The Brave New World of Technology and the Concept of Nothingness

The religious devotion characteristic of a totalitarian society is closely associated with what Jacques Ellul recognised as the totalitarianism of technology. Totalitarian technology induces the rise of secular religions like Fascism and Communism with all their political mystique but can also bring about a techno-religion in which the object of worship is technology itself. In this regard, our times were foreseen by Aldous Huxley, whose Brave New World depicted a society in which individuals merge with technology as a Greater Being, just as big data is seen as objective truth and an all-pervading stream of life today. Items of data are organised in diagrams which mirror the user's self in a totalitarian way. These diagrams invite the experience of nothingness, the concept of which is deeply rooted in the theological tradition. This experience also marks our age of nihilism that Friedrich Nietzsche described with the concept of the death of God. Nothingness can, however, ultimately have a redemptive meaning.