Recently in Online Community Category

Larry Hollon posts about rage online:
Raging on the Internet

while I agree that the connectedness we enjoy is also a challenge, I don't think it's the ultimate cause. It's a convenient tool to help pour salt. But it didn't create the wounds. The wounds are created by the daily humiliation and struggle of poverty. That they erupt with such explosive violence isn't a wonder to me. In fact, I've always wondered why those who struggle for survival everyday don't blow off frustration more often.

But that takes energy, and when you've barely enough to eat or when you're grubbing for enough money to get through the day, you don't have time to make social statements.

As for anger in the developed world, there's another set of issues to be explored. I think it's about our feelings of being disconnected, voiceless and unable to control conditions that affect our lives. We're not in the same basic survival struggle that I've written about above. But we're not in control either. And we're being frustrated, victimized and diminished on a daily basis by big corporations, big government, big education and big health. It's little wonder that some think church bureaucrats are part of the same mix.

I think you do your best to engage in dialogue. You do your best to serve real needs. And you try to bring about constructive, meaningful change. This is about making connection, after all.

I rememeber MLK tellling Meet the Press that it was a miracle that more American Negroes had not turned to communism under the conditions in which they found themselves.

Actually, the people who CAN and DO blog have a luxury that those who NEED it most cannot afford, or have no connections to places where they could. We bloggers have a place, even though even that place is no substitute for an in-the-flesh, embodied community to whom we can turn. But even then it is nice to have a way to blow off steam and ask confronting questions without aiming the rage at anyone in particular, or holding back as we would in the physical company of others. Sometimes it simply doesn't seem polite or appropriate, and yet there are those thoughts and feelings.

The "disconnectedness" of life is one of those attributes of the forces of darkness against which we struggle. It gets quite overwhelming at times. And when one gets used to wandering about looking for a "connectedness" in the churches that goes beyond simple piety and civility, or even beyond the occasional "ministry project" that is carried out, the lack of connectedness often seems to be the "way it is". Not that "occasional projects" aren't "better than nothing", or don't provide real and needed help, but it doesn't seem enough. All too rare is the needed community that underpins it. The "active" churches are all too often bereft of the very structures of community that make for the habits that form the people that God would have us become. Without the prior commitments to knowing one another in depth, and living our life together such that we are geared toward the discovery of gifts and discerning mission, we tend toward the adoption of activity that operates more like the politics of the world than the polis of the people of God. It's very easy to align with Christian Progressives and yet remain in an arrangement of relationships that offers no deeper fellowship than that offered by normal civic societies. While I find myself at home theologically with the Progressive Christians than with the Religious Right (by quite a margin), I find it too difficult to take the disparity of the quality of fellowship of either from the "peculiarity" of the kind of people we are called to be and to commit ourselves to exploring, and forming habits that make this a way of life and an assumed posture.

I have come much closer over the past 5 or 6 years to having any conversation whatsoever about where I am theologically, emotionally, politically, socially in the online communities I have found. This is extremely sad that the level of struggle I have had in finding "connectivity" in the offline world has layed so much importance on the online conversation. I don't seek to replace online at all. I simply would like to find a face to face group of folks who wish to think anew about "Authentic Church"

Internet Efficiencies p.41----see later post

Blogging is word of mouth on steroids p.43

"Blogging is faster and more effective than walking from village to vilalge and knocking on doors" p.44
Welll, not exactly (perhaps for products...not for the fuller engagment whcih leads to community, and more specifically, the type of community we are about).......the aim I have is to draw people to where conversation takes place and desires physical prescence in order to more fully know the human behind the stories; and perhaps to try to discern how we might "give a go" to the vision of church that happens when a particular two or three or more are gathered.

"Transparency is not high-risk unless you have something to hide"
Vic Gondrota, General Manager for Platform Evangelism, Microsoft in Naked Conversations, p. 17

Another quote from Microsoft's Tech Evangelist, Lenn Pryor:
"There's no doubt we moved the needle, he said, adding with apparent pride, "and we did it without so much as a press release"
p.16

The above attest to the power of the conversation. If we open it up,and show the customer/audience who we are, this speaks volumes; more so than PR talk. And this goes for church talk too. Nothing reveals more about a church than the interests and concerns of its members and participants in its missions/ministries. This is why I have advocated for church blogs. It's the best mediated STORY delivery medium yet.

Jay has some good thoughts on church culture and technology usage. The email was to a group that had been discussing some ideas for doing a Methodist Blogger Event, and Cole had expressed frustration about the Southern Baptists getting an article in the Tennessean about one of their execs that has a blog and was talking about the use of new technologies.

Only Wonder Understands: It Ain't About Technology!

What I was trying to express in the e-mail that I sent was a concern regarding a culture in the United Methodist Church that isn’t able to respond quickly to change. Now there is some value to this — the church probably should be a voice of caution, considering the ethical implications of new trends or technologies. Yet, given the speed of cultural change, those considerations must come more quickly, or else the church finds itself left behind, always playing catch-up, and never being on the cutting edge of any cultural movement.

The issue for me is not about who has the coolest stuff, but rather who has the willingness to create a culture that can be missionally focused. It’s not surprising that the Southern Baptists are “ahead” of the curve technologically for their ethos includes a willingness to take on new forms in order to carry out their mission in the world. Methodists, on the other hand, plod along, creating a committee to study everything so that by the time they’ve finally gotten around to adopting a new thing, the next trend has come along.

Thing about our structures. Our budgets nationally are determined on a quadrennial basis (four years). These days, four years is a long time. The first I-Pods were released four years ago, but they are transforming the music business, radio distribution, etc. How can an institution that only meets every four years respond to the speed of cultural change today?

Go read the whole "It Ain't About Technology!" post in the above link on Jay's blog

Gavin was blogging on this same conversation here

I just read this: via JOHO (David Weinberger) which points to this:

David Weinberger, January 2006 :: Rebecca Blood: Bloggers On Blogging

and it is one of those pieces that get me charged up about the sociological/communal stuff re: blogging, and its coming from one, David Weinberger, who is one of the "BlogFathers" in my own "blog journey". Not that I needed convincing of what he and the other Cluetrain authors were saying, but they added quite a bit of urgency (at least for me) to the mix. They constantly called for companies to "get a clue" about the imnportance and neccessity of listening to the people for whom they were making products or providing a service.

Rebecca: from my perspective the community was much stronger in 1999, being so much smaller. You could actually know of most of the existing blogs, and realistically hope to follow a large percentage of them. So what is the quality that defines community for you? What was lacking then that exists now?

“ There are people I’ve come to know over the years either through their blog or through their comments on my blog. Some of them mean a lot to me. ”

Good point. The community wasn't there for me (my note: in 1999 I assume). I felt I was blogging in the dark. No readers. No reaction. No sense of community.

For me, a community is a group of people who care about one another more than they have to. I do feel part of an ever-changing community of bloggers and readers. That's not to say that everyone who ever glanced at my blog is part of that community. But there are people I've come to know over the years either through their blog or through their comments on my blog. Some of them mean a lot to me. And this is not a binary club that you're either in or out of. It's far smudgier than that, as it should be. There are blogs I read that I feel emotionally attached to written by bloggers I don't know personally but about whom I've come to care. I'm more than a reader of them but less than a community member. It's an extension of the attachment we feel to favorite printosphere writers, but the blogging world is more intimate and less guarded.

I think we need a new social norm whereby it's rude to assume that someone has kept up with your blog.

How much traffic do you get?

I genuinely do not track it. I don't have the slightest idea. I don't have any meters in place and I never ever check my Technorati ranking or any of the others. I couldn't give you a guess reliable within several orders of magnitude.

Why don't you track it?

In small part on principle. In main part for pragmatic reasons. I would be affected by the numbers either way, and neither effect would be helpful. If I were a bigger person, I wouldn't care. But I do. So I don't check.

What principle?

That we shouldn't be writing blogs in order to gain a mass market. And we shouldn't be evaluating blogs and bloggers by how many people read them.

I have been half uninterested, because of the above reason, and half afraid to know (by the amount of comments I've been getting recently, it seems all the more likely that the number of readers is small)

I have to admint I've been a bit disappointed of late in the lack of interest in my working through (and posting of) the booklet "Becoming the Authentic Church". I had gotten much less interested (although not in the least DISinterested) in theologizing and discussing Radical Orthodoxy and such, and very much concerned/obsessed/preoccupied with finding a place and a people and an opportunity to begin to experience some of what The Church of the Saviour community is wrestling with right now (and really, constantly, over the years, as they struggle to remain faithful and renewed and seeking the structures which make for the most radical formation as the People of God).

This is closely related to the kinds of things in the interview with David above. One, how much "commenting" is a sign or not a sign at all, of either the worth of this blog, or the quality of it? I recognize that the drastic cutback in "politcal ranting" I had been doing June 2004 through June 2005 will put i a dent in that right now. There are simply many more people blogging about frustrations with Bush than there are people seeking a church community that forms itself in ways that often run counter to sensaibilities floating in church life from extreme left to extreme right.

I have a feeling that this issue and the interview above, though, should be treated in separate posts, as either one in and of themselves can make for many many conversations.

In Habits of the High-Tech Heart: Living Virtuously in the Information Age, Qunetin Schultze takes on the "hype" about the Internet. I read this book in early 2003, and wrote quite a few posts questioning his portrayal.

The posts were in my older blog, under my Book Bloggin' section, and I did quite a few retorts.

I was thinking earlier about the "Virtual Church". I am now convinced that it cannot be church except as a tool which helps to express church. To the extent that churches fail to provide the avenues to radical friendship and deep commitment to one another on the journey to call and mission and reconciliation, the online conversations that re happening are "better" at being church, but I also do not feel that "church" is happening in those places which fail to provide a way to "be" church. So the question is not "can one have or "do" church online, but HOW MUCH of church is being transmitted? Traditional churches ; those "real churches" as opposed to "Virtual churches" , are in a very real sense more "virtual" than some "virtual churches" (ie. Online).

There are things about being "Authentic Church" that require "finding those who share my vision of church" that can very possibly be siginificantly aided by the ways in which online tools help find related conversations. And once these "localities"; these "places of meeting" with those who wish to explore this with us are found, the online tools can help us to keep the conversation alive in times and places and ways not previously experienced. I still have hope that my visi on for online community is not to remain "disembodied" (even though in many ways, there is a sense of "embodiment" in online conversation. In a very real and authentic way, I have come to know a certain part of a significant group of people, and these are real people who truly respond, and to whom I have truly responded. There is no anonymity here. We know each other's names, we share our thoughts via the blogosphere almost daily, and we "contact" each other on a frequent basis. Regardless of the experiences I have in discovering people driven by a similar vision of r being church as I am, the online fellowship will continue, even as they hear about my experiences in bringing my hopes into an embodied, intentional community.

Technorati has been around, doing these things for a while now, but this is the first time I've taken notice of a major News source using it to link to blogosphere (blogospherical?) content. I have TalkingPointsmemo on my RSS list to do my keeping up with the signs of corruption bubbling over in the Bush White House and with his cronies.

Blog Report - Newsweek Blog Talk - MSNBC.com

Cool idea

The below quotes are from Eric's comments on a post the other day about the "dangers" of expressing your thoughts on blogs. Eric captured the sense (as did another commenter, "provoked")

Movable Theoblogical: Self-revelation of Bloggers

I blog in exact opposition to those who would want to keep stifling forms of institution in my face. I blog, while respecting academia, but also because I acknowledge its limitations.

I trust my friends enough to hold me accountable. It's called community, and more particular, the Church.

The limitations I see are also somethign that the church could do well to take seriously, especially given its vast shortfall of attention to the neglect of serious discipleship structures, the expectation of "accountability" to one another, and the CERTAINTY that there is a close-knit, intimately concerned group of people who make it their business to keep abreast of what's happening to us and IN us. In our blog world, that includes reading some of those "inner thoughts" that we've decided could be helpful to someone else, and that we don't mind sharing, but also that which we actually feel would be helpful for the world to know about us. It's like our "business card", except it's business that we feel represents a good sample of things which concern us, things which enrage us, and things which fill us with joy.

I always feel the need to append a quid pro quo to the end of posts where I extol the virtues and the advantages of blogging, to say that I DO NOT expect nor want for blogging to replace or supercede face-to-face church. I emphasize the "extension" quality or role of blogging; it is A resource and channel for enhancing and perhaps introducing us to snapshots of personality and passion which we woudl do well to address in our face to face meetings. Indeed, to encourage the increased building of new and addtional structures of sociality to enable the kind of close-knit society we need to nurture this faith journey that is not only very personal, but meant to be traveled in a group.

Just found this blog via AKMA

Shovelware by Mark Dery. I read a couple of books by him way back at the outset of the Web, when I was doing some heavy research into online community. His books were Flame Wars and Escape Velocity, both on tech-head culture and online discourse. He interviews Erik Davis (who authored TechGnosis in 1998. I have all three books, but not the latest from Dery, A User's Guide to "The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium"

It's been a while, but I remember I was impressed with his sociological narrative. I'll have to check this one out (anbd the blog as well)

Al....Al, ... leave it to Al. Al here summarizes an article by some critic who outlines the favorite story of Al's, the move of American culture away from the kinds of values he espouses, and that "culture war". As a big proponent and "encourager" of exactly that, and with the intellectual hubris that he lays on thick in nearly every article he writes, Al also summons a blogger I expected him to quote: Hugh Hewitt, a proponent of blogging seemingly for the sole purpose of grinding the far right axe.

Here, though, the irony is thick (not from Al, but who he uses to make a particular point):

Crosswalk.com - Albert Mohler's Weblog

Rupert Murdoch, the founder and chairman of News Corporation (and thus of Fox News), tried to explain this to the American Society of Newspaper Editors. "What is happening right before us is, in short, a revolution in the way young people are accessing news. They don't want to rely on the morning paper for their up-to-date information. They don't want to rely on a godlike figure from above to tell them what's important. And to carry the religion analogy a bit further, they certainly don't want news presented as gospel," Murdoch argued. "Instead, they want their news on demand, when it works for them. They want control over their media, instead of being controlled by it. They want to question, to probe, to offer a different angle."

Al quotes Murdoch saying of young people "they certainly don't want news presented as gospel". Oh, really? Coming from the owner and manipulator extrordinaire, this is the ultimate in pretending to be against a force that you yourself have helped to create and sustain. Fox News is the ultimate of all partisan sources, and bloggers like Drudge and Hewitt are the prototypes of the kind of media manipulation that fits in so well with the Southern Baptist leadership's modus operandi (and now, politically mirrored in groups like the college Republicans like Rove and Norquist).

But wait, there's more.

Al then proceeds to sound the rally cry for bloggers to "stand up for the good old days" when we all knew what was truth (????) and things were not so ....uhhh. diverse, confusing, and dangerous.

Terry Teachout's analysis, published in the respected pages of Commentary, signals a growing awareness of the blogging revolution and what it means for America. In a strange twist of irony, the culture of Western civilization may survive through the efforts of a core of dedicated bloggers who are unwilling to see it die. The media elite will simply have to watch from a distance, scratching their heads as they watch their audience disappear and their influence dissipate. The long-term impact of the blogging revolution is yet to be seen. Nevertheless, the toppling of the mainstream media's monopoly is a cultural achievement in itself. May the revolution continue.

And Al's answer to that is obviously to swallow Fox News whole, for there is where the "Un-spun" News is; the representative of the rebellion against the favorite whipping boy of the Religious and Secular Right: that "Liberal Media".

Now I am certainly no fan of the big mainstream media. They have , like most other media outlets, appealed to the least common denominators and corporate interests of their advertisers. But Al's own "movement" is about as mainstream as it gets in the religious world, and mainstream in American Religion means sellouts to culture; and a preaching of Christ without the teachings of Christ. The fact that Mohler can quote Murdoch with a straight face (in illustration of a point about "telling it straight" and "without presenting it as gospel" reveals how sadly blind these Religious Right pundits are about their own succumbing to the "Manufacturing of Consent". They have given it gladly, and are now rallying their troops to fill the blogosphere with their online tracts to their Nationalistic gospel from which they have cut out the very words of the proclaimer of THE gospel.

Frank Paynter, whom I sat at a table with at the Session led by Dan Gillmour on Citizen's Media, blogged this about the Session of Respectful Disagreement led by Dave Winer.

Sandhill Trek

Transparency and accountability, Stan Brown, a lawyer, suggests as basic values. I think maybe passion and creativity are as important or more important than "T&A." I get quite passionate about this. I think it's a good example of respectful, but charged disagreement. The discussion moves on to others who also have something to say so once again I'm not the center of the universe. Damn... coulda swore I wuz.

I remember liking that suggestion. The passion aspect seems to capture well what people like about blogs. Lots of opinion.

Question is asked: Does the blogosphere contribute to the polarization of public perspective or does it have a mediating effect?

I remember that one, too. Seems that it (the blogosphere) pretty much reflects the culture, which is pretty darn polarized.

I expressed to Frank, as I got up to leave at the end of the session, that I was feeling a bit apprehensive about the Faith-Based blogging session, which I felt obligated to go to, since if it was to be dominated by the type of blogging that it seemed its discussion leader was doing, it was going to need some alternative expressed.

Frank told me a little of his Quaker tradition, and how he is not so comfortable with the "who has faith and who doesn't" that seems to go on in "religious blogging". I nodded my head in agreement. He said something to the effect of : faith is not so "transparent" in a lot of people, who nevertheless are passionate, truthful, and purposeful people (my paraphrase), and mentioned Dave Winer, Doc Searls, and David Weinberger. I again agreed. He also said that faith is something you just BE; that you live.

Did I mention that I had a good time at Blog Nashville this weekend? This was one of those exchanges, brief though it was, that made it a unique time. And seeing all these faces to go with all the blogs I've been reading for 3 years, that's kind of exciting.

So, Frank's identifying of Passion and creativity; this is the essence of blogging for me. When I am not feeling so "passionate", often a reaction to a story linked by another blogger will cause the coffers to fill. I also know that this is where "Faith-based" blogging has gotten its thunder. But, as Frank expressed, to section out "Faith-Based" almost seems a condescending to the blogs that are full of passion (and I think; no, I KNOW, FAITH) but are not what would be identified as "religious". As one who blogs a lot of theology and Church, a good many of my favorite blogs are not "theological" in the overt sense. I operate under a "deep ecunemism" assumption: that God and his call upon individual human lives (and the communties to which he calls them or gives to them) is that thing that drives people, whether or not they feel this is a thing that comes to them from outside themselves or not. In fact, there are many people, who, for GOOD REASON, reject Christianity or religiosity (due to abusive, insensitive, very "un-actualized" people and the insitiutions they build and inhabit).

My own journey has schooled me in the language and narrative of the story of God's people, but I steer clear of the abuses and narrowing instances of that story; those instances where faith is dominated by doctrinaire, pious, largely non-compassionate people. BUt even they are not outside the reach of transformative experience that turns them toward the truth.

Thanks, Frank, for putting it the way you did, and making me think about it again. I mentioned to Frank briefly that a fellow I ma reading lately (Hauerwas) talks similarly, and says that the job of the Church is to BE the Church.

I started still yet another new book this week: The Power of Many

I took some notes as I was waiting around for the first BlogNashville event Friday night.

I'll be posting them soon. (BTW, the Title of this Post had a typiing mistake. No pun intended. Just horrible typing, but it works, doesn't it?)

Weblogsky: Cliff Figallo's Blog

Cliff Figallo is blogging his experiences networking via LinkedIn. Cliff was director of The WELL during its richest years as a virtual community, and has consulted on whole tons of huge online community endeavors ("social interaction on the net" - think AOL, or Salon's Table Talk). It's great to see him blogging away! [Link

Welcome Cliff. I have your book. Glad to see you-----got an RSS link?

BarlowFriendz: Dancing in the Streets: Revolution with a Smile

Delightful post with an idea from Barlow:
Maureen Dowd recently observed that the Republicans had become so obsessed with rejecting the 60's ethic of doing it if it feels good that they have taken up an ethic of doing it if it makes someone else feel bad. Moreover, the GOP strategy of basing their root-level organization on Hot Protestantism has infused their ranks with a lot of chilly Puritanism, which, as H.L. Mencken defined it, is "the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, is having a good time."
These were among the factors in mind recently as I turned my thoughts to what I might do to vex the Republicans when they gather in New York a month from now. Furious as I may be at their policies, conventional protest is not an option.
If it were peaceful protest, they would ignore it even if two million people turned up. They have a demonstrated capacity to do that. Indeed, the administration consists of such fervent God-anointed idealists that they would "stay the course" against any opposition short of a majority too overwhelming to rig their electronic voting machines against.

Then Barlow sugests the following:
I want to organize a cadre of 20 to 50 of us. I want to dress us in suits and other plain pedestrian attire and salt us among the sidewalk multitudes in Republican-rich zones. At a predetermined moment, one of us will produce a boom-box and crank it up with something danceable. Suddenly, about a third of the people on the sidewalk, miscellaneously distributed in the general throng, will start dancing like crazy and continue to do so for for about a minute. Then we will stop, melt back into the pedestrian flow, and go to another location to erupt there.

Amusing. I hope people show up in droves. Go to the link and read this article. Howard Rheingold is among the comments to thsi post on Barlow's Blog

Trippi's book got the wheels going in my thoughts about the value of a grassroots effort to "Take Back the Church" just as the Dean Campaign invokes "Take Back America". The journeys of American politics and American Christianity run parallel in this perception amongst their grassroots and progressive communities that their deepest ideals are being hijacked in front of them.

This is not that new for me, or other "old people" like me , remembering how it was at the same time that the Reagan years and the Religous Right arose at the same time in 1980, and the Southern Baptist fundamentalist revolt, spearheaded by Paige Patterson and Judge Pressler staged a "liberal scare" campaign and took control of the Southern Baptist Leadership. That was more of an ideological battle, but it certainly had its association and complicity and "approval of" the Reagan philosophy, with its secret wars and behind the scenes mapipulations and scandals , trading arms for hostages, backing sadistic murdering Contra rebels against what was seen as a Communist threat in the Sandinista government. That secret and decptive war , that resulted in Sanctuary trials charging Church leaders with illegally aiding aliens from Central America, who fled the violence which the United States government denied existed. It was in those years that I first read and listened to Sojourners after hearing Jim Wallis speak as he visited Arizona where I happen to be living for about 9 months.

As I listened to people working in the Human Services in Phoenix, jsut a few short years after leaving Seminary in 1981, I learned of the abandonement of vital services through budget cuts of the Reagan administration (which I heard warnings about those cuts to expect as forthcoming from the Reagan administration), and of the secret covert actions taken in El Salvador. Wallis later was to write a book called "Who Speaks For God?" , which was one of the few vocal evangelicals with social conscience that weas calling for attention to the diverse voices in American Christianity rather than lumping all Christians into the "Ralph Reed/Pat Robertson" mode, which was becoming almost automatically aligned with the Republican party.

With all the job hunting and independent projects I had going on over the past 3-4 months, I had laid down the mantle of exploring and "revisting" Virtual community. It's time to take it up again. But, for the next couple of hours, I'm going to my daughter's softball game. An article on SmartMobs got me to think ing about this. Later.

I was sent this link (Why Internet Church?) by by friend Larry, about the Church of England's new venture: an Internet Church, led by a paid pastor. the article is written by the Oxford Diocese Director of Communication, Richard Thomas.

It has some important things to say, such as:

And it may be that the increasing failure to participate is a direct result of a loss of faith in such institutions as places that are effective in their key tasks, and that make demands on us that do not contribute either to mission or personal growth.

Loss of participation in the traditional church (traditional as in "ftf") due to a perceived lack of emphasis in, or concern for, their own concerns and convictions about what Church should be. I perceive the main problem to stem from the almost total lack of communication among the many. The information is largely one-way, pulpit centered, and the populace is increasingly becomng aware that much more "conversation" and "exploration" is available elsewhere. The pulpit is no longer a conduit of information as it was in pre-information age days. But also , and as the Cluetrain authors insist, the thing that most people are interested in is the "Real market", which is the conversation.

The power behind this reality; what actually undergirds its status as "reality" or "driving force" is that the Christian community is dependent upon just that: Community. The Pentecost event occurred as they were "gathered together in one place". The question we are now asking, rather than "What is truth?", is "What is place?" What is the power of "one place?" Is this a physical reality or does it have something to do with the things that can happen there (and in the first century, people could not 'exchange" in the immediacy of give-and-take except by physcial prescence. But......

The previous post about Brainstorms leads me to post a little reciting of what I was raving about back in October 2002: Howard Rheingold's book that had just come out , Smart Mobs (which has a BLOG by that name which continues to keep us updated with continuing findings, studies, articles (many of them by Howard, since it is, after all, HIS blog)

I posted to Brainstorms today (Howard Rheingold's online community which is very "Well" like (as in "The Well", from which Howard led many in his convictions about the emerging power of the Internet for creating new types of social and peronal ties (In his groundbreaking book, The Virtual Community in 1992, online here). I have included it here because it is fittingly "rant-like" as a weblog entry, but it echoes and summarizes many of the things I often say in numeous posts attempting to "cover the ground" I posted to a topic I started on Sept 18, 2001, called "Online Theological Community".

From Smart Mobs,  and higly relevant to some of the Smart Mobs for which we hope to begin providing in the environment where we are exploring "Great Good Place Technologies",  which means we are to be part Social Software, part Smart Mob( which is also very much about social software running on social technology tools -- "scaffolding for social psychology). Anyway,  this is posted direct to radio from Smart Mobs

As I talked and envisioned with Larry this past week during my visit to Cincinnati, the importance of THIRD PLACE returned as a conscious topic around which to organize my thoughts and plans and hopes. The Old St. George model of the Great Good Place for Community and Spiritual Renewal presents itself to me at a real moment of Kairos; at this pinnacle of purpose and calling where I now find myself. I brought home with me a copy of the Second Edition of The Great Good Place, and also the followup study, Celebrating The Third Place, which collects a few "incarnational examples" of the kinds of Places sought in the initial study.

Far from being the "detriment" to the creation of and renewal of Third Places, the computer networks can be utilized as "Scaffolding" that collects and highlights the things that make for Great Good Places. To provide ways to "keep conversations alive" is a good thing. The only "self-awareness" growing there is that of our own and the sense of collaboration and comradery that we expereince in the Third Place. And now, the Third Place generates "virtual places" that are extensions of the physical environment, but carry with it some pieces of the personal effects of the Third Place---- perhaps even generating a new "sense of place" that is given prestigge becuase of the connection it gives us to the "overall Third Place". In other words, Third Place grows outward and is available to us in previously "dead times", like when we are on the bus, in the car, waiting for someone at a meeting place. We are "away" from the Third Place where we long to return and relax and engage, but we can bask in some of those qualities that make for the Third Place by re-reading and perhaps posting a response or an additional thought to a previous conversation, or explore a link to something posted by another participant, or set up a meeting/get-together with another with whom we have "branched off" a sub-topic of another conversation upon finding that we share a particular passion for exploring the possibilities in a particular direction (say, Online community software, and its installation on a newly upgraded Windows 2003 Server--- what a geek I am).

Link to Whole Earth issue on Technological Singularity and one by Jaron Lanier (virtual reality guy)

I had a trackback on one my posts this morning, just a couple of hours after I posted it. It really brought home a sense of the power this feature represents. It's like a gigantic Web of shared testimony. It's like I was sharing this bit of my experience at a campfire at a Church camp where friendship was thick, and here's another person, standing just on the other side of the fire, saying "Yeah, I know what you mean...it's like....." Thanks, Steve.

What he said:

what to me is the most important aspect of blogging: the creation of a web of Web selves |  Read the article about AlwaysOn (this line is just above the paragraph that contains the bulleted points almost at the end of the post)

When Weinberger of JOHO (same article as The Web Self article below - or earlier) puts it this way,  I REALLY think Church Web/Church Weblog.  A "Web of WebSelves";  that image carries with it so much of what I thik Church websites need to be.  Church Websites use brochure language to try to describe it to us.  What they're trying to do is give us enough of a "feel" to get us to come and meet them,  or "experience" the worship,  or "try it" or all the above. 

David Weinberger of JOHO writes about the claim by AlwaysOn that they are a "SuperBlog", and David points out that there's not really a way for members to "write" in an area that is "them" (that's how I understand what Weinberger is saying, and that's what blogging is for me as well:  a place that's "Me" on the Web.)

The part of AO that might be considered bloggy is pretty clearly a commenting or letters-to-the-editor capability. That's good to see, and people are writing trenchant commentary. But it's missing some core stuff that's central to understanding why bloggery is important: Members don't get a home page where I can go to read what they've written today. The "members profile" page doesn't count even though it has a linked list of previous posts. This matters (to me, anyway) since I think the most important effect of weblogging is that it creates a persistent place on the Web that comes to stand for the person; a blog site is as close as we've come to having a Web self.

Tony is obviously a great marketer. Every time he proclaims AlwaysOn as a "super-blog," he's having an actual effect on the world. People who go to AlwaysOn thinking that it's a prime example of a weblog are going to hear interesting voices � good � but are going to miss what to me is the most important aspect of blogging: the creation of a web of Web selves. That objection is political, not semantics. | see the whole article, AlwaysOnDebate

This is also where I think Church organizations are missing the point.  (Read on in "Churches missing the point")  

Community is not entirely physical.  Everyone knows that,  but there is still a lot of protest from traditional Chuyrch circles about how "Virtual Faith" cannot replace the physical gathering.  And I say,  over and over,  its not about REPLACEMENT,  it's about AUGMENTATION.  It's about providign another channel into encouraging of story.  It's about "hearing the voices" of the People of God,  and even as I write this on this "Pentecost morning",  I have the feleing that very few of the people I know are even reading it,  even though I know I keep this weblog,  and update it often,  and often write about things I care deeply about. 

Pentecost Sunday.  With some work to get going on, and being without my family today (they get back later today), I am in my home office this morning,  with Pentecost very much on my mind.  I was recalling how 20 years ago on Pentecost Sunday, I preached a sermon in the Church where I had been Minister of Youth/Associate Pastor for about 3 months.  It was my 27th birthday that day. 

I suppose the amount and frequency with which one receives "blank stares" and "glazed over" looks has the effect of driving one into the embraces of online interaction, "where people understand". It's like an oasis sometimes. Ecunet was my first experience of that. Weblogs and the people who know me in the face-to-face world (who still write me via email since none of them blog, except for the few who have met me as a result of our being bloggers, like Kenneth of JoKer's Blog or David weinberger and AKMA)

It seems to me that this "Social Software" buzz and debates about its definition and the exploration of what constitutes examples of it (like Weblogs,  which has sort of hosted the rise of the issue,  as far as I know).....is squarely in the center of what should be getting lots of hits and research from people seeking communication stragies for the Church.  It goes to the heart of subjects like "The Soul of Cyberspace" and "Give me that Online Religion" and "Cybergrace"  (these three titles all books from my shelf).  I will add mini-reviews for each of them in a few moments.

These conversations merit the devoted attention and participation of people supposedly interested in the interaction of humans,  and in the things that make for community.  Watch here as I begin to cover this and make direct (and often accusing) connections to the Church and where there is "cluelessness in search of....whatever it is that is the cure for cluelessness.....I guess that's exploring the clues.