Cyberspace

Via Russell Brown’s column in the latest NZ Listener - Wide Area News: Casting the net - a link through to the World Internet Project New Zealand being done by AUT’s Institute of Culture, Discourse & Communication.

The World Internet Project New Zealand (WIP NZ) is an extensive research project which aims to provide important information about the social, cultural, political and economic influence of the internet and related digital technologies.

The findings of the pilot programme and the interim reports can be found here. (Brown’s piece summarizes a some it as well). I’m going to download them and see if anything interesting pops out.

As someone interested in both transmedia narratives and the TV show ‘Heroes’ I was really interested to read this article recently.

Confessions of an Aca/Fan: The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins: “We Had So Many Stories to Tell”: The Heroes Comics as Transmedia Storytelling and to find the link to the online ‘Heroes’ comics that add to the TV episodes at Heroes TV Show on NBC: NBC Official Site

More links to transmedia storytelling at Greenflame · Transmedia.

Interesting article on Wired’s web site about developments that see brain-machine interfaces moving from therapeutic domains and into the entertainment world, and medical concerns about that. see BCI - Brain to Control Games Directly, Maybe Vice Versa

The NZ Privacy Commissioner has a press release out on what she calls “privacy pollution” caused by individuals and wider society being permeated by digital media and transactions.

“Privacy pollution is about the small privacy incursions that are annoying rather than harmful in themselves, but can accumulate and have widespread impact that can ultimately amount to a significant level of intrusion”

See: Private Word Issue 63, August 2007 - The Office of the Privacy Commissioner, New Zealand

Related links:

• Commissioner hits out at “privacy pollution” - Yahoo!Xtra News:
• Scoop: ‘Privacy Pollution’ erodes choices:
• Call for restrictions on ‘privacy pollution’ - New Zealand news on Stuff.co.nz:

The Ideas slot on Sunday morning on Radio NZ National was about virtual worlds, including both positive and negative voices about their effects on individuals and wider society.

Audio available via podcast or from the link on the Ideas page. (Be aware that the default audio format is WMA. If you want MP3 then you have to change your audio preferences on the RNZ web site).

Satirical piece over at LarkNews.com: Virtual Pastors please picky church-goers. I’d laugh more, but I can see it actually happening (given that congregations try to do it in real life sometimes).

Heidi posts a collection of links that track messianic expectation (of sorts) around Apple’s iPhone. See When Religion Meets New Media: IPhone = Jesus Phone?!?.

Reminds me of this from Kevin Kelly in his article, “The Third Culture.” (Science 279 (1998): 992-993.):

One would expect to see frenzied, messianic attempts to make stuff, to have creation race ahead of understanding, and this we see already. In the emerging nerd culture a question is framed so that the answer will usually be a new technology.

Also, on the cyberspace front a three books I’ve added to my “to read” list:

• Gaming Lives in the Twenty-First Century: Literate Connections by Cynthia L. Selfe and Gail E. Hawisher (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). The chapters “Dungeons, Dragons, and Discretion: A Gateway to Gaming, Technology, and Literacy” and “Gaming and Spirituality”.
• Cyberspace Romance: The Psychology of Online Relationships by Monica T. Whitty and Adrian N. Carr (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).
• Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture by Henry Jenkins (NYU Press, 2006).

A recent article in La Civilta Cattolica by Jesuit Antonio Spadaro argues for Catholics to consider virtual worlds, such as Second Life, as potential mission fields.

See:
Catholics urged to save virtual souls too - Stuff.co.nz
FT.com : Gospel 2.0: Jesuits move into Second Life:

You can read the article abstract here (in Italian) and here (via Google translation).

Tim Bulkeley’s on the lookout for people interested in religion and media.

Calling Auckland Bloggers! or Media and Religion scholars?
Heidi Campbell (Texas A & M) author of When Religion Meets New Media (Routledge) and the blog “When Religion Meets New Media” if there are bloggers in the Auckland vicinity who would be interested in a face to face get together to meet Heidi and each other on the evening of the 24th please contact me (Tim) by email or phone 526 0344 with your contact details. We will be having a sort of semi-colloquium on Media and Religious Authority that day (hopefully with virtual participants as well as physical ones - if you are an academic and interested in this topic please also contact me!) and a quiet chat with a wider group could be a good way to finish the day.

Contact him on the phone no. above or follow the link SansBlogue: Calling Auckland Bloggers! or Media and Religion scholars?

The first volume of the Wikiklesia Project - Voices of the Virtual World: Participative Technology and the Ecclesial Revolution - is scheduled for release on July 23, 2007. It’s a collection of reflections and essays by around 40 contributors looking at relationships between emerging (digital) technologies, spirituality, and the church.

You can find a press release here at: Wikiklesia Project: Press Release - Wikiklesia: Book One.

Voices of the Virtual World explores the growing influence of technology on the global Christian church. In this premier volume, we hear from more than forty voices, including technologists and theologians, entrepreneurs and pastors… from a progressive Episcopalian techno-monk to a leading Mennonite professor… from a tech-savvy mobile missionary to a corporate anthropologist whom Worth Magazine calls “one of Wall Street’s 25 Smartest Players.” Voices is a far reaching exploration of spiritual journey contextualized within a culture of increasingly immersive technology.

You can see the list of chapter titles and contributors (including me) at Wikiklesia Project: Chapter Titles.

The volume will be released initially as a eBook, followed by a printed edition at a later date.

All proceeds from the Wikiklesia Project will be contributed to the Not For Sale campaign.

More on the Wikiklesia Project at: Wikiklesia Project: About

Thanks to John La Grou and Len Hjalmarson for getting the experiment off the ground.

A selection of links that intersect around the role of new media in educational environments. Henry Jenkins has an essay (in two parts) that looks at the tension between participatory media and traditional educational models, and in particular emphasises the critical application of the following skill set:

1. Collective Intelligence — the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others towards a common goal.
2. Judgment — the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information source.
3. Networking — the ability to search for, synthesize and disseminate information.
4. Negotiation — the ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and respecting multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative sets of norms.

See:

• Confessions of an Aca/Fan: The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins: WHAT WIKIPEDIA CAN TEACH US ABOUT THE NEW MEDIA LITERACIES (PART ONE)
• Confessions of an Aca/Fan: The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins: WHAT WIKIPEDIA CAN TEACH US ABOUT THE NEW MEDIA LITERACIES (PART TWO)

Connected to this, is Mary Hess’ post about a review of her book on theological education promoting this type of critical engagement with new media by teachers and students. See:

• Tensegrities » Struggling to respond… and Tensegrities » A response to a review
• Tensegrities » Teaching/learning in theological education

Then AKMA has this post on reflecting on a meeting to discuss related matters - AKMA’s Random Thoughts - Retrospect and Prospect.

And then Tim chimes in with this post (connected to AKMA’s) - SansBlogue: Bible, Babel and Web 2.0. (Some long comments there - including some from Mark which he refers to here: E-BCNZer: Brighouse - “On Education”).

The integration of digital technologies, with existing pedagogues and technologies, will be here for a while yet. I know that I’ve found it frustrating as both a student and teacher that the roles I’m being trained for/are training people for are collaborative - they stand or fall based upon healthy, dynamic relationships (both in IT and religion) - and yet the systems promote individualism (for assessment particularly) and work to stamp out collaborative efforts (it’s called cheating). Intellectual property discussions (esp. academic ones) also connect here. There must be a better way.

Article recently in the Washington Post looks at the different ways in which people are bringing religion into the Second Life virtual environment. See Finding Religion in Second Life’s Virtual Universe - washingtonpost.com (Text also available here)

Related links:

• Anglican Second Life Inhabitants Construct Medieval Cathedral - Game | Life - Wired Blogs and The power of the blog « brownblog via SansBlogue: The Second Life Cathedral goes mainstream.
• Greenflame · Paul Teusner on Heidi Campbell’s “Exploring Religious Community Online”
• Greenflame · Religion and computer-mediated communications
• Greenflame · Research in New Media and Religious Online Communities
• Greenflame · God in Cyberspace
• Greenflame · Give Me That Online Religion
• Greenflame · Virtual Praystation
• Wired 3.07: Technopagans - May the astral plane be reborn in cyberspace and Erik Davis [ TECHGNOSIS ]
• Wired 3.06: A Globe, Clothing Itself with a Brain and “CyberGrace: The Search for God in the Digital World” by Jennifer Cobb.
• All sorts of things in the cyberspace and virtual reality categories.

Article from Wired highlighting an internet service for getting ‘debaptised’ from the Roman Catholic Church in Italy. See Debaptism 2.0: Fleeing the Flock Via the Net

I borrowed a copy of “Everyday Theology: How to Read Cultural Texts and Interpret Trends” (edited by Kevin Vanhoozer, Charles Anderson and Michael Sleasman: 2007) from the library the other day because it contained a copy of the essay “Human 2.0: Transhumanism as a Cultural Trend” (PDF) by Matthew Eppinette, as well as an essay on the church and blogging by .

I haven’t yet read most of the articles but from a quick skim it looks like it’d be a good introductory book for the course ‘Gospel in a Post-Christian Society’ that I took as part of my BD way back in 1999. (See e~mergent kiwi: a burger at my theological table for more on the course).

In his introductory essay, Kevin Vanhoozer argues for Christians being able not only to exegete the Bible and reflect theologically upon it, but also to exegete culture and become culture-makers. He states:

The reason why theology must study God and contemporary culture is the same reason why preaching must connect both with the biblical text and the listener’s context: because disciples do not follow the gospel in a vacuum but wend their Christian way through particular times and places, each with its own problem and possibilities. We can follow God’s word only if we know where we are and if we have a sense of where various ways lead. Doing theology is part and parcel of one’s daily walk and is too important to leave solely to the professionals.

Definitely.

Seen over at BetterHumans.com (anthropophobiacandroids : CyberPsalms 23) comes a transhumanist/technoprogressive psalm.

CyberPsalms 23 - By: anthropophobiacandroidsThe CyberLord is my technician, I shall not be denied.
He makes me lie down in electronic pastures,
He leads me beside quiet routers, and He restores my power.
He guides me in networks of righteousness for His name’s sake.
Though I see the uncanny valley and the singularity of death,
I will fear no androids, for shadows walk with me;
Your exploits and your cipher, they comfort me.
You prepare an IP table before me in the presence of cyborgs.
You anoint my header with oil; my buffer overflows.
Surely, knowledge and skill will bless all the days of my life cycle,
And I will live in the servers of the Web forever.

Having just posted the previous post I came across the following which also relate to religious narratives and media. Both are connected to MIT’s Science, Technology, and Society program which held a recent communications colloquium “Evangelicals and the media”.

• Henry Jenkins: Why Media Studies Should Pay More Attention to Christian Media…
• Evangelicals and the Media (MIT Webcast)

Various links related to convergent technologies (nano-, bio-, information technologies and cognitive science):

• Biosingularity - Techno-progressive blog that tracks new developments in bio- and medical technologies. (More on singularitarianism at Greenflame: Pondering the Singularity (Again)).
• The Top 100 Alternative Search Engines - Alternatives to the big four search engines (Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and Ask.com.
• The Discover Interview: Marvin Minsky - Interview with one of the perennial figures in artificial intelligence.
• U.S. university to build ’soft-bodied’ robots - Moving beyond ‘hard’, inorganic models for robotics and instead looking to ’soft’ organic/biological models.
• Wired News: A Wheelchair That Reads Your Mind - Research into a physically non-invasive brain-computer interface to aid with control of mobility devices.

Heidi Campbell points to a new issue of Religious Studies Review focused upon religion and the internet over at: When Religion Meets New Media: Special Issue from Religious Studies Review on Religion & Internet.

Some similar articles to issue one in 2005 of the journal Concilium which focused on cybertheology, cyberethics and cyberspace.

A while back I was skimming a couple of religion and media books (See Greenflame: Religion and computer-mediated communications), but I never got further than that with them. One of those books was Heidi Campbell’s “Exploring Religious Community Online: We are One in the Network” and now Paul has written a brief review of the book from his more informed position. See fishers, surfers and casters » Heidi Campbell’s Exploring Religious Community Online.

Now, let’s hope he will write one for Religion and Cyberspace, a collection of essays edited by Morten Hojsgaard and Margit Warburg.

A reasonably long, and sometimes bitty, article on social media’s use by teenagers and tweens over at MediaShift . Media Usage::Finding Balance in Teen Use of Social Media | PBS. One comment that stuck out as I scanned it,

Kids and teenagers have very little freedom in the real world. It’s not like back in the day. They used to bike places on their own — now it’s all controlled and sanitized.

The online world is the only place where they have freedom of expression, and can really be on their own and be themselves.

Hat tip to Fernando’s Desk » Blog Archive » A Few Good Reads…

Wired News have an interesting article about the rise of “New Atheism” which aims to bring about a society free of religion and superstition through reason. It’s interesting because it raises the issue that this may become the very fundamentalism it seeks to do away with. See Wired News: Battle of the New Atheism

If there’s money to be made then someone will want a slice of it - and possibly tax it. A few points about this at Virtual worlds getting so big they’re virtually taxable - 23 Oct 2006 - World News - NZ Herald.

Brief article on Pope Benedict’s critique of reliance on science and technology over at Pope warns scientists not to risk fate of Icarus - Yahoo! News.

Wired guide for first-time visitors (”noobs”) to Second Life in Let’s Go: Second Life.

And an article over at Rise of the machines - Technology - smh.com.au which picks up on some of the things that I highlight in the opening chapters of my thesis.

Simon Smith (who runs the BetterHumans.com web site) pauses to think about the effects of living in “eschatological” hope - in this case, waiting for some sort of techno-rapture. See Simon : Are virtual worlds inhibiting real social progress?.

But I would argue that, thanks to their sheer immersiveness, virtual worlds are qualitatively different from previous escapes, and getting more sophisticated all the time. My concern is what happens to the world while we’re waiting to upload into our digital utopias. The more realistic and appealing our virtual worlds, the more I fear people will avoid dealing with real problems. It’s certainly possible that virtual worlds will have a positive societal influence, with people trying to replicate some of their virtual experiences in real life. But I think it’s far more likely that people will increasingly seek to escape a world with poverty, sickness, social strife and other ills for one where such suffering is not only eliminated, but simply not represented because those who suffer can’t afford the cost of entry.

Related link - Greenflame: By their eschatology you shall know them.

Sitting on my desk are two recent books that look at religion and computer-mediated communications (CMC).

The first book is Religion and Cyberspace, a collection of essays edited by Morten Hojsgaard and Margit Warburg. I saw this by accident in a library the other day and found the essay, “Utopian and Dystopian Possibilities of Networked Religion in the New Millennium” by Stephen O’Leary, relevant to some stuff I’ve written on religious technological narratives. From the blurb,

Religion and Cyberspace explores how religious individuals and groups are responding to the opportunities and challenges that cyberspace brings. It asks how religious experience is generated and enacted online, and how faith is shaped by factors such as limitless choice, lack of religious authority, and the conflict between recognised and non-recognised forms of worship.

The second book, Exploring Religious Community Online: We are One in the Network, is the latest book by religion and media expert Heidi Campbell. I found it next to the one above in the library and was meaning to have a look at it sometime. Again from the back,

Exploring Religious Community Online is the first comprehensive study of the development and implications of online communities for religious groups. This book investigates religious community online by examining how Christian communities have adopted internet technologies, and looks at how these online practices pose new challenges to offline religious community and culture.

It’s part of the Digital Formations series that covers all sorts of CMC stuff. At the moment I’ll be skimming it, but later I hope to read it right through.

Over at The Digital Sanctuary: Internet Evolution Cynthia points to the new Pew/Internet report Imagining the Internet which surveyed the opinions of various stakeholders in the Internet. Related to my previous posting is their assertion that a substantial number of them are concerned about the role of autonomous technology in shaping future societies.

Of course, one of the best known examples of this technological unease is Bill Joy’s article Wired 8.04: Why the future doesn’t need us, which sparked off a range of responses.

Another well-known but optimistic view is that of Ray Kurzweil. See, for example, Reinventing Humanity: The Future of Machine-Human Intelligence. (PDF)

Joel Garreau’s book gives a good introduction to three of the various scenarios posed by the development of nano, biological, information and cognitive technologies (NBIC). He describes these as “Hell”, “Heaven”, and “Prevail”. Your local library should have a copy of the book. See “Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies — and What It Means to Be Human” (Joel Garreau).

A few years back Peter Lineham pointed me in the direction of the various series put out by Icon Books. Recently I’ve been reading the occasional book from their Postmodern Encounters series, including most recently Donna Haraway and GM Foods. All of the books in the series are fairly short and summarize a particular person’s interaction with a contemporary issue. In this case it examines the work of Donna Haraway on the new world of technonature, cyborgs, and the blurring of traditional boundaries between humans, animals, and plants, and between nature and machine (primarily using Modest Witness@Second Millenium. FemaleMan Meets OncoMouse: Feminism and Technoscience). Good thought provoking stuff.

The author, George Myerson, has written another volume in a series, Heidegger, Habermas, and the Mobile Phone, which I hope to get hold of in the near future.

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)

Interesting interview I stumbled across today. Albert Borgmann and N. Katherine Hayles interview/dialogue

The claim that cyberspace liberates people from the accidents of gender, race, class, and bodily appearance is often made by advocates of electronically distributed education. But to conceal a problem is not to solve it. We have to learn to respect and encourage people as they actually exist. The “liberated” students or citizens of cyberspace, moreover, have to bleach out their presence to that of a person who is without gender, social background, and racial heritage. Otherwise they betray what is supposed to remain hidden. And it turns out that there are loudmouths and bullies in cyberspace as often as in reality. The fuzzed identities of cyberspace, moreover, lend themselves to their own kind of mischief. (Borgmann)

Related links:

• N. Katherine Hayles
• “How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics” (N. Katherine Hayles)
• Albert Borgmann
• “Holding On to Reality: The Nature of Information at the Turn of the Millennium” (Albert Borgmann)

Picked up a copy of Digital People: From Bionic Humans to Androids by Sidney Perkowitz this week from the university bookshop. It looks quite interesting and I admit that once I saw the blurb on the back about science fiction movies - just after I’d edited some similar ideas in my introduction - I was keen to get it. From the back,

Robots, androids, and bionic people pervade popular culture, from classics like Frankenstein and R.U.R. to modern tales such as The Six Million Dollar Man, The Terminator, and A.I. Our fascination is obvious and the technology is quickly moving from books and films to real life.
…
Digital People examines the ways in which technology is inexorably driving us to a new and different level of humanity. As scientists draw on nanotechnology, molecular biology, artificial intelligence, and materials science, they are learning how to create beings that move, think, and look like people. Others are routinely using sophisticated surgical techniques to implant computer chips and drug-dispensing devices into our bodies, designing fully functional man-made body parts, and linking human brains with computers to make people healthier, smarter, and stronger.

Anyway, what is interesting in another way about this book is how it’s published. If you go to the publisher’s web site you can order a paper copy, buy a PDF (they have paper + PDF combos), buy a PDF of a chapter, sample a PDF, and search or browse the full text of the book.

Your book, delivered how you want it. Cool.

3quarksdaily: Poison in the Ink: How Virtual Worlds Mirror Our Own is an article picking up on the popularity of the large-scale online multi-player gaming systems.

See also: Greenflame: UN uses video game as educational tool

Article over at BetterHumans.com on virtual humans - those created by scans, computer programs, and video capture. See pragmatica : The growing role of virtual humans.

A few years back (2001?) I played around with LifeFX (Windows/IE only) which at that point had a funky email program (FaceMail?) you could download and then its avatar software would recite your emails to you with speech synthesis, a “life-like” avatar and recognition of emoticons. So I was interested when I saw this today: Wired News: Avatars Among Us.

I remember discussing with some friends that the way that sociable computers might come about would not be through embodied robotics but through an AI system hooked up to an avatar (maybe trained through embodied robotics though). If you spend you day interacting with a life-like avatar then over time you may come to consider it more than a program on your computer (or PDA or media player).

LifeFX was developed in part using technology researched in part here at the University of Auckland for medical simulations. There’s an article here about it: Wired 8.12: Must Read - Interface2face.

Oh, and there are some video clips of it here: LifeFX Demos.

From some reading I was doing today.

Technology never escapes politics. The fiction of cyberspace is useful precisely to the extent that it allows it allows its proponents to imagine an androcentric reality in which a threatening, messy, or recalcitrant (and invariably feminized) nature never intrudes. In this respect, cyberspace is consensual primarily in its insistence that technologically mediated experience can transcend the ecological and economic constraints that have shaped and continue to shape human culture. It offers the fantasy that the more technologically sophisticated our society becomes the less it has to worry about the distribution of wealth and resources.

From: Robert Moss Markley “Introduction: History, Theory, and Virtual Reality.” In Virtual Realities and Their Discontents, ed. Robert Moss Markley, 1-10. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996. (p.4)

This book is a collection of essays from writers who are more critical (even cynical) about the benefits offered by virtual reality and cyberspace, and the myths spun by the proponents of the technology.

Nice summary of a talk given on the influence of Google (and like) upon the identification of critical and helpful knowledge, particularly within the academic world, over at planet telex » Blog Archive » The University of Google - Speed Searching and the Killing of Knowledge. A problem that I come across regularly when marking essays. Seems that the essay question is typed into Google and the first few web sites retrieved crop up in several essays. Darren cites a list of criteria that the speaker, Tara Brabazon, gives to students to constructively educate them in using sources like Google. These include:

• Who authored the document?
• What expertise does the author have?
• What evidence is provided?
• What genre is the document, is it a journal piece, academic paper, polemic or a blog post?
• Is the site funded by an institution?

I talk about the use of internet/electronic resources to students whenever I teach but on the whole it doesn’t seem to have that much affect upon a significant minority. Even citing Internet resources is poorly done. Now however, I think I’ll develop a more constructive strategy.

See also: Greenflame: Google Sociology.

Emergent Authorship: Player as Co-Creator by Celia Pearce on interactive computer games - especially massive multiplayer online games and “God-games”.

From a cultural perspective, the ramifications of these new forms of entertainment is nothing short of revolutionary. Through these experiences, the consumer is thus transformed into consumer/producer and consumption itself becomes an act of production. Where previously there was a clear boundary between producer and consumer of content, this boundary continues to become more blurry. The role of the “author” in this context is, rather than creating content, to create context. This then invites the audience create or co-create the content, in essence, to entertain each other with their unique way of “playing the story.” Karl Marx said “seize the means of production.” What is interesting here is that not that users are seizing the means of production, but that in a sense, capitalism has found a sort of compromise in the production/consumption hybrid.

Published in a more polished form in: Celia Pearce, “Emergent authorship: the next interactive revolution”, Computers & Graphics, Volume 26, Issue 1, February 2002, Pages 21-29.

Mike, a friend of mine, forwarded me this link about the new family world envisaged by Intel its recent developer forum. The author comments that a colleague of his saw it like this,

Wolfgang’s issue with what was presented is that our future family life would have little in common with a typical scenario of today. Availability of various digital devices, ubiquitous broadband and wireless connections will enable every family member to be engaged in their own digital worlds. Just like in Total Recall, we would become trapped inside our own heads.

More at: Tom’s Hardware Guide Columns: Intel Does a Total Recall at IDF.

Seems similar to the observations a while back by Michael Lewis in the very watchable BBC documentary series “The Future Just Happened”. You can watch episodes at the main web site BBC : The Future Just Happened - the key episode for this topic is “Promise vs. Threat” (Real Player). (Book available here.)

William Gibson’s novel Neuromancer gave data and information a 3-D structure within cyberspace. Information became the landscape. It’s a little bit how I’m feeling at the moment as I stuggle to put my Virtual Theology paper to bed. I have a beginning and I know where I want to end but the middle feels like I’m in a landscape with no map. I can see all sorts of things around me - notes I’ve made, papers I’ve read, half-read books, multiple drafts of sections, innumerable outlines - but no clear path through to the other side. Or rather more than one path and I don’t know which is the best to pursue. It’s not a wilderness - it’s a jungle.

I’m hot and I’m mentally and physically tired. Writing feels like futile chipping away at a mountain with a hammer and chisel. It’s not that the material isn’t interesting - but it’s too interesting and I’m not doing it justice.

I’m hope things will look better in the morning when I revisit my draft. Maybe then I’ll see the critical connections between the parts and something unforeseen will emerge.

Wired News: Real World Doesn’t Use a Joystick

Kozy Kitchens’ experience with having a difficult time separating her real-life consciousness from that of her game playing is all too common among hard-core gamers. It’s so common, in fact, that game publishers might want to consider warning their customers that they may soon be unable to tell the difference between the game and reality.

If you want to read some interesting essays and articles about how people interact online or shape their “real lives” and “virtual lives” see Sherry Turkle. (Her book Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet is an accessible, if a little dated now, survey of online life and its psychological and sociological implications)

Wired News: Cell Phone Users Are Finding God

Once merely a useful tool for keeping in touch on the go, the mobile phone is fast finding a new niche as an instrument of spiritual enlightenment.

Link found via: TallSkinnyKiwi: (WIRED) Cell Phone Users Are Finding God

Just writing up some stuff on different approaches to technology. From those who see technology as liberator, to those who see it as oppressor, and those who see it as value-neutral. Then this popped up in the newsreader.

Somedays a doctrine of total depravity seems to get it right.

Wired News: Pursuing the Libido’s Dark Side

And as for the comment by the developer that

it’s vital to remember that what happens in the game stays in the game. Therefore, he added, people shouldn’t be afraid that the game’s players will step away from their computers filled with violent lust.

I’m not convinced that people don’t take the thoughts of their hearts with them into the game. Mark 7:14-16 springs to mind:

Again Jesus called the crowd to him and said, “Listen to me, everyone, and understand this. Nothing outside a man can make him ‘unclean’ by going into him. Rather, it is what comes out of a man that makes him ‘unclean.’”

What’s inside of human beings that would want to make them play this game?

Obviously a case of technology building a better, brighter world for us all. (”sarcasm mode” there folks) Somedays you just despair of us ever doing the right thing.

++ Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy ++

Over in his new blog Tall Skinny Kiwi has posted about people borrowing Teilhard de Chardin’s concept of the noosphere - a global mind or interconnected consciousness or even soul - to visualise cyberspace. (See: RecycledSpam: Noosphere). It was interesting to see it crop up as I’ve just finished writing a paper that looks at how cyberspace technologists “borrow” religious concepts or language to inspire or describe what they are doing, and Teilhard crops up being cited by a variety of people from a variety of backgrounds.

Teilhard’s vision of the noosphere, from the Greek nous for �mind,� is seen as the materialization of a global consciousness, that results the earth being clothed in a �new skin� and even a soul. Its arrival is portrayed by Teilhard in The Phenomenon of Man in terms of fire,

A glow ripples outward from the first spark of conscious reflection. The point of ignition grows larger. The fire spreads in ever widening circles till finally the whole planet is covered with incandescence.

If you’re interested in that sort of thing then the following books and articles will give you some idea of how Teilhard (and others) crop up in cyberspace creators’ imaginations.

Cobb, Jennifer. A Globe, Clothing Itself with a Brain [Internet]. Wired Magazine, June 1995. Available from http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.06/teilhard_pr.html.

Cobb, Jennifer. Cybergrace : The Search for God in the Digital World. 1st ed. New York: Crown, 1998.

Davis, Erik. Techgnosis : Myth, Magic, Mysticism in the Age of Information. 1st ed. New York: Harmony Books, 1998. Reprint, London: Serpent’s Tail, 1999.

Wertheim, Margaret. The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace: A History of Space from Dante to the Internet. New York: W.W. Norton, 1999. Reprint, London: Virago Press, 2000.

Most of these people have also published stuff on the net so have a search there as well.

Spent an hour and a half this afternoon watching the documentary Synthetic Pleasures (1996) by Iara Lee as part of my research and also to get some discussion questions for Monday’s lecture on being or becoming human in Western technoculture. Couldn’t get hold of a copy in NZ so ordered it in from overseas post-haste.

IMDB’s plot summary says

Conceived as an electronic road movie, this documentary investigates cutting edge technologies and their influence on our culture as we approach the 21st century. It takes off from the idea that mankind’s effort to tap the power of Nature has been so successful that a new world is suddenly emerging, an artificial reality. Virtual Reality, digital and biotechnology, plastic surgery and mood-altering drugs promise seemingly unlimited powers to our bodies, and our selves. This film presents the implications of having access to such power as we all scramble to inhabit our latest science fictions.

That’s a fairly good summary. In places the movie drags a little and 8-9 years on it’s looking a little dated but there’s some really interesting material in there for discussion. What it means to be human, on the place/role of the body (consumer/consumed), on dreams of immortality and freedom from the flesh, as well as the bizarreness of people in general.
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Just looking through my bookmarks collection and came across Heidi Campbell’s Web Page: Research in New Media and Religious Online Communities. She’s “investigating the nature of community, religion and the social through an analysis of new media technologies.” Intriguing stuff.

There are some links to things she’s written including online versions of some of them.

For all you interested in cyberculture I found this today: The Cyberspace and Critical Theory Overview

It is a large collection of materials drawn together by George P. Landow, Professor of English and Art History, Brown University.

I’m still thinking and reading about religion, technology and the nature of human identity in cyberspace. (I’ll be thinking about this for at least another 2 years until my thesis is finished) One book I find my self continually dipping into is Brenda Brasher’s Give Me That Online Religion. It’s easy to read, contains people’s personal stories and raises some good questions. Yesterday I was struck by this passage having been thinking about blogs, open-source theology and the postmodern monastry idea.

Individuals with no tie to any particular religious organization or group are the pioneers of online religion. The nonspecialists find in cyberspace a public space where they can preach and teach, crack religious jokes, and construct virtual rites with abandon. And they love it. To computer-adept amateur religionists, the global interconnectedness and pervasive openness of cyberspace concoct a heady brew of spiritual possibility that causes the spiritual imagination to flourish. Investing hundreds of hours in constructing Websites filled with spiritual content that they treat as virtual sacred places, individual online religious practitioners are the cultural missionaries of virtuality. They are among the first to explore the boundaries of cyberspace, attempt to learn its language, and try to translate their religious message into its context. Netcasting virtual religious art and music, these cyber-religionists construct online ritural, spin out virtual theologies, and form unprecedented, free-floating bonds of spiritual community in an eruption of cyberspace spiritual enthusiasm.

Brenda E Brasher, Give Me That Online Religion (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2001), 69-70.

Blogging fits this description well, though when Brasher wrote her book blogging was not really wide-spread.