Greenflame

Jottings on science, religion, technology, pop culture, photography and faith from the Aotearoa New Zealand

  • Close to the Machine: Technophilia and Its Discontents

    It’s been a week or two of finishing off books that have been sitting on the bookshelf in my office. One of the latest was Close to the Machine: Technophilia and Its Discontents by Ellen Ullman. An Amazon review notes that:

    Close to the Machine explores a world in which ‘the real world and its uses no longer matter.’ This memoir examines the relationship between human and machine, between material and cyberworlds and reminds us that the body and soul exist before and after any machine.

    The book itself was okay. I could identify with a lot in it but at times the text seemed to drag. One passage in particular thought struck me

    In this sense, we virtual workers are everyone’s future. We wander from job to job, and now it’s hard for anyone to stay put anymore. Our job commitments are contractual, contingent, impermanent, and this model of insecure life is spreading outward from us. I may be wrong, but I have this idea that we programmers are the world’s canaries. We spend out time alone in front of monitors; now look up at any office building, look into living-room windows at night: so many people sitting alone in front of monitors. We lead machine-centered lives; now everyone’s life is full of automated tellers, portable phones, pages, keyboards, mice. We live in a contest of the fittest, where the most knowledgeable and skillful win and the rest are discarded; and this is the working life that waits for everybody. Everyone agrees: be a knowledge worker or be left behind. Technical people, consultants, contract programmers: we are going first. We fly down and down, closer and closer to the virtualize life, and where we go the world is following.

    Had me stop and think about churches and Christians caught up in this – of these models applied to congregations – servants of God and fellow wayfarers with commitments and relationships described as “contractual, contingent, impermanent”.

    Maybe it would be good to be an oasis in this world – a place of solidity, permanence, lasting relationships – even for those who briefly pass through; cast about by the powerful and damaging forces of the virtual world. The Kingdom of God belongs to those who have been discarded.

  • Darwin and Fundamentalism

    cover thumbnail. Click for larger imageJust read Darwin and Fundamentalism by Merryl Wyn Davies. It’s a short book in the Icon series “Postmodern Encounters”. If you’re looking for a brief (80 pages) introduction on the subject of Darwin, Darwinism, religious responses (positive and negative) and scientific engagement (again postive and negative responses) then this provides a good entry point. It’s footnoted so you can follow things up. Davies notes that fundamentalism occurs both in religious and scientific arenas and that the issues thrown up are more that a dualistic split between “materialistic, atheistic evolutionism” and “fundamentalist, literalist creationism”. Briefly she argues that

    A true appreciation of the historic context of Darwin, the socially constructed nature of science, and theological and historically informed understanding of religion, which is much more that simply Christian fundamentalism, suggests that we are being hijacked by two extremist positions.

    Well worth borrowing from the library to read for a day or so on the train into work just to get the mental juices percolating (even if you don’t agree with all her conclusions).

    A related link is Evolution: Library: Emi & Nathan: Personal Testimonies at PBS which has a video clip of the following:

    As science majors at a conservative Christian college, Emi and Nathan have both struggled with the creation/evolution debate for themselves. For them, as for many people, evolution and religion seem to contradict each other. In this interview excerpt from Evolution: “What about God?”, Emi and Nathan share their own experiences and their strategies for tackling the issue through further education.

  • iPod mini

    Just when I though I’d gotten over my coveting of my neighbour’s iPod : Apple – iPod – iPod mini

  • Blog conversion

    Looks like it will be closer to a couple of weeks before everything is up and running smoothly. I’ve got the prototype running sweetly under Mac OS X and Apache on my iBook but my hosting provider won’t have a facility I need for my requirements for another couple of weeks.

    So I’ll be playing with MT templates, CSS and using multiple embedded MT blogs to handle different functions.

  • Slow time for blogging

    Blogging takes a back seat for the next week or so while I move to Movable Type. The lure of RSS-XML feeds and plug-ins has finally won me over. Stay tuned.

  • Leonardo’s Laptop

    I’ve been flicking through Ben Shneiderman’s book Leonardo’s Laptop today and saw he’d written a section on e-learning in which he proposes a model for classroom and distance education.

    COLLECT Gather information and acquired resources
    RELATE Work in collaborative teams
    CREATE Develop ambitious projects
    DONATE Produce results that are meaningful to someone outside the classroom

    Skimming through it reminded me quite a bit of Steve Taylor’s proposal for a postmodern monastry and open-source theology. The last bit especially – creating things for the benefit of the wider community.

  • Jono & Yuki get married!

    Kim and I had an awesome day yesterday down in Hamilton at the wedding of a good friend of ours (Jono). Really nice to catch up with old friends and celebrate with Jono and Yuki (she’s far too good for him 🙂 ).

    The wedding was just right for the day. A real blue sky scorcher so after the wedding ceremony it was out of our “more formal” clothes and into beach and BBQ clothes for the “reception”. Pig on a spit, mountains of pavlova and great company while we sat around on the grass chatting, eating and drinking.

    The sharing of food, drink and good company are sacred.

    Congratulations Jono and Yuki. All the best for the New Year and your new life.

  • Web’s inventor gets a knighthood

    Tim Berners-Lee was knighted in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours list. The BBC has a short story and biography at BBC NEWS | Technology | Web’s inventor gets a knighthood

  • Happy New Year

    Happy New Year!

    Another year ends and another starts. On the whole it’s been a good year for me and my family. Some transitions with respect to work (from BCNZ to Carey next year) and some encouraging feedback on my PhD research.

    I’ve been greatly encouraged by postings on various blogs and meeting new people through them. The Advent grid blogs were great (I have some ideas on that for another day).

    All the best to you and yours for the New Year.

    Here’s the Auckland Sky Tower last night at midnight.

  • UserFriendly Strip Comments

    Saw this over at UserFriendly. I have a couple of games that I continually come back to for their game play not graphics so this made me smile.