We are currently experiencing strikingly rapid developments in technology and science, reshaping global interconnectedness and cultures. As part of the AAR annual theme of Future/s, this session considers perspectives on how the digital world and advancements in technology have influenced Asian American religious sensibilities, especially as a function of digital diasporas.
In the short stories “Lena” and “Driver,” qntm depicts a near-future world in which the invention of whole brain emulation has given rise to the “workloading” industry, in which capitalist firms extract cognitive labor from “virtual images” of scanned human brains. Reading “Lena” and “Driver” alongside Asian Americans and the Spirit of Racial Capitalism by Jonathan Tran, I argue that the pursuit of artificial general intelligence (AGI) by capitalist firms emerges from the economic system of racial capitalism, in which “to claim a racial identity or to have one claimed of you is to be submitted to seasoned processes of racial commodification, indexed racially for use and used with racist justification.” To this end, I compare qntm’s depiction of a post-AGI capitalist economy with real-world paradigms of racial capitalism, like the H-1B visa system, which has enabled many thousands of Asian knowledge workers to immigrate to the United States.
This paper explores the theological themes from the 2025 Tony Award Best Musical “Maybe Happy Ending.” The production, originally starring Filipino American Darren Criss and Chinese American Helen J. Shen, tells the story of two retired “helperbots” in a futuristic Seoul, Korea who go on an adventure and fall in love. Through the lenses of techno-orientalism and the figure of the cyborg, this paper explores theological anthropology and eschatological thinking present in the show’s libretto as it pertains to futurity and its inextricability from finitude.
Asian North American religious life is increasingly shaped within AI-mediated digital places structured by algorithmic platforms, social media, and generative technologies. For Generation Z in particular, these environments function as sites of moral formation, belonging, and authority that extend across the Pacific. This paper examines how transpacific Asian and Asian American Christian communities in the United States and Hong Kong negotiate these digital places and what these negotiations reveal about Asian North American religious futures. Drawing on qualitative interviews with Gen Z participants and religious leaders, the paper analyzes how AI-shaped digital life reshapes ethical discernment, communal authority, and intergenerational relations under conditions of migration, racialization, and political precarity. Conceptually, the paper advances “digital place” as an analytic for transpacific Asian North American religious studies, illuminating how religion is reconfigured through technological circulation rather than bounded national contexts.
| Myrna Perez | sheldonm@ohio.edu | View |