If we want to normalize letting long term support people call themselves tech priests I'd very much appreciate it.

"What were your duties at your last position?" "Performing the daily ministrations and singing the praise of the machine god."

Walk down the rows of cubicles chanting "Nonne avertis et conare iterum?" (best I could translate "have you tried turning it off and on again" to latin)

As an archivist/librarian-programmer, I'm totally here for calling myself a tech priestess.

Cold

Nothing makes me feel more like a wizard than learning some new command line skills. Just string together some short, seemingly indecipherable symbols, and... magic!

So today I find out my job title is tech priest. I was happy with necromancer before. Does it come with a pay rise?

Not at all, but a status increase for sure.

Not familiar with 40k. Was it a similar idea to nuclear-power-as-religion from Foundation?

Not far off. The “golden age” of humanity was shattered long ago, with the mortal wounding of the god emperor, and knowledge of most of the greatest technology was lost.Millennia later, a cult has grown up that both worships and maintains technology as having machine spirits, which are somehow linked to the machine god itself. That god may or may not be the same or related to the god emperor of mankind, depending on the interpretation.

Honestly the lore of w40k is quite fun to read, if you’re into dystopian and fantasy sci-fi.

FWIW hardline tech priests view the machine god as separate from the emperor. Hardline imperium officials view the emperor as separate from the machine god. The official party line is that the emperor and the machine god are the same, with the emperor perhaps being an avatar.

It seems like both sides are fine to have them be reconciled, but it's an important narrative gadget that can be used to get humanity to fight itself in-universe.

Also interesting is that humanity's "lost" technological progress seems to eclipse some of the other races in the W40K narrative, with even the Tau (space dwarves with robots) and Eldar (space elves with crystals) freaking out when humanity brings giant robots, because the sheer physical impracticality of a gigantic human shaped robot is noted, with nobody aware of how they continue to work.

> gigantic human shaped robot is noted, with nobody aware of how they continue to work

BattleTech had something similar: it was considered cheaper to keep replacing humans than to replace the mechs, because hardly anyone knew how to repair or build mechs.

Or how about Anathem, with the Ita class doing computer things and nuclear materials cared for by a select group?

That was probably one of Stephenson’s most insightful moments of science fiction.

Scientists only get to talk to the public every 100 years or something, wasn’t it?

IT was never allowed to talk to scientists.

Seemed like a modernist idea, even at the time of publishing.