Joff alerts me (via email) to the news that JMS will be coming to the Auckland Armageddon in October. See pulpexpo.com – Joe Straczynski – Film and Comic Writer. (Curses! The link disappeared over the weekend)

Related links:
Joff’s experiences of the Wellington expo.
Greenflame: Post-Armageddon.

2002 article – Wired News: Of PowerPoint and Pointlessness on Powerpoint in schools. Via slacktivist: PowerPoint sucks.

Undeniable Facts: Undeniable Friday- a fact a day – Levitating screw.

Came across the online lecture, Edinburgh University Divinity School: God in Cyberspace by Lavinia Byrne, the other day. Concentrating on religion and cyberspace, I particularly liked the conclusion:

The scribe of the Book of Kells knew about community; his was a monastic calling. Yet the discipline of scholarship required him to spend time alone; his art made this a necessity. This is the balance we are offered by a vision of communications which takes personhood, relationship and true encounter in community seriously. This is the balance that gives us a sense of where there is loss and where there is gain in our own use of technology. I would say that this is the balance we find in God, three in one, one in three. As our communications’ systems become more diverse, we need to exercise the gift of choice with true discernment; to mirror the divine image and likeness in which we are made in its true complexity. Like the young men who walked beside the Sea of Galilee, we can be fearless in our searching and fearless about asking him their question: ‘Lord, where do you dwell? We thought the answer was all about atoms. Now we have discovered that it is about digits as well.

There are other public lectures online as well. See http://www.div.ed.ac.uk/publiclectures.

Related link:

Lyon, David. “Would God Use Email?” Zadok Perspectives 71 (2001): 20-23. (Available at http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/9752.htm)

Looking at information technology, and technology in general, as an ecology is a stimulating idea, and one I’m thinking about in relation to the imago Dei. Much has been written on the relationship between the environment and interpretations of the imago Dei in Gen 1. Is it possible, if we think of technology ecologically, to connect that reflection with cyberspace and other technological dimensions of life?
Bonnie Nardi and Vicki O’Day look at how viewing information technology as an ecology might serve to shape engagement with it that goes beyond a focus upon means rather than ends. They write in their book Information Ecologies: Using Technology with Heart:

We define an information ecology to be a system of people, practices, values, and technologies in a particular local environment. In information ecologies, the spotlight is not on technology, but on human activities that are served by technology.

By focusing upon technology as an ecosystem they argue that (among other things) it:

• Focuses attention on the relationships between tools, people, and practices.
• Moves beyond the idea of technology as a single tool for a single person.
• Captures the notion of locality that is missing from high-level system views.

Furthermore, while an ecology is complex it can be views at many different scales because:

• An ecology responds to local environmental changes and local interventions.
• An ecology can be examined at the level of the individual.
• Individuals can participate in multiple ecologies.
• Individuals are involved with real relationships with other individuals in an ecology.
• Scale of the ecology allows for the identification of individual points of leverage, of ways into the system, and avenues of intervention.

I like their idea of librarians as ‘gardeners’ or ‘ecologists’ of information ecologies, and think the metaphor of the created co-creator (together with related metaphors of the cyborg and Incarnation) might connect well here.

Related links:
Greenflame: Appropriate technology

Conrad Gempf starts to podcast the text of his book “Jesus asked” soon. More at gempfcast.

Jason also had some links to other talks (maybe on the same material) that are available as MP3. See Jason Clark » Conrad Gempf – Narrative and MP3.

Back in mid-2004 I went over to the ANZATS conference in Melbourne (see Greenflame: Friday). One of the keynote speakers was Australian poet Noel Rowe, and I thoroughly enjoyed his presentation. Recently I came across his conference paper that had been published last year in the Australian EJournal of Theology (AUGUST 2005 – ISSUE 5 – ISSN 1448 – 632).

You can find it at : Noel Rowe, “The Glory of God: Humanity Full Alive: Poetry, Theology and Emptiness” – “The angel did not draw attention to himself”

Oh, yes! A movement calls for the removal of the Caps Lock key on keyboards. I loved some of the keyboards on old CRT terminals that I used to use because the Control key was in the right place. I can swap the two but it’d be nicer to have two Ctrl keys.

Wired News: Death to Caps Lock

What with the various Crises in the DC Comics universe(s) in the past 20 years or so, it’s pretty hard to figure out what’s what with all the retconning. (See Crisis on Infinite Earths, Identity Crisis, Infinite Crisis, plus Zero Hour and other bizarreness.)

Post Infinite Crisis DC Comics produced a serialized (new) history of the universe to bring everyone back to speed. It’s not gripping, nor exhaustive, but might just make everything a little clearer (especially when you’re trying to figure out just which Superboy, Hawkman or Flash is being talked about.

See DAILY PLANET 52 WEEK SPECIAL: History of the DC Universe (Part 1). Should be 10 parts when all done, I think.

Inspired by jonnybaker: if you want me to read your blog posts… I have hacked the RSS feeds (both RSS1 & RSS2) to include the full content of blog posts. Been meaning to do it for a while now, but needed a push from somewhere to do it.

The resulting changes looked okay in NewNewsWire Lite but if any problems let me know. Of course, if there’s a significant problem you won’t be able to read this if you use a news aggregator/reader.

Did not touch the Atom feed. (Does anyone use it?)

As an aside, Blogger’s atom feeds seem to be painful in the newsreader all the time. Lack of titles, constantly refreshing the feed so I get large numbers of past feeds marked as new, etc. Almost makes me think twice before subscribing to someone’s Atom feed.

I’m an avid watcher of cooking shows, and if some interesting sport or science fiction isn’t on you’re likely to find me watching (in the spare seconds I have in my life) something on Food TV, which shows a selection of from mostly the US, UK and Australian. (Way, way back in the dark ages of the internet I used to read rec.food.recipes everyday).

So imagine my delight to find that there as a whole lot of search plug-ins for Firefox that search cooking channels and recipe sites. See here for a list.

However, I still can’t see the appeal of Iron Chef America.

Picked up a copy of this the other day via inter-loan (all the way from Wichita State University). Contains a selection of essays looking at, among other things, co-creation and artificial intelligence. Most of the papers are short (5-10 pages) and don’t interact with the material to the depth of my own research (and nor should they given their length), but it’s encouraging to see that others have had similar (but different!) ideas. Not sure if any of the paper will get used in the thesis – well past the time for new material now.

I inter-loaned the book rather than buying it (even though it’s one of the few that touches on my thesis topic) because of the price: US$120 / UK£60. Seriously, books like this should move to a publish on demand or electronic media version. Given the limited appeal (and sales) that’d make access better and more people might buy it outside of institutions.

Görman, Ulf, Willem B. Drees, and Hubert Meisinger, eds. Creative Creatures: Values and Ethical Issues in Theology, Science and Technology. Issues in Science and Theology. London; New York: T & T Clark, 2005.