Tech Agnostic special event at The MIT Museum

Join Humanist Chaplain and author Greg M. Epstein in conversation with Thea Keith Lucas and Chris "Hypervisible" Gilliard to explore global technology worship and the case for skepticism and agnosticism as a way of life. TICKETS REQUIRED! See below blurb for link to tickets AND for a reflection Greg Epstein wrote earlier this week about this event, which he calls "one of the most special" he's ever participated in.
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Today's technology has overtaken religion as the chief influence on twenty-first century life and community. In Tech Agnostic, Harvard and MIT's influential humanist chaplain Greg Epstein explores what it means to be a critical thinker with respect to this new faith. Encouraging readers to reassert their common humanity beyond the seductive sheen of "tech," this book argues for tech agnosticism — not worship — as a way of life. Without suggesting we return to a mythical pre-tech past, Epstein shows why we must maintain a freethinking critical perspective toward innovation until it proves itself worthy of our faith or not.

Epstein asks probing questions that center humanity at the heart of engineering: Who profits from an uncritical faith in technology? How can we remedy technology's problems while retaining its benefits?

Showing how unbelief has always served humanity, Epstein revisits the historical apostates, skeptics, mystics, Cassandras, heretics, and whistleblowers who embody the tech reformation we desperately need. He argues that we must learn how to collectively demand that technology serve our pursuit of human lives that are deeply worth living.
In our tumultuous era of religious extremism and rampant capitalism, Tech Agnostic offers a new path forward, where we maintain enough critical distance to remember that all that glitters is not gold — nor is it God.

Copies of Tech Agnostic will be available for purchase onsite from the MIT Press Bookstore.

Co-presented by MIT Radius and the MIT Press.
This Tuesday, November 12

6 - 7:30pm
$5
TICKETS HERE!

Greg Epstein wrote this week, about this event: I've been thinking and writing about grief and hope, and what both are supposed to look like, now, at a time that can feel apocalyptic for many, at least politically speaking.

Maybe my personal favorite chapter of my new book #TechAgnostic: How Technology Became the World's Most Powerful Religion, and Why it Desperately Needs a Reformation is chapter 5 -- "Tech Apocalypse(s)." In it, a famously reclusive and private privacy researcher named Chris "Hypervisible" Gilliard agrees, after I'm able to arrange for us to jointly interview his all-time favorite comic book writer/artist, to let me come to Detroit to visit him for two days. He takes me on a whirlwind tour of the history of technological surveillance policing and...so much more. In the end, he tells me that the (tech) apocalypse is already here. It's just, to borrow William Gibson's phrase, "unevenly distributed." I learned more from that two-day conversation than from entire semesters, maybe even years, of study.

I am so thrilled and grateful that his coming Tueday, MIT's Office of Religious, Spiritual, and Ethical Life (ORSEL), along with the important MIT Radius program, are flying Gilliard out for a conversation with me, at the gorgeous new MIT Museum, facilitated by MIT's head chaplain Rev. Thea Keith-Lucas. We'll process recent political, social, and technological events as well as the historical context for them. It will be one of the most special events I've ever done. Tickets are required! Please sign up: I'd love to see you there!

PS: The Tech Agnostic book launch resumes next week after a wonderful launch last week, and thanks to many of you for coming to my sold-out event at the Cambridge Public Library.