September 2004

Doing a bit of transhumanist web surfing today while pondering writing a paper on the transhuman agenda and Christian social justice and came across the article below over at Betterhumans.com.

In Betterhumans > Ending Aging to Help the Poor author Simon Smith argues,

Rather than hinder the fight against poverty, funding life extension research is one of the best things we can do to improve everyone’s quality of life.

There’s many things in his piece that I find unsettling including his argument that a fraction of the defense budgets of the Western world could be diverted to anti-aging research. The implication in the article seems to be that the research would then be used for the good of all. I’m sorry but I can’t see that happening. It’s like arguing that phamaceutical research benefits all evenly - rather than only those who can afford it. Pharmaceuticals become an economic “weapon” - just ask those countries who need them, can only afford generic drugs and then get slammed with economic implications.

There’s also the implication that unless we get the anti-aging treatment the elderly are inherently worth less than the younger - that they have nothing positive to contribute any more.

Anyway, have a read and a think about it. I think I might use it in class next week when we look at the doctrine of humanity.

Jonathan’s post zone de confluence has some interesting refections on a French art exposition on technology’s effects on our perceptions on time and space.

He also had a link to this movie (WeAccept_H.mov) produced by one of the artists - D-Fuse - as a response to the commercialisation of the Internet.

Saw this the other day in the paper edition of the Science & Theology News that I get.

The connection between design and devotion is under study by a group of clerics, neuroscientists and architects who are trying to understand how the mind reacts to the sensations of entering a house of worship. The result, they hope, will be better designs that enhance the meeting of the sacred and earthly.

I’d like to read their final report sometime.

Full article at: Science & Theology News - Architects parse out what makes holy spaces holy

Interesting post over at Paradoxology: Without a Rite-of-Passage….

Some days it seems just like this - Calvin and Hobbes — 21-09-1993.

A year or so ago I blogged about Greenflame: Genetics with some links to a couple of genetics resources I’d found (including a Gattaca study guide). Now it looks like we’re a lot closer to the Gattaca scenario than we were then. Check out Wired News: Quick Read on Your Genetics.

Thanks to Andii at Nouslife: Gattacca is nearly here for pointing it out.

I’m skimming through Stanley Grenz’ The Social God and the Relational Self and came across the following in a section where he’s talking about metaphorical language (especially with respect to Sallie McFague’s writing).

The acknowledgment that theological language is metaphorical alters our understanding of the task of the theologian. Rather than a scientist who discovers truths about God waiting to be discerned, the theologian is a poet who crafts meaningful pictures about our world and our relationship to the transcendent.

In effect, the theologian becomes, or is, a storyteller painting word pictures. Though why stop only with the medium of words?

Seen at: Inventor sniffs out nose-operated mouse | Tech News on ZDNet. (More details there)

Dmitry Gorodnichy, an inventor from the Institute of Information Technology in Ottawa, has developed a computer navigation system that relies on the movements of a user’s nose to direct a cursor, New Scientist reported on Wednesday.

For good measure, a simple blink of the right or left eye corresponds to the right or left click of a mouse button, the magazine said.

I was reading the article “Complexity Theory as Model and Metaphor for the Church” by David A. Wollert yesterday and the following paragraph stood out.

Unlike passive components, such as water molecules, human beings presumably can direct their own interactions. Thus the connectivity of “the church” itself is a dynamic process and not a static map. How we interact with one another becomes one of the defining features in an emergent systems view of the church. If we isolate ourselves, then the church will tend toward a static or fixed attractor; if we interact with everything around us, then the church will tend to become chaotic and overextended to the point of failure. Maintaining an optimum autopoietic state requires an adaptive form of connectivity, sufficiently self-contained to maintain stability and individuality, yet suffuciently responsive to the world to benefit from the synergy of working together. In the jargon of complexity theory, the church must exist at “the edge of chaos.”

I like the idea of existing at “the edge of chaos” - resonates for me with thoughts Steve had at KB04 about standing on the foreshore before the chaotic sea.

(I’m also preparing some lecture notes on the Trinity so thoughts about integration, codependency, identity, structured dynamism & personhood also spring to mind).

For those who are interested the full reference to the paper is:

Wollert, David A. “Complexity Theory as Model and Metaphor for the Church,” Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 56:1 55-59, M 2004.

I was looking for NZ images of the sea and land for the KB04 presentations and I came across this site: New Zealand Photos and Images by Vonnagy.

Some really nice photos of NZ - including some local Waitakere ones - AND you can download them and use them for free. (If you use them on your web site then he asks that you add a link back to his site).

The images are fairly small (600×400) but don’t have any watermarks etc. Also if you want a higher resolution image - say for a print - you can obtain one from him too.

Kingdom Builders 04 finished yesterday and Steve and I wrapped up the “Theology and Real Life” stream looking at Jesus and technology. Over the past three days we’d run sessions on Jesus & the environment, Jesus and the foreshore, and Jesus and technology using Karl Barth’s quote “Tell me your Christology, and I’ll tell you who you are” to weave them together.

It was good to work with Steve and see him in action. His presentation on the foreshore issue here in NZ, where he worked strands of exclusion & embrace, theologies of land and place, and meeting Christ on the foreshore, was outstanding in my opinion. Hopefully it will see publication at some point in the near future.

I learnt a lot in the process about collaboration, presenting outside of the “ivory tower” and also about myself and how I cope (or don’t cope) with stress. (Big “thumbs up” to Kim and Steve there.)

Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!
Go to the nzepc - new zealand electronic poetry centre.
Enjoy.
Have a look at nzepc - 12 Taonga - Whetu Moana under the Features section.
(Here be text and sound recordings).

Nice quote seen over at jonnybaker: rushkoff on blogging who adds his own sping onto it. He’s highlighted a chunk of Douglas Rushkoff’s The Real Threat of Blogs.

I believe that the most dangerous thing about blogs to the status quo is that so many of them exist for reasons other than to make money. A thriving community of people who are engaged for free, to me, have a certain authority that people doing things for money don’t.
…
Likewise, I believe the greatest power of the blog is not just its ability to distribute alternative information - a great power, indeed - but its power to demonstrate a mode of engagement that is not based on the profit principle.

In particular he asserts that the Internet, and blogging, move people outside of the traditional market-driven activities of consumption and production. In a sense, they become subversives.

Some ideas here that might be useful for Saturday’s talk on Jesus, the Internet and technology.

Being something of a comic book junkie (see: Greenflame: Holy Warrior Nuns, Batman!) I was interested to read this yesterday over at Jolly Blogger: Superman, Jesus Christ and Jim Caviezel.

Great posting with lots of links to interesting articles and sites linking in religious themes with comic book characters (mostly Superman).

Seems the pace of blogging - the frequency and length of posts - is slowing up, particularly in the NZ blogs I read. Must be the end of winter - spring is almost here (an “already but not-yet” tension for the eschatologially minded) but the energy burst of new growth isn’t quite here yet.

On the other hand, the northern hemisphere blogosphere seems to be humming - a late summer/autumn rush before the winter?

PhD supervision meeting today. Time to “vent” about how I’m feeling about my thesis progress to my supervisors. No writing due today just time to talk. They listen, they encourage, they offer wisdom - nice to have that sort of relationship with them. Going to take a few weeks away from the main work and clear my desk of other outstanding work - lecture prep, a magazine article and some IT work. But spend some time thinking about the thesis through skimming a couple of books (including From cells to souls - and beyond)

In their helpful book How To Get A PhD Estelle Phillips and Derek Pugh identity a series of psychological stages the PhD student goes through:

• Enthusiasm
• Isolation
• Increasing interest in work
• Transference of dependence from supervisor to the work
• Boredom
• Frustration
• A job to be finished

Definitely in the boredom and frustration stages at the moment but hoping to move on to the final run to finish up by the end of next year.

Just a little “stocking stuffer”. The new Apple - iMac G5.