Open Information Science 2018; 2: 189–202

Research Article
Stefania Operto*

Human, Not Too Human: Technology, Rites,

and Identity
https://doi.org/10.1515/opis-2018-0015
Received January 22, 2018; accepted September 24, 2018

Abstract: In the social sciences, the term “rite” identifies a set of practices and knowledge that contribute
to forming the cultural models of a given society and has the aim of transmitting values and norms,
institutionalization of roles, recognition of identity and social cohesion. This article examines the
relationship between technology and ritual and the transformations in society resulting from the diffusion of
new technologies. Technological progress is not a novelty in human development; though it is the first time
in the history of humanity that technology has pervaded the lives of individuals and their relationships. The
analyses conducted seem to show that the ritual is not intended to disappear but to change; to change forms
and places. Postmodern societies have undergone profound modifications, but the conceptual category of
ritual continues to be applicable to many human behaviors and it would be a mistake to support the idea
that rituals are weakening.

Keywords: emerging technologies, Internet, IoT, rite, ritual, robotics, technology and society.

1 Technology and ritual: an emerging relationship

This article examines the relationship between technology and ritual and the transformations in society
resulting from the diffusion of new technologies. Why did it seem interesting to relate two such different
phenomena? Technological progress is not a novelty in human development; though it is the first time in
the history of humanity that technology has pervaded the lives of individuals and their relationships.
Human development is marked by discoveries and the introduction of a new technology changes
the lives of those who use it, but it takes time for a new technology to be established; similarly, a ritual
becomes recognized when its practices are defined and acquire a symbolic meaning within the community
of reference. Connecting technology with a ritual involves the need to consider the presence of technology
in social structures, involving different disciplines, approaches and methods in the analysis.
An important issue is to depict how the process of socialization of individuals with technology takes
place. According to the approach of technological determinism, society changes because it is modified by
the impact of technology. This approach does not seem to adequately consider human influence in defining
the paths of development and diffusion of technology and the fact that the relationship between technology
and society is articulated, complex and historically contextualized.
In order to analyze the role of technologies in everyday life and how these can influence rituals, it seems
more appropriate to adopt the perspective of the Social Shaping of Technology (MacKenzie, Wajcman, 1999)
according to which, technology and society cooperate in the process of social integration of technology:

Article note: This paper belongs to the special issue on Habits and Rituals, ed. by R. Giovagnoli & G. Dodig-Crnkovic

*Corresponding author: Stefania Operto, University of Genoa, Department of Science of Education (DISFOR), Phd, Genoa,
16100, Italy, E-mail: stefania@operto.net, stefania.operto@unige.it

Open Access. © 2018 Stefania Operto, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attributi-
on-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 License.
190   S. Operto

“The social shaping of technology is, in almost all the cases we know of, a process in which there is no
single dominant shaping force” (MacKenzie, Wajcman, 1999: 28). The diffusion of technologies can cause a
renovation of social relations (Kling, 1991: 347), which can range from the reconfiguration of forms of power to
the creation of new modes of social relations. According to domestication theory (Silverstone, Hirsch, 1992) the
entry of technology in daily interaction is not a linear process but also involves the sphere of consumption as
a symbolic practice. The process of socialization with technology is divided into four phases: appropriation,
objectification, incorporation, and conversion. In the conversion phase, as will be illustrated below regarding
the rites of passage supported by technology, the construction of the meanings and symbolic values associated
with the technological object and the subsequent transfer of these into daily interactions takes place.
To analyze the relationship between ritual and technology, the author takes emerging technology as
examples: artificial intelligence, biotechnology, cognitive science, information technology, nanotechnology,
and robotics. These are very different sectors, but they havecommon denominators: they are perceived as
new; they are able to modify existing society; introduce extreme innovations; and, grow rapidly.
What future can be imagined as a context of rituals? Some visionaries, by taking artificial intelligence
technology to the limit, imagine the possibility that technological progress will accelerate beyond the capacity
of human beings to understand and predict. This is the concept of technological singularity: the advent of an
intelligence superior to human and the progress that would follow which is supposed to be unpredictable
unless there is a parallel increase in the intellectual faculties of individuals. Recent years have seen a plethora
of forecasts about the profound, stimulating reflections from different disciplinary sectors (Eden et al., 2012).
Singularity hypotheses refer to different scenarios and the diffusion of the concept of technological
singularity is due to several scholars, among the most important Vinge, Moravec, and Kurzweil. Vinge
writes that within thirty years, there will be the technological means to create superhuman intelligence and
he suggests calling this event a singularity, “a point where the models known so far must be discarded and
new reality rules” (Vinge, 1993: 2). Moravec predicts that machines will attain human levels of intelligence
by the year 2040, and that by 2050, they will surpass us (1998, 1999).
Kurzweil extends Moore’s law of 1965, which is currently under review, created to describe the
exponential trend of the growth of the complexity of integrated semiconductor circuits, and moves this
trend to technologies that will lead to the singularity according to “The law of Accelerating Returns”
(Kurzweil, 1999, 2001, 2005)1.
Reflections on the relationship between rites and technology are part of this scenario. The author’s
analyses seem to confirm that it would be wrong to claim that rites disappear (Segalen, 1998); in postmodern
societies characterized by uncertainty (Bauman, 2000; Bauman, 2001) social roles and structures are less
defined and transitions are more permeable. Traditional rites of passage (van Gennep, 1960) change to take
the form of the ritual referred to by Goffman in face-to-face interaction (Goffman, 1967; Goffman, 1969) or
what Turner calls social drama (Turner, 1982).
As shown below, in the relationship with technology, the distance element with the schemes mentioned
by Turner emerges in particular in the art sector, while the interaction aspect, as defined by Goffman, is
found in the field of Human-Robot Interaction (HRI).
Even social networks, meeting technology, are transformed: “Although many relationships function off-
line as well as on-line, CSSNs [Computer-Supported Social Networks] are developing norms and structures
of their own. They are not just pale imitations of ‘real life.’ The Net is the Net” (Wellmann et al., 1996: 231).
Moving Wellmann’s concept from social networks to rituals, the author of this paper believes that one can
define rituals supported by technology with the expression ‘technology assisted rites’.
The examples that will be illustrated are taken from different contexts, all characterized by high
technological development; some of them are individual and limited, others have a wider impact.
To accurately grasp the uniqueness and the emerging character of these cases we will not, therefore,
refer to a specific country or territory but to an idealistic abstraction, albeit in the knowledge that each
cultural context has its own well-defined characteristics.

1  Moore’s law is often cited improperly and applied to forecasts concerning all forms of technology, while it only applies to
semiconductor circuits.
  Human, Not Too Human: Technology, Rites, and Identity  191

It should not be forgotten that technological progress is not fairly distributed around the planet;
generalizing the extension of technology assisted rites to any context seems not only premature but also
inappropriate. The author believes that those communities (social groups, nations) that for various reasons
cannot access advanced technology are excluded from technology assisted rituals; these communities
are subject to the digital divide in its declinations: gender, generational, and socioeconomic divide. The
exclusion of a portion of the world’s population from technology seems to recall what Bourdieu highlights
as the function of the rite of institution in sanctioning the passage of the human condition from one state to
another: separating the individual who lived an event not from those who did not live it, but from those who
will never live it (Bourdieu, 1998). Even though for Bourdieu the reference is not technological progress, it
is interesting to try to transfer the function of institutional rites to technology rites; to discriminate between
those who have access to them and those who, on the other hand, are excluded. This brings to light, as
illustrated in addition to the ritual of consumption among young people, the influence of technology
in determining a social hierarchy based on consumption (Baudrillard, 1970) and the possession of
technological objects (smartphones, computers, and smart devices).
In this future of which some emerging signs are already visible, rites do not seem destined to disappear,
but to change and to relocate. A technology-filled society needs rituals to structure a symbolic order and
seems to carry out this process on the one hand by incorporating and transferring consolidated rituals into
more private and less collective places and, on the other hand, by experimenting with new frontiers - one of
which is represented by the modification of the body towards a cyborg body - whose precise development
level is at the moment difficult to predict.
On the following pages we will try to highlight the boundaries and characteristics of technology assisted
rites witnessed in some relevant contexts of human action.

2 Rite and postmodernity

In the social sciences, the term ‘rite’ identifies a set of practices and knowledge that contribute
to forming the cultural models of a given society and has the aim of transmitting values and norms,
institutionalization of roles, recognition of identity and social cohesion; more specifically, a rite is a
set of formalized acts carrying a symbolic meaning, inserted into a spatial and temporal dimension,
characterized by the use of objects and the presence of a system of behaviors, languages and specific
signs (Segalen, 1998).
One of the dominant characteristics of a rite is its ability to be polysemic and adapt to social change;
in a society permeated by technology in which dimensions such as identity, relationship and work are
increasingly correlated with technological transformations, it seems interesting to analyze whether and
how technology relates to the rite and the way in which society relates to it.
The use of the terms ‘rite’ and ‘ritual’ has spread to such an extensive range of categorizations that
“the use and abuse of such words are likely to deprive them of their semantic efficiency” (Segalen, 1998: 7).
This recalls the need to define the theoretical framework within which the reflections on the relationship
between ritual and technology are inserted.
The conceptualization of the rite was initially developed in the religious sphere; for Durkheim (1912)
religion is a collective representation of adherence to society and ritual is the ceremony through which
individuals confirm their participation in the community and manifest the search for cohesion. Goffman
takes up Durkheim’s idea and reworks it on a micro-sociological level, translating the object from religion
to the cult of the individual; if Durkheim analyzes rituals within public ceremonies and demonstrations of
a civic order, Goffman senses that the constitutive rites of the sacredness of the individual and of his/her
identity lie in the processes of daily life and in the interactions that people carry out with others. Goffman
broadens the conceptual domain of ritual from the religious sphere to that of daily interaction: rituals thus
become practices that provide the common meanings of reality necessary to be able to relate with others
(Goffman, 1967; Goffman, 1969).
192   S. Operto

The comparison between the Durkheimian rite and Goffman’s conceptualization is extremely pertinent
to the theme under examination: one of the peculiarities of the relationship between rite and technology
is precisely the fact that it is focused on the systems of daily relations that individuals establish with it,
understood both as object and system of behaviors, languages and signs. Technology assisted rites make
use of technological objects, establishing relationships and practices full of meanings; the result is the
creation of their own symbolic codes, the definition of new processes of identity construction and the
formalization of systems of social recognition norms.
The peculiarity of Goffman’s thought lies not only in having identified a new field of study for rituals,
but in his conviction that the starting point for the study of the practices of interaction should not be the
individual but, precisely, the interaction; up to that moment, in fact, studies had focused on the results
of the interaction and not on how it might occur. The study of interaction, shifting the attention to the
process, focuses on the system of relations between the acts of individuals rather than on the individuals
themselves: “I assume that the proper study of interaction is not the individual and his psychology, but
rather the syntactical relations among the acts of different persons mutually present to one another”
(Goffman, 1967: 2). For Goffman, even simple everyday gestures are full of ritual meanings that imply a
complex relationship and require an integrated vision; these gestures are structured around verbal and
non-verbal configurations, involving the dimension of corporeity and establishing systems of relationship.
The body has an important role in delineating technology assisted rites: the experiments carried out
to enhance the functions of the body with prosthetics, robotics, virtual reality systems represent rites of
passage and have an impact on the ritual dimension of the body. When a body is improved with a system
of sensors, it becomes both transmitter and receiver, an increasingly malleable resource, a communication
tool that acts in the process of interaction.
Goffman’s attempt to consolidate the study of interaction practices is not an isolated attempt.
The importance of studying how an interaction could possibly occur emerges in Bateson’s work: he
formulates an approach to the study of interaction as a communication system and his main interest lies
in the organization of this system (Ruesch and Bateson, 1951). The ritual, its structure and functions are
not independent entities, but inseparable aspects of culture. In order to attempt to explain a ritual it is
necessary to refer them to the social context, whose boundaries are marked above all by communicative
processes (Bateson, 1991).
Bateson was greatly influenced by the development of the theory of information and cybernetics and
by contacts with Norbert Weiner and von Neumann (Heims, 1977); at that time technology had not yet
pervaded society, but Bateson sensed the importance of developing a model of multidisciplinary analysis
that included a comparative study of the behavior of living organisms together with how machines work.
Technology becomes the function and expression of a new epistemology; the foundation of this perspective
is the awareness not only of the interaction between the natural world and that of machines, but the
commonality determined in a system that creates a cybernetic model.
Like Bateson’s, the conceptualization of Turner’s rite is also inspired by direct anthropological
observation; while Bateson did his field work in New Guinea, Turner concentrated on the Ndembu of Zambia
(Turner, 1957), formalizing a dramaturgical model for the study of rituals. Turner demonstrates how analysis
of ritual behavior and symbolism may be used as a key to understanding social structure and processes
(Turner, 1969); speaking of van Gennep’s theory about rites of passage (van Gennep, 1960) he extends the
notion of the ‘liminal phase’ of rites of passage to a more general level, and applies it to gain understanding
of a wide range of social phenomena. The Scottish anthropologist supports the creative role of collective
rituals; specifically, rites of passage play the role of cyclically deconstructing social organization. Rituals
are now seen as arenas in which social change may emerge and be absorbed into social practice.
Social changes, according to Turner, happen in four phases. In the first phase social norms are violated;
in the second phase conflict presents the characteristics of liminality, since it is the moment of passage
between two different states of stability of the social process; in the third phase there is a restorative
action made by the system that precedes the last phase in which there is resolution of the conflict or the
legitimization of a schism between the parties in contrast (Turner, 1982).
  Human, Not Too Human: Technology, Rites, and Identity  193

In rite analysis, a state of liminality indicates that the subject is between two phases: s/he is no longer
part of the group to which s/he previously belonged but has not yet been incorporated into the group
to which s/he will belong upon completion of the process. Turner has extended this model to complex
societies by defining liminoids, since they resemble a liminal without corresponding to one, the phenomena
that take place when it is necessary to find a new cultural meaning that considers certain aspects of
social life. In contemporary societies new meanings are elaborated, particularly in the field of art where
free symbolic experimentation is possible; an individual or even an entire social group in a situation of
liminality possesses cognitive, creative abilities and the potential to change typically frozen in a precise
social position (Turner, 1986).
It is interesting to anticipate how the relationship between ritual and technology is also expressed in
the artistic and creative fields, sectors in which the liminoid character of these phenomena emerges with
particular force. Many performing artists, as described below, use technology in their works and some of
them directly on their bodies; among others, Stelarc, the performance artist described below, is famous
for amplifying the functionality of his body with medical instruments, prosthetics, robotics, and virtual
reality systems. Bodies modified in this way, poised between human and artificial nature, assume a liminoid
personality, placing themselves on the border between the previous state of the human body and the
following state of cyborgs.
To conclude this brief review, it seems useful to summarize how the temporal development of studies
and conceptualizations on rites and rituals has produced two effects: the transition of the ritual from the
religious to the secular dominion and the extension of the range of action of the rite from a social macro level
to the micro level. The study of interaction must not, however, let us forget the function of rites performed at
the macro level; the relationship between rituality and political power is recognizable in nation-states and
in regimes, specifically authoritarian regimes, for which the use of rituals is particularly functional to the
achievement of cohesion of national identity, creation of consensus, regulation and social control (Kertzer,
1988).
For the purposes of this contribution, the author believes that she focuses on the micro-international
approach of the rite, leaving the functionalist conceptualization in the background. The analysis carried
out orientates the author to place the relationship between ritual and technology in a phase of passage
of the social process and, more generally, of human evolution of which some signs and symbols can be
glimpsed; the liminoid personality that characterizes technology assisted rituals seems to suggest the need
to find new defining domains to understand these phenomena, while waiting for future developments to
open the way to further and more precise reflections.

3 Being born and growing up: rites of passage and technology

In order to show the areas in which the nature of technology assisted rites seem to emerge with greater
symbolic evidence, it seems particularly effective to adopt the perspective of the course of life; we will
therefore try to analyze in the following paragraph how an individual models the relationship with
technology from birth to the end of life, following the evolution of technology assisted rites in different
social groups.
Today, it is impossible to talk about processes of identity construction without talking about the
Internet; beyond the schism between those who enthusiastically highlight its advantages and those who,
on the other hand, focus on the risks of an uncontrollable development of the Internet, it is unquestionable
that the diffusion of the Internet and especially of new media have caused profound changes in everyday life
processes. The current generations born with technology use social networks daily to communicate, inform
themselves, relate to each other, fall in love, let themselves go, quarrel, and make peace: the digital space
of the network is the stage (Goffman, 1959) where many of the interaction activities that human beings have
carried out, and continue to carry out, in physical space.
When does the first contact between human beings and technology occur? In the past, every new birth
was presented to the community through codified rituals, such as the Feast of Amphorae in ancient Greece,
194   S. Operto

the lustrum in ancient Rome, the rite of Christian baptism, the Namakarana ceremony in Hinduism. Given
the high infant mortality that occurred especially within the first weeks of life, these ceremonies were
postponed by a suitable time to increase the chances of survival.
Currently, digital identity precedes physical identity; it is not unusual to come across prenatal
sonograms on social networks that show the progress of gestation and the newborn in its stages of prenatal
development. Today’s parents are increasingly building digital footprints for their children prior to and
from the moment they are born.According to the research conducted by AVG (2010), almost a quarter (23%)
of children begin their digital lives when parents upload their prenatal ultrasound scans to the Internet; the
average digital birth of children happens at around six months with a third (33%) of children’s photos and
information posted online within weeks of being born; 81% of children under the age of two currently have
some kind of digital profile or footprint, with images of them posted online; 10% of babies and toddlers
have an email address created for them by their parents, and five percent have a social network profile.
Leaving aside the implications in terms of security and privacy, these acts are configured as real
ritual ceremonies in which public and private space tend to blend and overlap; the community, in the
anthropological sense of communitas (Turner, 1969), made up of those who use these digital contents,
attend the event as a ceremony held in a physical place, through comments, congratulations, messages
of good wishes, and symbolic gifts. The ritual of birth is thus realized in a place and in a time marked by
technology assisted social networks.
The technological community defines the community of belonging with precise rituals of access; these
communitas can assume on social networks the contours of more or less closed groups whose members
share the same language, condition and system of rules; the members, also subjected to rigid ceremonies of
access and initiation, share stories and experiences, exchange opinions and advice, expressing the need to
recognize themselves in the same condition of liminality.
The network also modifies the distinction between public and private space; while in traditional rituals
the existence of a public space in which a ritual is celebrated is fundamental, in technology assisted rites
this distinction fades away. The practice of sharing elements of privacy through network channels breaks
down public-private boundaries in a continuum with no clear boundaries.
Domestic spaces are also changing: the smart home, the intelligent and digital home, represents a space
that transcends the categories inside/outside and work/home (Spigel, 2001). In these spaces individuals
continue their evolutionary process of domestication, the process of appropriation and use of technologies
articulated in four phases: appropriation, objectification, incorporation, and conversion (Silverstone et al.,
1992). One of the first rites of passage is the arrival of the first smartphone.
When you reach a certain age, which is shrinking every year, or when you reach goals such as the
transition from kindergarten to primary school or other occasions (birthday, first communion, Christmas,
school goals), one of the most popular gifts is a smartphone. All you have to do is walk the streets to meet
children with technological devices in their hands every day; the current new generation “is the first
generation for whom Internet access has been constantly available, right there in their hands” (Twenge,
2017:4).
Experts warn against the risks of overexposure and the uncontrolled and premature use of these
devices; some consider the age of three to be the minimum limit to be able to use digital screens, since until
this age the child’s interest is still strongly oriented towards sensory-motor activities. Parents, on the other
hand, often identify and appreciate the possibility of using their smartphone to exercise remote control of
security and protection over their children, extending the function of the baby monitor, a system used to
remotely listen to sounds made by an infant.
The psychological, sociological and anthropological dynamics that are activated online are widely
studied and are outside the objectives of this contribution to deepen the opinions for and against the
intense use of devices by young people, both for recreational and educational purposes; instead, we will try
to highlight whether we can recognize some behaviors acted out on the network and with the network that
may take the form of technology assisted rituals, because formalized and bearers of symbolic dimensions.
In 2016, the time spent by the very young online exceeded that spent in front of the television and
  Human, Not Too Human: Technology, Rites, and Identity  195

the increase in time spent on the web concerned a considerable proportion of boys and girls under the
age of four (OFCOM 2016). The activities carried out by the younger generations on the web are the most
varied, but all characterized by a common factor: the online experience is configured without interruption
compared to that lived in the physical world (Prensky, 2012, Twenge, 2017) unlike those who were not born
with the web and socialized in adulthood.
For young people there are no differences between what happens in the physical world and activities
on the web, but a continuous transference from one environment to another. If young people seize the
opportunities offered by the network in their path of identity construction, speaking of risks, what happens
on the web can also cause, unfortunately, negative consequences in the physical2 world.
Young people immersed in this place experience the relationship with others in its dimensions of
conflict and collaboration, discovering affectivity, sexuality and passing from childhood to puberty through
rites of passage, including digital ones. One of these is represented by the arrival of the first smartphone;
this celebratory act takes on the characters of the ritual because it occurs at events such as the transition
from one school level to another. But not only by taking possession of the smartphone, the process of
symbolic characterization begins between the individual and the technological object that will then affect
the relationship and interaction with the other.
The individual thus autonomously and independently accesses the contents and tools of the network.
Using the parental control settings, it is possible to limit or monitor how they access the Internet, but these
measures gradually become less effective.
Another technology assisted rite of passage takes place through the smartphone: subscription to social
networks. This rite represents the first conscious and voluntary ceremony to expose one’s digital identity
to the whole world in the true sense of the word. Platforms have a minimum age for use in their usage
regulations, but there are known tricks to circumvent the controls set up by the systems. Faced with the
progressive emancipation and empowerment of children in the use of digital devices, parents are often
faced with a feeling of educational obsolescence and the need to find a space for mediation to regulate the
times and ways of access to the network, the presence of these two elements can generate the progressive
feeling of loss of control over their children’s online lives.
Early registration for social networks, access to videogames, applications and platforms unknown to
parents make these events more invisible to the adult world, taking the form of rites of passage that do not
require recognition by external authorities and that, on the contrary, are self-celebrated by the individual.
The technology assisted ritual takes place in a context of growing individualism of young people, a
phenomenon demonstrated by many studies (Twenge, 2017); if on the one hand adolescence is prolonged
by delaying the traditional rites of transition - the separation from the family, starting to work, making a
new family, the birth of a child – the dimension of individuality grows and develops. The reduction of the
collective dimension thus favors the diffusion of technology assisted rites that take on private and individual
contours. The sacral care with which young people prepare and update their profiles on social networks,
select and modify images, monitor the trend of their popularity indexes escape the world of adults who
remain excluded from these rituals.
Young people’s ability to restrict adult access to their online lives can occur in several ways. An
example is through the creation of closed lists or groups on social networks; this recalls the definition of
the background (Goffman, 1959), the cohesion space in which the group prepares the public representation,
a space to which the audience group should not have access. Exclusion from the group’s cohesive digital
places can also affect peers, with serious consequences for the victim; exclusion is a very serious type of
cyberbullying and occurs through the intentional exclusion of a peer from online groups, chats, interactive
games or other environments protected by access credentials.
To be readmitted in cases of exclusion or to enter the group for the first time the performance group
(Goffman, 1959) may require the completion of an initiation rite. The passage from childhood to adolescence

2  Think of all the risks inherent in the uncontrolled use of the network such as cyberbullying, cyberstalking, grooming, hate
speech; in 2017, one in three teenagers said they had been harassed online with the gender gap that affects girls more likely to
be victims (Pew Research Center, 2017).
196   S. Operto

takes place in this way on the web with formalized rituals. The initiation rite carried out on the web can take
the form of a ‘test of courage’ or a symbolic act, required by the same cohort or by the immediately larger
cohort to join the group. In contemporary tribes, these rehearsals take the form of behaviors or acts carried
out in the real world, then exhibited on the digital stage to prove that they have been passed. Some of these
tests have increasing levels of hazard or may be associated with unlawful behavior.
Another interesting area where technology assisted initiation dynamics take place is videogames. Some
videogames present narrations with strongly initiatory characterizations. Many of these are structured to
potentially allow anyone, as an alias, to complete the initiatory path of the protagonist and allow, through
access to a variety of proposals, to renew the rites of passage each time, improving their training process.
The difference between traditional initiation rites and those experimented with videogames is not limited,
however, only to thi.: In traditional rites, at the end of the rite of passage, the individual guarantees the
social perpetration of the rules. In videogames, instead, the purpose of virtual initiation is not collective
in front of an authority recognized as such but remains in the private sphere. Once again, the element of
privatization of the rites emerges, which seems to characterize the present epoch.
The consumer market contributes to the desire for technology among young people, which defines
their social position; in this sense, consumer objects, technological ones, play an initiatory and, in some
cases, even sacral role. Vice versa, the lack of possession of this or that object, not respecting the sacredness
of the initiatory gesture causes exclusion from the group and positioning in a transitional condition that
lasts until the possession of the object itself.
The ritual of consumption is expressed above all through the form of possession rituals; through
possession rituals the individual appropriates the symbolic properties of the object: “If the cultural meaning
has been transferred, consumers are able to use goods as markers of time, space, and occasion. Consumers
draw on the ability of these goods to discriminate between such cultural categories as class, status, gender,
age, occupation, and lifestyle” (McCracken, 1986:79).
Thus, the function of the ritual of institution (Bourdieu, 1998) mediated by technology is fulfilled in
determining social hierarchies based either on the possession of technological objects, as a precondition
for access, or on belonging to digital groups, a condition determined by the young members themselves,
regulated by norms and defined by self-celebrated rites. By taking possession of the technological object,
the domestication process is completed. In the conversion phase, the construction of the symbolic meanings
and values associated with the technological object takes place, and the subsequent transfer of these
into daily interactions. The rite of transition has been accomplished: entering the digital community, the
individual confirms his belonging to the new peer group.

4 More human than human: technology, body and life cycle

Human beings have always tried to intervene to enhance the functions and capabilities of their bodies,
reduce and prevent the process of aging and deterioration and fight death, understood as the end of the
life cycle. Biological development follows a mostly linear path, the social one is instead characterized by
culturally determined phases; the body, as a communication tool, has a central role in the relationship
between social and individual identity; the social meanings attributed to bodily performances are at the
same time internalized and externalized, exerting a strong influence: “There is, then, a body symbolism,
an idiom of individual appearances and gestures that tends to call forth in the actor what it calls forth in the
others” (Goffman, 1969: 33).
In recent years technology has been changing the body: medical robotics, bio robotics, robotic
prostheses, exoskeletons for mobility, assistive technology are changing social perception and body
concept. The body, then, becomes a terminal emitter and receiver whose boundaries and ritual meanings
of youth, adulthood and old age, strength and weakness, man and woman fade into a continuum with no
clear boundaries.
It is interesting to note that many body empowerment technologies were born to help people with
disabilities and not to enhance ‘normal’ functions; these people have become precursors of a border space,
  Human, Not Too Human: Technology, Rites, and Identity  197

placed in a condition of liminality between human body and modified body, between humanity and post-
humanity: physical bodies become technology modified social bodies.
Let us analyze some cases starting from the athlete Oscar Pistorius and his prostheses in carbon fiber
to compensate for the lack of both peroneal bones from birth, continuing with Aimee Mullins who, with her
cheetah legs, has helped to redefine the concept of beauty. Mullins was born without fibulae in both legs;
to give her independent mobility, doctors amputated both her legs below the knee on her first birthday. By
age two, she had learned to walk on prosthetic legs. Outfitted with woven carbon-fiber prostheses that were
modeled after the hind legs of a cheetah, she is an influential voice for her reflections on the concept of
beauty and how it is possible to turn adversity into an opportunity.
What happens when a man is merged with a computer? This is the question that Kevin Warwick, a
British engineer known for his studies on direct interfaces between computer systems and the human
nervous system, and his team at the department of Cybernetics, University of Reading intend to answer with
‘Project Cyborg’. The first experiment was in 1998. Kevin Warwick underwent an operation to surgically
implant a silicon chip transponder in his forearm. This experiment allowed a computer to monitor how he
moved, using a unique identifying signal emitted by the implanted chip. He could operate doors, lights,
heaters and other computers without lifting a finger (Warwick et al., 2003).
From a medical and rehabilitative point of view, the strengthening of the body through technology has
expanded and developed in the artistic field, a symbolic space in which a freer experimentation is possible;
different performance artists have produced experimentations on their own bodies, stimulating reflections
of legal nature on the criteria to define whether an entity is a human individual or a cyborg.
Neil Harbisson has suffered since birth from a disease that prevents him from seeing. To ‘feel’ colors,
he uses a ‘cyborg antenna’, a device implanted in his head. In 2016, Harbisson became famous for being the
first cyborg to be legally recognized by a government; the photo on his UK passport shows him wearing his
device, effectively sanctioning it as part of his face (Harbisson and Ribas, 2018).
Stelarc, born Stelios Arcadiou but who legally changed his name in 1972, is a performance artist who
has amplified his body. He has used medical instruments, prosthetics, robotics, virtual reality systems,
the internet and biotechnology to engineer intimate and involuntary interfaces with the body. He explores
alternate anatomical architectures with augmented and extended body constructs. In 2007 Stelarc had an
ear created in the laboratory with his cells implanted on his left arm; the project also includes the insertion
of a Bluetooth microphone to allow people to listen to what is perceived by this ear. With this project, called
‘Ear on Arm’, he won the Ars Electronica Golden Nica in the category ‘Hybrid Art’ in 2010 (Stelarc, 2018).
Moon Ribas is a Catalan artist known for developing Seismic Sense, an online seismic sensor implanted
in her feet that allows her to perceive earthquakes taking place anywhere on the planet through vibrations
in real time. The seismic sensor also allows her to feel moonquakes, the seismic activity on the Moon.
According to Ribas, adding this new sense allows her to be physically on Earth while her feet feel the Moon,
so in a way, she is on Earth and in space at the same time (Harbisson and Ribas, 2018).
To this day, the cases cited are individual and limited, but they appear significant in emerging
phenomena that stimulate new questions: what is the boundary between the physical body and the
technology modified social body? Is the age criterion still valid for determining an individual’s age?
Age is a relative and multidimensional concept; social age, defined through the different phases of the
life cycle and the rites that characterize its passages and transitions, is now integrated with the cybernetic
age, expressed by the number of parts of the body replaced or integrated or the type of amplified functionality.
In the middle of the last century Wiener, the mathematician famous for his studies on cybernetics, wrote
that the physical identity of an individual does not consist of the matter of which he is formed and that the
human form can be transmitted and reproduced, but that at that time it was not known how to reproduce it
over short distances (Wiener, 1948).
The modified body, thanks to technology, thus changes the parameters of the rituals in which it takes
part, redefining the perception of young, adult and old, beautiful and ugly, strong and weak, man and
woman. Will this produce a society without divisions? In 1985, Donna Haraway published for the first time
the ‘Cyborg Manifesto.’ She saw in technology radical potentialities of change in a perspective that she
defined as postmodern feminism. The cyborg is the central figure of her theory.As a hybrid of machine and
198   S. Operto

organism it allows one to overcome the dichotomies between human and mechanical, nature and culture,
male and female, normal and alien, psyche and matter.
Technology intervenes not only in the processes of transformation of the individual physical body, but
also of the body immersed in a system of communication with other bodies. What if these ‘other’ bodies are
not human but robots with anthropomorphic features? How do the rituals of interaction between a human
being and a robot come about?
Robotics presents many interesting insights into the role of the body in interaction rituals and has
developed the field of Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), the study of interactions between humans and
robots. HRI is a multidisciplinary field with contributions from human-computer interaction, artificial
intelligence, robotics, natural language understanding, design, and social sciences.
The robot returns the body to technology; if the relationship with the computer is configured as the
relationship with a screen and a keyboard, robotics, in particular social robotics, broadens the debate on
the need to address the problem of the “body” of the robot intended to interact with the bodies of human
beings: understanding of the processes and mechanisms of human-machine interaction must necessarily
be based on an understanding of the processes and mechanisms of human social interaction (Nicolosi,
2011).
In fact, every technological object is always a social and technical phenomenon, that is, it is the result
of a technical and social co-creation; from this point of view, a robot has a ‘body’ that, like the human
body, acts in a communicative context. The human being interacts with the world through the body to
some extent even before through the brain and this principle is particularly important for social robotics,
for all the components emerging in the ritual of interaction and in “face games” (Goffman, 1969): facial
expression, body posture, gaze direction, voice, and mimicry. Referring to robotics, therefore, it is necessary
to introduce the element of corporeity in the man-machine ritual interaction.
The context in which research activities on humanoids are most advanced and developed is that of
Japan. At the end of the nineties, the first humanoid robots were presented to the public and since then
there have been repeated attempts to reproduce not only human functions and movements, but also the
appearance of a human being, including facial expressions, a very complex3 objective.
Unlike the Japanese market, the European domestic market still sees a prevalence of sales of vacuum
cleaners and lawnmowers and a strong presence of amusement robots (toys and robotic kits). Applications
in passenger transport, assistance for the disabled and surveillance are starting to spread.
What implications will this have for the near future? What about rituals? At present, empirical evidence
is very limited, but some signs are already worthy of analysis. In 2017, the Chinese engineer Zheng Jiajia
married the robot he himself built, even though the marriage has no legal value now. In October of the
same year, the robot Sofia became a legal citizen of Saudi Arabia, the first robot in the world to achieve
such a status. November 2017, Shibuya Mirai received his residence from the Tokyo district; the entity in
question is an artificial intelligence, a bot4 planned to be a seven-year-old child (Shibuya, 2018). Vital, an
acronym for Validating Investment Tool for Advancing Life sciences, is a member of the board of directors
of a Hong Kong company; Vital is not a human being but an artificial intelligence program and its “opinion”
is considered in the decision-making process.
The ritual context in which nobody, until a few months ago, could have imagined a robot acting in a
context strongly imbued with symbols is that of religious rites. In 2017, on the occasion of the Life Ending
Industry Expo in Tokyo, an annual event dedicated to funeral products and services, the Japanese company
Nissei Eco presented a special version of the Pepper robot produced by the company SoftBank: the robot
for celebrating Buddhist funerary ceremonies. Shifting demographics have pushed the funeral industry to
experiment with new services; as explained by the developers, the idea comes from the fact that in Japan

3  Masairo Mori in 1970 hypothesized that the process of anthropomorphizing robots has a breaking point in terms of accep-
tance by people when a high resemblance to a human being, but not perfect, causes a reaction of rejection (uncanny valley).
This is also why some robot builders prefer more artifact features than human features.
4  In computer science, bots are an algorithm able to analyze and understand the language of people who interact with them
and learn through machine learning.
  Human, Not Too Human: Technology, Rites, and Identity  199

the number of Buddhist monks is decreasing and ceremonies are very expensive: “Dying in Japan doesn’t
come cheap. Funeral services can cost millions of yen and buying burial plots can cost even more. Changing
lifestyles and the rapidly aging population have increased demand for more convenient and cheaper ways
to send off loved ones” (Martin, 2017).
What is the reaction of public opinion to this? Ongoing research (Eurobarometer 2012, 2017; Operto
2017) shows that many people fear technological progress, even though they are at the same time fascinated
by it; this ambivalence is associated with the fear of ff v f f their autonomy, of helplessly watching the
progressive loss of freedom and, more generally, of observing the erosion of the concept of humanity itself.
Robotics responds to the lack of time and resources, two central factors in human life; from this perspective
many people recognize in robotics the opportunity to free up a share of time committed by humans to
activities considered dangerous or repetitive and boring.
The areas in which technology seems to influence human nature are many and certainly deserve to
continue to be observed soon; the last reflections in this paper concern the last frontier that man has always
sought to reach: immortality.

5 New Pharaohs? Rites of immortality among virtual cemeteries

and hibernation
The theme of death concludes these reflections on the relationship between ritual and technology. Fear of
death is linked to the fear of loss of identity and funeral rites become one of the strategies of immortality
that sanction the passage for the living from pain to survival perpetuated through memory.
The issue of death has also changed with technological development. Our digital identities survive our
bodies destined to end, at least for now, their life cycle. The web guarantees an imperishable iconography;
the diffusion of the new media has marked a real change of paradigm, making it evident that an analysis of
the social aspects of death must be accompanied by a study of the dynamics of use of the new instruments
of communication. Think of the fall of the twin towers in 2001. Perhaps it is the paradigm of the first ritual
of sharing a distributed collective death.
Funeral rites survive the restlessness of time in traditional forms; however, alongside the real cemeteries
new forms are emerging to respond to the demands of postmodernity. One of these forms can be found in
virtual cemeteries. A virtual cemetery is a telematic place where you can “bury” and commemorate the
dead in various ways, free or for a fee. From an iconographic point of view, there are similarities with real
cemeteries: they are divided into zones, organized into sectors, you can deposit flowers on the graves and
leave thoughts.
Online memorial websites have existed since at least 1995, when “The World-Wide Cemetery (www.
cemetery.org) was founded in Canada and Web Healing (www.webhealing.org) in the United States. Over
time, these online spaces have appropriated new media and communication possibilities to develop much
more elaborate memorial platforms” (Hutchings, 2016:48).
At the ritual level, the substitution of the actual body and the information is produced; all the data of
the deceased are shared, accessible and recalled during the virtual commemorations, characterized, unlike
the real ones, also by a certain degree of interactivity.
If we extend the concept, we can talk about memory technology; from a technical point of view a
virtual cemetery is nothing more than an interactive computer structure. The implications in terms of rites
are relevant, however, given the possibility of attending the ceremony offered at the same time to people
physically present around the world, not a displacement of the ritual but a technology assisted distributed
ritual, a distributed socialization of memory no longer limited to family members, but extended to the
community.
Social networks have specific procedures to manage your accounts after death.Facebook, for example,
allows you to indicate in advance if you want to commemorate your account after death or delete it so that
it is presumed permanent. The commemorative account remains active and is managed by an heir contact,
who must obviously be designated in life, allowing friends and family to collect and share memories of
200   S. Operto

the deceased. According to various estimates, there are more than thirty million dead people on Facebook
alone, whose account continues to be present and, in some cases, even active, of course in the hands of
others. The rites of dealing with and sharing death have changed and specific manuals have also been
developed to manage one’s digital “survival” after physical death.
On the other hand, one of human beings’ dreams is immortality, pursued through memory or body
conservation. Also, in terms of immortality, emerging technologies offer the possibility of reflecting on
some current trends: the most interesting concerns cryopreservation. Scattered in some countries of the
world, in particular in the United States and Russia, some companies offer the opportunity to cryopreserve
their bodies after death to try to win the challenge of immortality. The body is stored at about one hundred
and sixty degrees below zero, the blood is replaced by cryoprotective substances that are supposed to stop
the decay of cells. The cost for hibernating only the brain is almost one hundred thousand dollars, for the
whole body it is more than double that figure.
Those who hibernate trust that technology will awaken them, but for many scientists this is currently
not based on any scientific evidence. If this is the case, human beings will surely be able to codify special
rites to celebrate these awakenings.

6 Conclusions
The analyses conducted show that the ritual is not intended to disappear but to change; to change forms
and places. Postmodern societies have undergone profound modifications, but the conceptual category of
ritual continues to be applicable to many human behaviors and it would be a mistake to support the idea
that rituals are weakening.
In technologically advanced societies there are some practices with the basic characteristics of the
rite: the symbolic dimension, the formalization, the presence of a system of behaviors, specific languages​​
and signs and, finally, the use of objects. Technological objects connect individuals by realizing the rites of
interaction; at the same time, and increasingly in the future, technological objects will be connected to each
other through planetary networks, changing the shape of cities, the domestic dimension, and the rhythms
of daily life.
Technology assisted rites have some peculiar characteristics: on the one hand they are private rituals
and, on the other hand, distributed. The concept of privatization of rituals recalls the transition from the
collective to the individual: the movement of many rituals within the home - think of the interaction rituals
supported by technology that take place in full physical isolation - is connected to the more general crisis
of the concept of community. On the other hand, the rite to be recognized as such does not necessarily have
to assume a collective character; even individual acts can be of a ritual nature, provided that a normative
element is always found (Mauss, 1968).
At the same time rites are transferred, they are distributed to other places, digital spaces where the
concept of community takes on a different meaning. On these new ceremonial stages, technology assisted
rites seem not to need the formalization by the authority to be realized. It could be argued that technology
defines the development of rituals that do not require a celebrating authority: rituals are self-celebrated by
the community that recognizes them as such.
The signs of the displacement of the rite from a ceremonial protocol intended as formal public
recognition by an authority in charge of its control, to its progressive privatization emerges from the
presence of rituals characterized not by territorial belonging or power relations, but by common elements,
sharing, and identification processes.
However, it does not seem to be the technological device that determines the rite; it is technology that
favors the production and circulation of symbols that define ritual behaviors.
Technology assisted rites concern not only the relationships between human beings but also between
human beings and objects, for example robots. A technologically advanced society, as has been illustrated,
transfers consolidated rites - marriage, funeral, commemoration of the dead - into new contexts, thus
expressing the need to acquire a symbolic system.
  Human, Not Too Human: Technology, Rites, and Identity  201

The technology assisted rite is simultaneously private and distributed, located in a place not necessarily
characterized by the physical presence of all those who assist. The community that participates in this
dramaturgy attends the ritual carried out in private for a transferred public; privatization and displacement
are therefore two apparently opposite aspects that seem to have found a way to live together thanks to
technology.
Some of the cases observed are still numerically limited but seem to be precursors of emerging
phenomena. Soon, it will be interesting to continue with the analysis of the configurations that rites will
assume in the human social system.

Acknowledgments: This work is supported by DISFOR, University of Genoa. The author thanks the
anonymous reviewers and editors for their valuable comments and suggestions.

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