Discerning Our Informationism

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Discerning Our Informationism

"Informationism" is Schultze's term for the "techno-faith"; the set of assumptions and underlying values he identifies as ruling or dominating online culture. It is a faith in the "hype". It is being "number crunchers and bean counters who equate data with meaning". No doubt such blind faith in marketing data and polling statistics is given far more value than it deserves. There is certainly a penchant in humankind to take all possible shortcuts to human knowledge, or in this case "knowledge of the human". Faster is more efficient, which enables product development to become more streamlined, and on and on into more obsessing with efficiency. I've been inside of such organizations and corporations. I've been "managed" by directors who seem to personify this glorification of "process" and deification of "the project plan", and then use timelines and outlines to tear down the hard work of employees. It's not a very "personal place". So I say this to agree and identify with the danger in becoming almost "robotic" and autocratic in our devotion to numbers and flow-charts.

But once again I wait for mention of exceptions to this personification of cyberculture, and still see none. I guess this is going to take a while, or maybe it will never be covered. Maybe this is the purpose of this book. If so, that's fine and I read on, and rely on my own "inner dialogue" (and this blog/review) to interact with the premise, and the validity of the arguments.

The first chapter closes with only a brief pause on a question which I had hoped would comprise a larger portion of the book: No matter how many information technologies we devise, we canot fashion them humanely unless we direct them toward coherent moral purposes. What is the telos to which our technologies should be aimed? How do information technologies relate to the aspects of life that we cherish and hope to maintain for future generations? We could debate these kinds of issues endlessly, but today we do not discuss them enough. We celebrate our cyber-savvy and informatinal abundance, but we are increasingly confused about what we truly ought to be doing with our information and machines". (p.43)

In Moderating Our Informational Desires (Chapter 2), Schultze asks "In the Information Age, who has time to cobble together a moral vision?" Well , for me, that is the at the center of why I teter on the edge of being "an enthusiast"; perhaps for some, I've long since fallen over the edge. I spend a lot of time online looking and searching for places where people are talking about the Church and how communication technologies can "EXTEND" this conversation. To us, the Web is not "information consumption" but "conversation". And yes, there are certainly inane conversations and useless banter. But have you noticed that the same kinds of "filler" and "inane conversation" and "just plain silliness" takes place "in person" too? As I venture into this chapter, the call to "slow down" is the main theme. Okay, point taken. But what of the "moral discussions" taking place? Of authentic and thoughtful discussion taking place? Of the thousands of Christians writing and interacting with each other via Message Forums and Weblogs? Has Schultze visited some of the "Blogs 4 God" destinations, or some of the passionate social commetary and dialogue taking place? So far, I've seen very little evidence that he has.

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