What is "productivity" in the Church context? Is it not very near and dear to the heart of the mission of the Church to "tell its story"? To "equip the saints" in a Web world is to help them to appropriate recognizable modes and channels of communication, and to do so in a way that accentuates the VOICE; the HUMAN VOICE; if we let the human voice speak, then we in the Church believe that in the community of saints, this VOICE will inherently proclaim the mighty works of God; it will bring forth a "reason for the hope that is within us".
Hypertext is inherently nonhierarchical and antibureaucratic. It does not reinforce loyalty and obedience; it encourages idle speculation and loose talk. It encourages stories.
The result is not just new things learned but a vastly enhanced ability to learn things.
This was bandied about in the meetings at Vanderbilt yesterday with AKMA and Dave Weinberger. If we can somehow capture the undercurrents, the things goijng on in people's minds as we all "sit and listen" (as with a classroom lecture or a preacher's sermon), and thoughts are swirling, each in our own heads, how valuable and energizing would it be to be able to explore the things in other people's minds as they "blog" in their head --- and if people can "blog" afterwards from a recording (with time code, using either video or audio) and "blog" or respond to certain parts of a presentation, and "submit this" to the "community blog" so that we have a variety of "overlays" to the presentation --- and any of those overlays can be "subject to overlay" themselves, then a vast Web of interaction happens, with opportunity for everybody involved to read everyone else, and therefore share a new kind of "interaction". Some people can "blog" events very well and still follow what is happening....like taking notes....others might want to blog the transcript or archive, saved as notes, perhaps recordings, like DV Video with time code, and a blog tool linked to a database that grabs as a "time stamp" the time code and then can "link" frm thet recording to "TrackBacks" in other blogs that link to the video (I suppose the same can be done for audio in digital format....maybe such things already exist in the MP3 world. I have yet to really immerse myself in that world. Maybe if things as I describe them above begin to take place, I will begin the immersion process bigtime.
