WIRED for a Decade

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WIRED for a Decade

My Internet connection went out about 10am this morning, so I am reading a bit more in WIRED: A Romance, which I picked up on its "release date" yesterday. I had just gotten my August issue of WIRED in the mail the day before, and earlier that day, I had printed out an article in Business 2.0 that told a little bit of the story that WIRED: A Romance gives us (author: Gary Wolf, who is one of WIRED's contributing editors.)

I thought about how one of my OSG projects shouod be to devise an online magazine akin to WIRED (and therefore to "HotWired" as well) to cover the same sort of things as they affect the Church. I can't call it "The WIRED Church" since Len Wilson took that title, so I'll have to come up with something. Maybe "SMART Church", named after SmartPhones and SmartMobs. Yes, I think that might be it. SmartPhones are all about devising an OS to run on portable devices that "integrate" several functions of frequent use by the mobile user/networker. Anyway, the term WIRED is almost an oxymoron with the direction of Mobility and therefore "UN-WIRED".

I wanted to brag on the fact thatI picked up the very first WIRED back in 1993 and was immediately hooked, although at that time I was, interestingly enough, without fulltime work. I was, at the time, trying to make a go of the Cableizer business of hooking up and installing VCRs, Home Theaters, entertainment systems, etc. Today, I should no longer call myself "unemployed", even as I was not among the "unemployed" then either ( I was simply stubbornly refusing to give up the thrill of being on my own, and the sense of power I had experienced in seeing some business efforts reap results. I hung onto that for a long time, but in the process I also learned a great deal of Computer support, online networking, and did DMin work via United. Anyway, back to WIRED. I have every issue (to my knowledge) ever printed, including the almost iconic first issue. It's often been a mood-improving device for me when it arrives in our mailbox. It often contains thought provoking stuff, and I have "blogged" many a WIRED article since starting Weblogging a year ago. The subject matter of WIRED is tantalizing mix of technology trends, new "hot" devices, and sociological reflections on various issues in Technology and Society. It's right down my alley.

At OSG, we are quickly moving to set up a WIRED kind of atmosphere - only here the optimism and utopianism is going to seem overly -hyped and optimistic only to our context: that of Church and theological communities. We know that the ERA in which WIRED was the hottest media piece, and attracted an almost overwhelming amount of advertising, was a "bubble", but despite the "over-investing" that took place, the future still holds bright possibilities, particularly for the Church. It is full of possibility because of what is yet to be learned about Social Software, Weblogs,

Un-WIRED MObs (Smart Mobs) and just the right amount of convergence between the building of technological places and the FTF (Face to face) places that inspire the desire to STAY CONNECTED or REMAIN CONNECTED, and do so ANYWHERE. It is going to be well worth our while to explore the spiritual-socio-psycho-third place issues as they affect the Church and institutions that seek to network individuals who have "betterment" in mind.

As I write this, my connection via Cable Modem is still down. I feel an uneasy sense of "non-productiveness". Every five minutes or so, sometimes more, I will look up at the lights on the Cable Modem to see if the Cable light has come on to stay. Every so often, I will glance up to catch a temporary state of illumination during its cycle-through tests it runs every couple of minutes, when it flashes on and off in one-second intervals for about a miniute, then goes dark for another couple minutes. This had just happened Saturday as well, after about 6 months of uninterrupted coverage (at least during my working or browsing or blogging times). (later: About an hour later, the "Cable" light has returned along with the "restored" service. Life is good again.)

So I continue on in WIRED: A Romance, engrossed in a story of the start up of this magazine which has raised me through my beginnings in Web development and envisioning, and been my major cultural pulse-taker during the evolution of a call to the online world which I have come to focus on during this past year, and been forced to reckon with in a more urgent manner since having my future opened up for me in November. I say that with much less anger now. It seems like a new level of urgency in the call. As Larry told me concerning our talks about a role for me at OSG: The time is now.

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