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My initial Web Theology Page

Send Me Comments, Suggestions, Resources or links to resources for this study

My developing "call" to Internet ministry

From "A CompuServe for the Church" to the World Wide Web"

When I came to the Ecunet community in 1992, the model of computer mediated communication was the commercial online service and the local BBS

CompuServe was the ultimate commercial service, with more members than any other, and a longer history.

The local BBS 's were known for their online discussions, sharing of files, and introducing their members into the culture of Usenet newsgroups ;the Internet medium of online discussion and debate. Now the small local BBS offerings have grown to encompass the world

Decentralizing of information; wide scale contribution possible on several local servers, all reachable via link

I began a meeting on Ecunet called "A Compuserve for the Church" in which I began to visualize what a national/international online service for the theological community would look like.

1. Files
2. Forums
3. Resources
4. Increasingly easy to use interfaces for organizing forums, mail, files, resources
5. Ecumenically diverse resource "malls" and online book stores

The original idea was a centralized computer system to which all the various groups would "offer" their wares, and join in discussions, both internal specific and diverse, topically focused types. The Internet and eventually the World Wide Web changed that concept.

The idea of a centralized server for files, and host for communication, is giving way to an "outpost" or "rest-stops" along the worldwide network

The advent of CMC opens up further dialogue and exposes us to people of diverse traditions who have interests and callings similar to ours

My journey along the highway

Just a few weeks after the CAMCON meeting at which I got my first copy of BIZLINK and went online on Ecunet, I picked up a book called "The Whole Internet" by Ed Krol, and began to experiment with the UNIX commands that most Internet connected computers used. I joined Internet forums on Genie, then Delphi, and found the process slow and confusing. When I read about the BIX service offering a Windows interface to their system which included "direct" Internet access (rather than the "SYSOP mediated" style used by Genie, or the "terminally cryptic" menus of the Delphi system, I downloaded their software. Initially, the Windows interface did not extend to the Internet features, but within a few days they began a beta program in which I was able to participate and began my trek onto the Internet highway.

BIX enabled me to explore the Net via an interface called "Gopher", which is a series of menus, usually organized by subject, which point the user to various resources located on either that computer, or on another located anywhere else in the world. Gopher menus typically list subjects, from which a selection may take you to another Gopher menu with more specific topics within that selection, which may lead to another more specific Gopher list, or to the documents and files themselves.

Gopher makes use of ftp, so that one can download available files directly from the Gopher screen. Gopher also provides a subject oriented interface to the location of the various resources. Selecting choice 6 on a particular menu will take one to the location of that file or next level of a menu, which may be located on that same computer, or, as it often turns out, to an entirely different computer anywhere else in the world. So Gopher provides a way of linking computers content by subject.

The World Wide Web goes a step beyond Gopher and provides a way to not only bring subjects together, but also a way to link any occurrence within any document to an occurrence of a related kind in any other document. My WWW site tells my own spiritual autobiography, describes my interests, and displays some of this work I am doing concerning linking up theological groups. In any of these documents, there are "hypertext links" which , when selected by a mouse click, will bring to the screen another document that I have found to be helpful in describing or illuminating the subject of the link. As this process of writing and linking to the work of others and to other works of mine expands throughout the world, a giant collaborative effort is unfolding.

Although a particular Web author might have their own particular interests and viewpoints in mind as they write and provide links to other similar ideas, the sheer numbers of ideas and efforts being expressed on the Web provide a very diverse set of links that one can explore. It is very much like a library visit where one goes to a card catalog to find a book, which points you to a particular row of shelves. On the way to find that listing, other book catch your eye as you get closer to the area of interest. The WWW provides this experience. It helps to reveal the common interests of many who would otherwise never discover each other .

The Web decentralizes the system of information. One can store a particular set of information at one site, but be accessible to other sites via file transfer and the WWW structure of links. Information of similar type can be available as easily as if it were on one's own computer (not including the time it takes to call up the document.- a function of line speed --) and so the necessity no longer exists to bring all the info to one site. The Web has caused many "info brokers" to emerge; people and groups who make it their task to cull from the vast information available online that which appeals to their audience. There are general lists of lists of scores of subjects, and there are more specialized but not necessarily less lengthy listings.