, to attribute to the media, especially the digital ones, a magical, spiritual and quasi-religious relevance and power. Trend which, among other things, questions the alleged secularization of contemporary Western societies. Empirical evidences of this relevance will be showed presenting the inquiry report of a research carried out in Italy in 2024 on the "Internet Use as Everyday Religion on the Rise".