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to New Media Communications Home PageRheingold gave me my first broad sweep of the history of online communications, and the development of CMC as a medium for personal communications. Written in late 1992, Rheingold also served as an "ambassador" for VC possibilites, and for the human effects of communication technology. This was a key book to read in order to understand the move toward online relating. It was Rheingold who introduced me to the writing of Oldenburg, who authored "The Great Good Place". Rheingold recognized the connection between the drawing power of such places where the possibilty of encounter always loomed. With the increasing anomie in the work place and decreasing sense of significant home life for many, the third place becomes a place of even higher importance.
Rheingold also warns about the "seductions" inherent in the adoption of CMC, which can always take a commercial turn for the worst, and usurp the democratic and free-speech/expression that many have found in participation in CMC.
Negroponte identifies several ways in which the move from "moving atoms to moving bits" is and will continue to change the structure of the economy.
Sherry Turkle has provided here a good study of the social psychology of online relationships. The self and its diverse roles/layers is explored in its manifestations online, and where this affects RL.
I first began to think seriously about Virtual Church ideas after reading "Life on the Screen".
Is it unethical, for instance, to create an online persona that proclaims a certain identity for purposes of "being" in a role which has a different kind of "stigma" , such as a Layperson rather than a "proffesional clergy". Such an anonymous "identity" need not be misrepresentation, since it will be a true expression of the feelings of the person to be "other than" the role (such as Professional clergy or clergy spouse) where it is sensed that people are not at a place where they can be "comfortable" in sharing personal space (psychological space)
It can be understood that there will be such "defrocked" people who simply want to be "needy" and "rebellious" as they cannot be in their sanctioned role as "spiritual leader".
Mark Dery has written a kind of an "expose" with sociological insight into the computer culture "fringe". These groupings claim for Computer Technology a "god-like" role in changing the experience of being human, and even the experience of transcendence.
The groups and individuals Dery analyzes are many of the same that Slouka uses as fodder for his arguments in "War of the Worlds".
Rothman gives a broad sweep of the kinds of changes he sees happening in electronic democracy, elctronic community, and in electronic commerce. He is also very politically "plugged in" quite literally.
Mark Slouka builds up what seems to be a very legitiamte set of concerns in the first half of his book, then proceeds to limit himself to the most lunatic fringe of the computer culture to warn us of what's ahead. Many of these are the same people Dery covers in his "Escape Velocity", in which he gives what he calls a picture of the "escapist" mentality; ones who stress the triumph of technology over anthropology or the human limitations, or ones who identify technological means to achieve spiritual awareness (in many cases, escape; the psychadelic "drug trip") Dery draws close parallels to the 60's counter culture and the 90's Cyberculture.
Burstein and Kline provided me with sufficient morsels of socilogical insight in a WIRED interview ("Is Government Obsolete?") to get me interested in and to purchase their book, Road Warriors, which gives a keen view of the process of new CMC developments, and the tremendous shifing and posturing of the major communications corporations to position themselves to be major players in the "forseen" info hiway.
It was one of the few books I saw with obvious economic and business interests that does not blindly leap into the Cyber-topian kind of hype about "electronic democracy" and "revolutionary education". They also ask some questions which the theological community needs to asking as well:
The concerns about widening the gap between the haves and the have nots.
My introduction to Toffler came with this short treatment of the need to approach political change as "third Wave" thinkers and oers, instead of the "Second Wave-ers", who still operate in an industrial age, factory kind of mentality.
In industrial thinking, economies of scale produce same-ness; but in contrast, the Third Wave is "de-massifying"; "specializing" the mass market and targeting the specific interests.
I can see this in theological history. Second Wave theology emphasized a kind of "manifest destiny" where conversion meant Western industrial style culture, and top-down thinking. Rome held education in its hands until the Reformation, and continued to use the new medium of printing to distribute the "Index" (lists of banned books, much as much of the religious fervor on the Internet is focused on porno, obscenity, and "heretical" movements of the pagan "Internet" world.
Each time a new media rises to power, there are demons amuck.
Mass-quantities thinking also encourages the motivation to "theological uniformity, and we see the "worship of the book" as the number one channel of divine guidance. Funny, how Jesus never mentioned that they should write. The only time he did (and this was in John's vision on Patmos), writing it down was the only way to get the message out of him ( imprisoned) and to the audience (via letter).
Do you suppose that there was some element of a sense of danger in what was to become a "fossilization" of an alive, moving, dynamic Word that was on the move among the people?
Online, there is a "textual", identifying nature to life: we can "label" content happening in a way that we cannot in FTF life; we do not see "signs" above real life conversations and interactions. These must happen mostly by accident in RL (real l ife), and so we end up spending great amounts of time and energy positioning ourselves in situations and with particular kinds of people we consider to hold the richest possibility for offering us the kind of interaction we seek (or at least THINK we seek).
The trouble with this, is that we limit ourselves to our own preconceptions, and do not afford ourselves the opportunity to receive from those we do not expect to offer us the content that we crave. If anything, the gospels intimate to us that "serendipity" is likely to come not only at unexpected times, but from unexpected people.
- My first reaction is to question not my frequency of links (almost always less than one or two per browser screen, but to heave a sigh once agin about the tendency for academics to want to read something in a beginning to end flow. NOw while I do not demean the art of such a craf (in fact, I admire it and aspire to it still), but it also keeps me from exploring the freedom and artistry of exposing and suggesting linkages and relationships.
Prior (Phase 1) papers in this study
Statement of Goals and Learnings Sought
Intro to Larger Research on Theology, the Internet , and the Church
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