Stimulus Vol 12 Issue 3 August 2004 |
Table of ContentsTechnology and incarnation Technology In Worship Co-authoring Christianity Praying with machines: religious dreaming in cyberspace Pulp-it: Missions and IT Blogging: report from a grassroots revival St Imulus: God@keyboard Studying the bible for free The Gospel and our culture(s) Models and Metaphors The SMACA e-zine Hypertext Bible Commentary and Encyclopaedia Wrestling texts: hypertext and biblical studies Book Reviews Following Gandalf: Epic Battles and Moral Victory in the Lord of the Rings Urban Ministry and the Kingdom of God Technology and Human Becoming A Question of Faith; A History of the New Zealand Christian Pacifist Society Good News to the Poor – Sharing the gospel through social involvement Dialogue |
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IT, culture & the Church |
EditorialProphets, losses, and electronic communication
Early contact with a new technology often provokes us to line up with that techne’s ‘philes or ’phobes. However, time often demonstrates that a technology is indispensable, at the same time revealing its limits. Neither the "love it" nor "hate it" approach is a sufficiently nuanced response in the real world.
Better to ask what the technology will take away in exchange for the gifts it brings. In the Iron Age the technology we call "writing" was new. Plato’s Socrates recounts how Thoth (Egyptian god of technology and patron of scribes) claims that this technology is an "elixir of memory and wisdom". Socrates’ own view seems to be that the explosion of readily accessible information facilitated by writing does not make one wise. "Much-read, but uneducated… they only appear wise."
Time reveals the accuracy of the Iron Age Greek philosopher’s evaluation. Compared to oral cultures we have poor memories and have perhaps lost wisdom, but having seen the gains from opening this Pandora’s box, who will give back the gift of writing?
Facing a new technology the most interesting question is: how will it change my world? The contributors to this issue open perspectives on this troubling question.
Telephone, radio, television and film have changed the way we speak to one another, and how we perceive our world. Computers and built-in microchips now control our factories, vehicles, kitchens and lives. Electronically mediated communication radically diminishes the impact of distance, and tampers with our sense of time – producing a desire for instant results. It enables everyone to transmit and even broadcast their thoughts globally.
Back in 1994, Susan White introduced her discussion of "Religion in an age of technology" with the assertion that Christians must "discover what it means to be the church when the touch of one button on the remote control brings them images of Christians killing one another in Bosnia and Belfast and the touch of another button brings them megaservices in the Crystal Cathedral or in Vatican Square."1
The phenomenon of blogging (blogs are self-published frequently updated journals online that usually invite readers to comment on what is written) highlights each of these changes. Like all internet activity blogging eliminates distance. Several of the authors in this issue write blogs. Indeed I "met" one of them via this medium, and we have still not talked face-to-face. Tim Bednar (in the United States) comments on the blogs written by Steve Taylor, Stephen Garner and I. The world of internet communication moves fast; within days of my first "meeting" Tim he had agreed to share in writing this issue. He suggests that blogging offers models for new forms of being church, while Steve Taylor asks questions about the nature and practice of authoring.
Kirsten Abbott moves from the hands-on experience of creating a web-based exploration of a Bible text to questions about the nature of Bible reading, while for Stephen Garner these electronic technologies open deep questions of spirituality and the nature of humanity. More down-to-earth and immediate concerns underlie Tim Page’s practical advice on the use of technology in worship, while Michael Hanson presents the software that can help answer our basic questions about the Bible text. Practical concerns led me, in presenting the Hypertext Bible Commentary & Encyclopaedia project, to adapt the print medium to mimic features of an electronic text with different levels in each section and a glossary.
Jews and Christians have a long history as "early adopters" of communications technology. Well before the time of Socrates, the advantages of alphabetic writing were grasped by the writers of the narratives and poems of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) to preserve and stabilize our emerging Scriptures (the Old Testament authors were early adopters). The transition from clumsy linear scrolls to the convenience of access offered by codex "books", in the third and fourth centuries AD, happened first for Christian and later for pagan literature.2 The invention of moveable type was quickly adopted by Christians and Jews, Bibles being among the earliest printed books.
Some of the authors in this issue appear for the first time, others are established academics. Some are pillars of established institutions, others exist on the emergent bleeding-edge of the church. All are in a sense "early adopters", and their articles suggest that new technology opens new horizons for our activity and practice of being Christian. So it is no accident that (with the exception of Rob Kilpatrick’s "Dancing with the Devil…") these writers do not focus on the negative consequences of the technologies they consider. Users of new communications technologies today still feel the need to defend their practice against colleagues happy to assume Socrates’ mantle. More balanced views will perhaps only arise with maturity and time.
Endnotes 1. Susan J. White, Christian Worship and Technological Change (Nashville: Abingdon, 1994), 13.
2. Colin H. Roberts and T.C. Skeat, The Birth of the Codex (London: Oxford University Press, 1983), 37. For further discussion of this see Tim Bulkeley, "Form, Medium and Function: The Rhetorics and Poetics of Text and Hypertext in Humanities Publishing", International Journal of the Book 1, (2003), 318-319.
Tim Bulkeley Douglas Maclachlan |
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IT, CULTURE & THE CHURCH Blogging |
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“...to be part of the gospel imperative to transform minds and put faith in God into practice.” |