For eleven days, the Nuremberg metropolitan region was all about the digital future. Under the festival’s defining theme, ‘Recode the Future’ 220 events and 750 speakers brought together over 18,000 participants. From the spectacular opening event featuring cyborg pioneer Neil Harbisson and Ecosia founder Christian Kroll at the Meistersingerhalle to the Bavarian Digital Summit at the Germanisches Nationalmuseum, one thing became clear: the region is shaping the digital transformation actively, critically and collaboratively.
For us at the Bavarian Research Centre for Interreligious Discourse (BaFID), NUEDIGITAL 2026 provided the ideal platform to explore a central question of our time: How are digitalisation, artificial intelligence and transhumanism changing our understanding of religion, ethics and what it means to be human?
Our article: ‘Silicon Salvation – The Reinvention of the Sacred in Code, Anime and Games’
On 30 June 2026, we hosted a three-part exploration of our post-humanist future at the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences (WiSo) at FAU in Nuremberg. Before an interested audience comprising members of the tech community, academics and pop culture enthusiasts, three talks examined the intersections between technology and religion:
- Welcome to the Age of the (Robo-)Messiah (Ramy Abdin, M.A.) A religious studies perspective on transhumanist visions and the myth of the cyborg. The lecture examined technocratic utopian visions of the future and the religious connotations of technological acceleration.
- Between Spirit, AI, Gods, and Cyborgs (Jan Gehm, M.A.) An analysis of Japanese anime and their interweaving of high-tech and spirituality. The talk highlighted how modern media address questions of meaning, identity, and new images of God in the age of artificial intelligence.
- Mankind Tuned: What Cyborgs and Video Games Have to Do with Religion (Dr. Nathanael Riemer) From classics such as Syndicate to current titles, the lecture analyzed the ethical and religious implications of digital body optimization in gaming culture and raised the critical question of a looming division within society (‘mankind divided’).
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3/3A digital future requires interfaith and ethical reflection
The festival has shown that artificial intelligence and technological progress are far more than mere technical challenges. For us, the motto ‘Recode the Future’ also means re-examining and helping to shape the ethical, cultural and religious foundations of our society in the digital age.