Jottings on science, religion, technology, pop culture, photography and faith from the Aotearoa New Zealand
RAILhead Design: APOD Grabber is a cool, little Mac OS X app that gives you the ability to quickly and easily view, browse, and download images from NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day web site. It also grabs information about the picture and allows you to set the Desktop background too.
Found this excellent image of the night-time Earth today using it. See Earth at Night. You can grab the images as various resolutions but this would make an excellent poster or background.
A while back I blogged about contemporary Rites of Passage and the lack thereof perceived by some.
Now in the latest AA Directions magazine (AA as in Automobile Association) they give their list of modern Kiwi rituals including The Fishing Trip, The Car Rally, The Wedding, The Singalong, The Tattoo, The Hangi, The Match, and The Eco Rescue.
See Natural Habits – What makes us special? A look at modern kiwi rituals
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
An email today from one of the librarians I am continually indebted to pointed me to this small area of cyberspace that I have never visited before.
Subtitled “Tired of the usual liberal perspectives on the issues of the day? Then you have come to the right place…” Peter Glover’s web site www.word21.com has a couple of articles on “cyberchurch.” In particular,
The Church in Cyberspace – Going where no church has gone before? (PDF)
The Cyberchurch, The Megachurch and the Myth of New Ways of Doing Church. (PDF)
Now Glover writes polemically and at times stridently, so if you’re looking for material to support your cyberchurch/blogging venture you’re going to be disappointed (or even considered apostate). However as I tell all my students to read and talk to people with a variety of views and then form their own opinions and positions I’m posting the links here.
They’re opinion pieces from someone who is deeply concerned about the nature of the church and its relationship to cyberspace. As with any sort of empassioned piece the rhetoric and polemicism get in the way of some of the constructive questions.
Questions to do with the nature of the church and its relationship with cyberspace are relevant questions and need to be discussed with a variety of views being aired.
Updating the previous entry reminded me that the latest issue of Stimulus is out now: August 2004 – IT, culture & the Church.
Tim Bulkeley, the coordinator of “Virtual Theology”, edited this issue and it has articles in it by him, Steve Taylor, Tim Bednar and yours truly.
Some stuff appears to be online (like Nicola Hoggard-Creegan’s article) but you may need to contact them if you want to get hold of a copy outside of NZ.
There have been various threads of discussion recently in the blogosphere about the depth of blogging and its role as a medium for doing theology. (See Maggi (1) & (2), Steve (1) & (2), Dan and me (1) & (2). (As well as many others out there)
For some it represents the cutting edge of theological endeavour, for others a forum to enter into that domain for a first time, and for some it serves as a useful outlet for the “traditional” theology they do.
I’ve been asked to participate in a colloquium on “virtual theology” early next year and one of the possible topics to address is: Does the fluidity of digital media create a different world-view affecting how theology is done?
Themes such as the nature of authority, multiplicity and simultaneity of information, and virtual presence will all come up at some point.
So I watch with interest the ongoing discussion.
The colloquium is sponsored by the RJ Thompson Centre for Theological Studies here in Auckland and aims to bring a group of trans-Tasman (Australasian) scholars to explore and discuss themes related to doing theology (& related disciplines) in the context of an electronic world. The coordinator is Tim Bulkeley (who also blogs here: SansBlogue).
Seen on jonnybaker: test your political leanings a link to The Political Compass. Here you can take a quick quiz (5 minutes) and see where you lie on the socio-political spectrum (with comparisons to well-known political figures).
Connecting with the earlier post about “I, Robot” Damaris have a brief study guide to the file at: Culture Watch – I, Robot
They also have Part 3 of the interview with Douglas Coupland I’ve blogged about before too. See: Culture Watch – Interview with Douglas Coupland (Part 3)
Full article at Weblog: Fuller Prof Ordered to Leave U.S. – Christianity Today Magazine. Interpretation of what a religious professional is and the Homeland Security departments definition of “approved” seminary for employing them forces Finn Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen out of the country.
Slacktivist comments here on it as well: slacktivist: Mysterious Ways
My fieldtrips for my research often tend to be to the movies. Movies such as the Matrix trilogy, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Star Trek: Nemesis and today I, Robot serve as a source for thinking about human nature in relation to technology.
In her book on technoculture Lelia Green comments on the increasing number of contemporary narratives that are being told about machine-human interaction.
Cyborgs and science fiction form an area of popular culture which seems to have increased in importance as technology has become more integral to our cultures and our communities. This burgeoning interest in narratives about the future, and about parallel universes, may indicate a desire to understand and explore the present. In speculating about others we are also speculating about ourselves.
Furthermore she says,
Through films such as Blade Runner and The Matrix, our society tells itself stories about what it is to be human in a world where humans are increasingly influenced by, and dependent upon, technology and technocultures. Here the myths of loss and longing are played out in the context of technologically driven futures, where machines can feel feelings and have roles with more humanity in them than the �people� characters do.
I’d definitely put “I, Robot” in this category.
Issues to do with dehumanization, human-machine fusion, technological dependence, the essence of humaness, the relationships between the concepts of body, mind and soul, and the place of love all come out in this film. More so, I think, than did in the slower-paced and “deeper” “A.I. Artificial Intelligence” (though there are moments in that film that are equally provoking).
I enjoyed “I, Robot”, both as an intellectual vehicle for my research and as a story. The ending of the movie with it’s “what next?” questions leaves it open for continuing discussion. Hopefully, they don’t make a sequel.
Wired Magazine Issue 12.07 (July 2004) was themed around “Human Being 2.0” with lots of interesting articles related to “I, Robot”.