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Saudi Arabian Mobile Phones
The Islamic Saudi Mobile Phone has a number of unusual, built-in features to serve the religious needs of its intended audience - faithful Muslims. It will provide Qibla direction as well as prayer times in over 5,000 cities worldwide, and should be available at the end of the month.
It joins a number of cell phone products that are already made for the Islamic community:
(From Ikone Mobile Phone)
In his marvelous awardwinning book Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny created a world drawn from Hindu spirituality - a world in which reincarnation really worked. In the novel, he wrote about a pray-machine that could retrieve souls (the electrical brain image) from the electromagnetic field surrounding the planet:
The high-frequency prayers were directed upward through the atmosphere and out beyond it, passing into that golden cloud ... which is seen as a bronze rainbow at night and where the red sun becomes orange at midday.Yama tended the pray-machine and the giant metal lotus he had set atop the monastery roof turned in its sockets. For six days he had offered many kilowatts of prayer, but the static kept him from being heard on high.
The novel contains other devices that are a fascinating confluence of religiosity and technology; it won a Hugo for best novel in 1967.
Thanks to Textually.org for great details on this story.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 1/12/2005)
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