Some important literature to support TUX research

As I mentioned earlier this year, in my description of the alt.chi paper I’m going to present at the CHI 2019 Conference next month, I am concerned about what I see as the almost complete lack of citations of transcendent experience literature in the human-computer interaction (HCI) research on transcendent experiences facilitated by technology. A number of studies of techno-spirituality cover transcendent user experiences (TUXs), but strikingly few of them cite any literature on the pertinent experiences or attempt to define the experiences of interest.

To help address this situation, I have created a resource of literature (mostly research papers) that were of particular value to my PhD research and that I think might help other researchers understand and/or define transcendent (user) experiences. By no means does my list does include all of the literature on any of these topics — and what’s there as of this writing is just a start — but I hope it will help move things forward.

I’ve created this resource as a separate site, not part of this one (which is mostly a blog). I’ve done this to keep separate the personal (this one) from the strictly informational (the literature resource).

You’ll find the literature resource at transcendhance.wordpress.com/literature/

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Note: I use “transcendent experience” as a general term for the type of experience that involves a feeling of deep connection with something greater than oneself. These experiences are called by many other names, including spiritual experience, peak experience, and religious experience. Transcendent experiences may or may not be religious. See my PhD thesis for a more in-depth discussion of the terminology.