The Information Age we are entering is a supreme challenge for the theological community. We know that what we are facing is more than simply relaying information, but presenting that information in a way which sets it in a context of relevance to the user of that information. The Christian scriptures, along with the sacred books of other faiths, were an attempt to communicate key elements of faith to a widely dispersed audience. These writings are full of the diversity of expression which could be found in the people during those times when the writings were authored, collected, and dispersed among the faithful.
The technology of writing, the various materials for holding these writings, and ensuing technologies for copying and distributing these writings often brought with them great shifts in the roles of the common people in their faith communities. The Prinitng Press is often heralded as the single most significant of these shifts into new communication technologies. Some would say that the present "MTV generation" would represent a modern shift from text and books to video as the major mode of communication.
Today we see in print and on television the identification of a new, "Information Age". We see regional Bell companies scurrying to acquire Cable TV operators, and many program producing conglomerates buying up alternative media producers such as multimedia developers. It seems as though it is apparent to everyone in the business and media world that the face of communication and entertainment is about to change forever.
Just as the Churches in Luther and Gutenberg's day were able to build new movements through the wider availability of printed material, there are opportunities today for a more significant prescence of the church in the mainstreams of the communications world.
Today's "marketplace" consists of "the digital data highway", where faster, more efficient means of communication and sharing of vital information is taking place. This is happening within organizations and between "information" services which provide a variety of database services and resources for upgrading the communication efforts of any organization.
We've already seen it happen in the world of publishing and writing as the word processor and desktop publishing software have made it simple for almost any organization to produce its own internal news with documents of quality appearance and style previously attainable only by professional printers.
More recently, correspondence has been shifting dramatically toward the use of E-mail, eliminating costs previously neccessary for phone conversations (and the oft-resulting "phone-tag") or the time consuming US Mail or its more expensive "overnight" alternatives.
This newsletter will attempt to be your window into what is possible for the theological community in these new technologies. Here we will provide monthly glimpses into a wide variety of communication and educational technologies. The contributors are stationed around the world, but the immediacy of E- Mail will allow us to produce new issues quickly. We are trying our hand at developing a form for online presentation of this news (New technology Review Online, on the Ecunet system), as well as fordistribution in printed form, as you now see it.
The Ecunet community was the base for the development of this idea. The meeting "New Technology Review"" sounded the initial call for this kind of publication, and some of the other meetings' discussions provide meat for some of the issues we will be exploring here in the months ahead.
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