American and Technological Gods

I'm not a big reader. In fact, over the course of my life, I've probably read less than fifteen books that haven't been assigned for a class, and most of those were technological teach-yourself sort of publications, like Flash CS3 for Dummies. It's not that I'm opposed to books. Given my interest in music, film and various other forms of art, I would actually peg myself as a fairly avid reader if I didn't know better, and I definitely would like to read more. The problem is finding the motivation to actually sit down and do it. I mean, watching a movie takes about two hours. But a book? More like two weeks (I'm a slow reader). That's a whole lot of time to devote to anything, and I'm usually just not willing (or able) to make the commitment.

So, last week, when I starting having this extended, highly abnormal urge to read, I didn't want to let it go to waste. I Amazon'ed House of Leaves (which is brilliant, and you should probably read it) to get some recommendations for my next literary undertaking. There were a few frontrunners - Survivor: A Novel (by the author of Fight Club), John Dies at the End, Clown Girl, and American Gods - and after discussing the matter with a few well-read friends that have excellent taste, I decided on Neil Gaiman's American Gods.

The next day (Wednesday, who is coincidentally one of the main characters in the novel), while waiting for some flyers to be copied, I wandered into the HUB's bookstore, and surprisingly, on the bottom shelf of the fiction wall, there was a single copy awaiting me. I was a little disappointed by the synopsis, and the first few pages that I skimmed in the store weren't very promising, but I decided to trust the judgment of my friends and purchased it anyway.

I'm currently 200-ish pages into it, and can certainly say I'm not disappointed. It's a witty, thoughtful, and delightfully hallucinogenic novel, complete with flame-spewing buffalo heads, a 7-foot tall, bar-fighting leprechaun, a man-eating vagina, and a high-stakes checkers match that could result in one of the characters having his skull crushed with a sledgehammer. Definitely a good call picking this one.

But this is a technology-driven blog, right? So, why does this book (wonderful as it may be) have a place here? Well, as the plot unfolds, and the pieces start falling into place, it's become apparent that Wednesday (Odin/Woden, the chief god in Norse mythology) is "recruiting American manifestations of the Old Gods of ancient mythology, whose powers have waned as their believers have decreased in number, to participate in an epic battle against the New American Gods, manifestations of modern life and technology (e.g. the Internet, media, & modern means of transport)." [taken from Wikipedia]

With the exception of my time reading E.M. Forster's short story, "The Machine Stops", I'd never given much consideration to the similarities between humanity's interaction with technology and that of the gods (both past and present), but there are certainly connections to be drawn between the relationships. We rely on technology. We look to it for explanations of our situations, solutions to our problems, and predictions of the future. We devote time and resources to it. We celebrate it, and even speak about it in a manner reminiscent of a religious sermon. In at least one instance, it's even been suggested to be responsible for the creation of the universe. The more I think of it, the only significant difference I can come up with between humans' relationship with technology versus gods/religion is that technology doesn't offer any kind of afterlife. But, I'm sure that, at some point, even that has been associated with technology.

After going through the above paragraph and realizing just how similar technology and gods/religion really are, I believe this would be a worthwhile topic to delve further into. For now, though, I think I'm going to sleep (it is 3:30, after all). Perhaps after getting further in the book and having some time to consider the idea more, I'll revisit this topic.