Social Justice Series: Caritas Aotearoa New Zealand is a series of booklets looking at the eradication of poverty. Really helpfual material with NZ examples. I’ve been reading the fifth book in the series “The Digital Divide: Poverty and Wealth in the Information Age” as I think about cyberspirituality.

How does the proclamation of the Kingdom of God, in both word and social action, interact with cyberspace, technoculture and its effects? How should we live in a world where we are, in William Gibson’s words, “wrapped in media”?

The books are really cheap ($2-$4 each) and its worthwhile buying them all. I plan to use them to start discussion questions in class and with house groups etc.

Having spent the last year looking at the image of God, Christian anthropology and its development over the last 2000 years I’m somewhat encouraged to see this. All this dying and going to heaven as spirits borders on Gnostic and neo-Platonic thought a lot of the time. Personally, I can’t wait to see creation restored and to be able to physically enjoy it as God meant it to be.

ic Newcastle – Bishop risks row over new book

Feel like my head is going to explode. I’ve got about 10 different competing ideas running around about this topic for Saturday – each of which I think are interesting and relevant. Some include:

1. The use of Teilhard de Chardin’s work to describe the Internet/cyberspace as the evolution of a “global consciousness”
2. Groups who include IT technology into their rituals and practices (e.g. technopaganism)
3. A Christian spirituality that is faithful to the gospel and contextualised to Western technoculture
4. New “religious” stories, such as transhumanism, that seek transcendence of the human condition via technology
5. Issues to do with social justice, the “Digital Divide” and how that relates to the Kingdom of God
6. Ecological consequences of technology and its relation to the image of God and stewardship

Hopefully it will be clearer in the morning. (And I can figure out how to include a “Babylon 5″ reference into the work).

I’m working on a couple of things at the moment relating to techno- or cyber-spirituality and I’ve posted a brief bibliography (with web links) in the resources section. The references here are to take you beyond the “how do I get Powerpoint into worship?” and “our church needs a web site” stages and to get you thinking about how those sorts of technologies actually shape faith and its practice.

What does it mean to be the people of God in a technocultural world? And what challenges and opportunities do technologies like the Internet offer to religion and spirituality?

A great site dedicated to Outlining software (especially older versions). Covers both Mac and PC (DOS & Windows) with downloads. See Outliners.Com: Welcome to Outliners.Com!

Sure you can do outlining in Word but I’m a big fan of many small, different, efficient and dedicated pieces of software working together to get the job done (as in the “Body of Christ”?). Must be the UNIX background coming through.

For those of you using Macs but not Mac OS X then Acta, one of the earliest outliner programs is available here. Acta, the easiest outline processor

Snappy and still very useful.

I love outliner software. Just the way I think and organise my information. Came across this gem the other day that is both an outliner and an image map generator. So a quick (and limited) outline of my web site and we get the following graphic with hyperlinks. Cool.

The software is called myMind, it’s for Mac OS X and it’s free!. You can pick up a copy from: Sebastian Krauß | Software

“How many people are on the Internet? By stunning coincidence, the total turns out to be exactly the same as the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin.” [Paul Andrews, Seattle Times, 14 Jan 96]

I’m speaking at the following on cyber/techno-spirituality along with some other speakers . Both using it for spiritual purposes and wondering if technology has it’s own spiritual agenda. Rachel and Steve are also speaking and you can visit their blogs under the Wayfarers menu on this page. (Note to self: Must check if Kirsten has a blog.)

You are invited to join a group of IT and theological professionals
meeting:
On: Saturday 1st November 4pm-6pm
At: Carey Baptist College, 473 Great South Rd, Penrose, Auckland.

The objectives of the group are to facilitate discussion of issues at the interface of IT Church and Culture; to network and to discuss projects of interest.

The November 1st meeting will discuss four presentations:
Kirsten Abbot: Wrestling with the (hyper)text: Gen 32
Rachel Cunliffe: CensusAtSchool
Steve Taylor: A postmodern monastery: the catalytic earthing of an “open-source” spirituality
Stephen Garner: Techno-spirituality

In The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Douglas Adams described the “Total Perspective Vortex” – a devices that allowed you to see exactly where in the universe you fitted in. Of course, when you realised how insignificant you were then it blew your mind.

Over at TouchGraph they have something similar. Just enter in the name of your web site or blog and their Java applet will draw a map of how your site links with others in Google’s cyberspace directory. Sometimes the oddest links have been made by people.

Check out TouchGraph GoogleBrowser V1.01