Internet the new TV

In the mix of an article looking at Malcolm Gladwell's examination of social networks and real social change... I saw this.

“If the Internet didn’t exist, Barack Obama would not be president of the United States,” says Ben Rattray, the founder of Change.org. “The fact that the most powerful person in the world wouldn’t be in that position without the Internet and organizing online says something.”

It reminded me of reading about how TV changed everything for elections.  How the early leaders of both the USA and Canada would likely not have been elected in an era of TV  (or radio possibly for that matter).   The importance of how the visual changed debate.   Marshall McLuhan said that the televised debate changed everything and likely the internet changed the landscape again.  

One question I have is:  did the internet really organize people?  The answer is yes if you voted for (or were in favour of) Obama.   Or did the internet change the game again?  Where TV made elections about how good you looked in a suit and how much you fidgeted and looked dishonest etc,  did the Internet make the person with the most tech savey-ness, the best iPod play list or cool factor win?

I'm no Marshall McLuhan so I'm not going to state it as fact.   But I do think the "change" came it lots of places.

Technology and Education

Q. Do you think it is our job as educationists to increase the capacity of the student to come to grips with this new experience of a new technology?

A. They are totally at grips with it and what we want to give them is some detachment.

--Marshall McLuhan, Education in an Electronic Age,

in The Best of Times/The Worst of Times:

Contemporary Issues in Canadian Education, 1970

 

(As posted by Benjamin Robertson over at Resident Alien)

Extensions of the WHOLE man.

Kevin Kelly has his thoughts on where tablets might end up going.  He states two things that will make them different than the average cell phone or computer/laptop, the second being:

The tablet window goes two ways. You watch; it watches you. Its eye can remain on all the time, watching you as much as you like. Brian Eno once famously said (in the pages of Wired) that the problem with computers was that there was not enough Africa in them. By this he meant that computers as we knew them could “see” only the wiggling ends of our fingers as we typed. But if they could see and employ the rest of our body, as if we were dancing or singing, we could express ourselves with greater finesse. This window tablet injects some Africa into computers. It overthrows the tyranny of the keyboard. Gestures are king. Swoosh your fingers to scroll, wave your arms as with a Wii, shake or tilt it. Celebrate its embodiment. The craftsmanship of this device will matter. We’ll spend hours holding it, caressing it, stroking its magic surface, watching it. The feel of its surface, the liquidity of its flickers, the presence or lack of its warmth, the quality of its build, the temperature of its glow will come to mean a great deal to all of us.

This is interesting to my Marshall McLuhan (somewhat) obsessed mind.  McLuhan always referred to technology as extensions of man (or woman) and here Kelly is pointing out that technology is going to feel better to us as it extends more and more of us.   McLuhan saw our actual nervous system being eventually completely extended by our technology.  Conventional computers have done a good job with sight and sounds... and maybe our thought...but now touch screens will start to take our whole body as extensions.  Causing us to move, to dance.   I think McLuhan would also see it as interesting that the newer innovation of touch screens and gestures overthrows the need to know the phonetic alphabet even more.  The keyboard isn't gone completely, but I think this is a move closer to not needing to know written language.  Which moves us farther from the visual to the oral community.  

It's also interesting to see how Kelly describes the romance between the individual and the technology.  The relationship is tangible to the user.   Kind of scary in a way.  You thought that people were already zealots about their Macs.... now their iPad is going to be their lover and best friend.   That might be more scary, I'd hate to see Apple fanboys more obsessed with something.

I think McLuhan would have loved this stuff.  I do too.... and I've only been thinking about it for a little while

Rob Bell on Video Preaching

It's no secret that I am a fan of Shane Hipps, and I also appreciate the teaching of Rob Bell.   The latest Our of Ur has an excerpt of an interview with Rob about the Dangers of Video Preaching.

Your NOOMA video series has been popular. What do you think about the increasing number of preachers and churches using video technology to expand their reach?
It's powerful but there's also a dark side. Video is not church. You put images and music on a screen, and people will listen. But it's also dangerous. You're playing with fire. I think video technology deserves to be scrutinized heavily.
Go a little deeper. What makes video dangerous?
I don't think we know yet what the long-term impact will be on disciple-making. In 10 years we may discover what particular kind of Christ follower is formed by video preaching. I see warning lights on my dashboard. It's unclear what video may do to the ways we conceive of life together.
In the New Testament, there are 43 "one another" passages, and during a Sunday morning service you might be able to practice three or four of them. And as the service gets large, you can probably do fewer. A massive group setting is also dangerous. You can come, sit, listen, and go home and think, I've been to church, even if you haven't practiced any "one anothers." And with video that only gets more intense. I'm not sure that's the direction we want to be heading.

We want to be calling people to deep bonds of solidarity with one another. We may gather in a massive group, but from the stage I often say, "This is just a church service. Church is actually about caring for one another, and serving one another, and speaking truth to one another in love. Don't get the two confused."

It's great to see someone who has used video so well be aware of what it's dangers and limitations are.  I think every church needs to examine each technology - even when it seems to be successful, because it might be wolf in sheep's clothing.    It's interesting that over at Church Marketing Sucks they have an interview with Tony Jones about social Media.   Mr. Jones seems to be the other side of the spectrum, in that he seems to think that pastors (churches) should be on everything new that is out there.  Jones said:

There was a time when churches and pastors needed to decide whether they were going to wire the church for telephones. There was another time when they had to decide whether to bring microphones and amplification into the sanctuary. Those were decisions about using new technology to communicate. Social media is simply another step on that path--it's about communicating with people, and more and more people are using it, so churches need to decide how to engage that. 

He seems to spend little to no time on what the results of those choices were.   As far back as Marshall McLuhan there have been people pointing to what even microphones do for worship and preaching and community.  (I don't have my copy of the Medium and the Light so no direct quote here)
I think I like the way that Rob Bell and Mar Hill are approaching technology...  Others need to take notes (and read either of Shane Hipp's books)

reading Marshall and Me

Found an excellent blog about the ideas of Marshall McLuhan written by Michael Hinton: Marshall and Me.  I have just begun reading back in the archives of post, but am very pleased with his excepts, quotes and ideas from the past.  I've added it to my RSS and will follow the thoughts.
I don't know how many people are as interested in the thoughts of McLuhan as I am..... but you should be ;)

I don't want to cause a Twitter

I've been thinking some more about Twitter and how it will effect the church. (You might want to read my last post) I did some reading of the reviews that are out there for Anthony Coppedge's book The Reason Your Church Must Twitter and I saw this quote by Jim Watson

"The beauty is that you can reach your people on their computer and/or on their cell phones, via SMS text messaging, which is a huge thing. Phone calls are tedious, email is often not read and fairly labor intensive for a church and in the end, ultimately, communication is key."

Communication is key, but I think that Twitter will eventually become like the things mentioned above, just another form of invasive annoying communication.  Ultimately people respond to communication because they have an connection to it.  (I already ignore text & Facebook messages from some people)   The quote is actually quite telling of how quickly we forget how cutting edge the mentioned technologies once were.

I'm know at one point email was the saviour of communication....because the telephone was quite tedious
I bet the telephone was once going to save the church.... because visiting people took a lot of time.
Throw in how websites, signs outside our churches,  radio broadcasts, pod-casting  etc. were all going to save the world around us.

A new medium will not change the way most basic reason that people ignore your message....they don't like you or you're not important to them. 

Being the McLuhan geek that I am I thought I would look at Twitter through MM's four laws of media:
ENHANCES:  - the ability to communicate information, to convey quick information.
OBSOLESCE:  - email, phone, talking to people, deeper connections
RETRIEVES: yelling across the street, passing notes in class....
REVERSE: reverses into constant barrage of short messages, devoid of personal connection

I'm going to contiune thinking about some of these.... feel free to let me know where I am wrong in comments.

Technology saving the church (again)

Facebook and Twitter are going to save your church. No for real - it says so on the Internet.

Maybe it is just the type of blogs that I read. Maybe it is just the things that catch my attention. But, it sure seems that there are a lot of people out there that love to embrace each new medium that comes along.

I'm not even going to get into my usual mcluhanesque comments on media both being positive and negative* but there seems to be a rush lately to be the first person to literally write the book on the latest social network and how it will be the saviour of your church.

First there was Chris Forbes and "Facebook for Pastors" that would teach pastors how to "build relationships and connect with people using the most popular social network on the Internet."
Now recently we have Anthony Coppedge and "The Reason Your Church Must Twitter" who takes an even stronger stance with "a helpful, easy and practical guide to reaching the right people with the right message." I don't want to pick on these two authors. In fact they are both really smart men, that I respect a lot of what they have to say. I haven't taken the time to see if a few years ago someone wrote how MSN Messenger would save the church. I bet the Internet was going to save the church at one point, along with the computer, the automobile, and the printed page. All those things have had huge impact on both the church and our very core of culture, but the impact was not wholly positive. I could come up with lots of things about the comptuer, cars and print itself that have negativly effected the body of Christ.

Already I feel it. Somebody is muttering "ludite" and dismissing me as a technophobe. But stop and think about it, nothing has wholesale postive effects. Yes Twitter is great, people can track what other people are saying, eating, etc.... but what about depth? What takes people to a deep level of realtionship? I can as easily ignore the "This is the worst day in my life" tweat as I can engage that person. Being that I am disembodied here at my computer the person dosen't even know that I have ingored their call for help/attention/assistance. Maybe even worse I will make the mistake of dismissing them with a "don't worry tomorrow will be better"

I think us lovers of tech have to be (more) careful to not sell the latest and greatest technology as a fix for all that ails the church. We have see more than the benifits and see all the effects.

Always more to say...but that is good for now

* technically McLuhan has four laws (or directions) but most people really are only ready to focus on the positive and negative effects.

Video killed the house audio technician

I don't feel like writing another blog post about technology today. So here is the link and the short description.

Tim Stevens has a post in defense of a 100% video church service.

gosh... I think the thing that bugs me on this one, is they are propping it up as being all in the name of saving money.... umm how about doing smaller churches? or house churches?

Someday soon I am going to start discussing these posts in the virtual voices of Marshall McLuhan, Shane Hipps and Frank Viola
(and yes I linked to them all because I want them to see this)

Mostly a plug for Shane Hipps

I have been doing a lot of research on the effects of technology on culture (both church and everyday regular life) I happened across an article in Slate about video venues and mega churches and was happily surprised to find that Shane Hipps was quoted:

Using video goes against a critical tenet of Protestant faith: the priesthood of all believers. Instead of a real experience, it offers a mediated one that inherently puts the pastor in a position of greater power over the masses. "It's actually undermining their theology,"

in his book Shane has written about the effects of video - not necessarily the separate venue site, but certainly it pertains. The above statement is pretty strong, but I think it needs to be. While I have been expanding my thoughts on media through other authors (Postman, McLuhan etc.) I strongly recommend Shane Hipps as a place to start to become aware of the influence of media on our culture. (I think I have to steal my book back from Rob)

I want to write more on the things that I am learning and thinking, but they will have to wait - check out the article in the meantime.

Because I have yet to say something cool.

I have yet to read much (ok, anything) of G.K. Chesterton, But I have read many quotes from him in my reading of Marshall McLuhan - So in the interest of the "sound bite" here are some excellent quote that I stumbled on...

Happy Birthday, G.K. Chesterton! «:

"Here are a few of my favorite G.K. Chesterton quotes:

- “The point of an open mind, like having an open mouth, is to close it on something solid.”

- “Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.”

- “The artistic temperament is a disease that afflicts amateurs.”

- “By a curious confusion, many modern critics have passed from the proposition that a masterpiece may be unpopular to the other proposition that unless it is unpopular it cannot be a masterpiece.”

- “The aim of good prose words is to mean what they say. The aim of good poetical words is to mean what they do not say.”

- “You cannot grow a beard in a moment of passion.”

- “It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possibly have gone wrong.”

- “All science, even the divine science, is a sublime detective story. Only it is not set to detect why a man is dead; but the darker secret of why he is alive.”

- “There are those who hate Christianity and call their hatred an all-embracing love for all religions.”

- “These are the days when the Christian is expected to praise every creed except his own"

Maybe I should go to the library tonight... and try to find some of these.