Jottings on science, religion, technology, pop culture, photography and faith from the Aotearoa New Zealand
Naomi Klein’s book “No Logo” has been sitting on the bedside table for the last week or too and I’ve been flicking through it every now and then. Some really thought provoking stuff, especially about corporate marketing and access to schools.
Then I saw this on a blog. After I picked my self up from the floor I read it. Then I read it again just to make sure I got it right. Then I felt really depressed (too close for comfort). Hopefully something will happen today to cheer me up.
I’ve uploaded HTML and PDF versions of the talk I did at the IT | Culture | Church meeting from the 1 November. You can access them here [Techno-spirituality]. I’m still working on a paper for a conference looking at technology as a religious quest which should pick up some of the other sources listed in the bibliography on that link.
Having recovered from watching the All Blacks play Wales at rugby on Sunday night I made the mistake of taping NZ playing Australia at cricket last night. Arrrggghhh! Two missed chances in the last over and then we lose by 1 run on the second to last ball. (All credit to the Australians…)
This is not good for the blood pressure.
I’ve been looking for a light-weight piece of software to handle basic image conversion, preview and manipulation function. Fireworks MX is good but it seems to suck the resources out of my laptop and Apple’s Preview application is often slow and handles multiple files erratically. Then today I find Toy Viewer for Mac OS X>. Quick, low overhead and handles PDF as well as various image formats.
Better than having to load up Fireworks for quick-n-dirty file conversions, resizing and previewing. And the price is right too 🙂
Saw this on fellow kiwi Paul Fromont’s blog. Looks like a hub for connecting people, stories and ideas about communities of faith developing in light of contemporary culture.
Even if you aren’t “emerging” yourself it has some good ideas and it’s always good to hear other peoples stories.
Really enjoyed the talks at the IT, Culture and Church on Saturday. (More information and discussion at the ITCC web site: http://www.bigbible.org/itcc/
Kirsten’s approach to the integrating electronic media with the Gen 32 text on “wrestling the angel” showed the potential for different ways to encounter the text in biblical studies as well as opening doors in my mind for using blogging as part of a communitarian hermeneutical spiral.
Steve’s talk was (as expected) imaginative. The creation of new “monastic” communities of faith – what might the techno-cultural equivalents of medievalism’s monastries and abbeys be? Those centres of learning, skills, knowledge and education – across all aspects of human existence. What might a creative, prayerful, spiritual communities of “monks” look like today? (One possibility is nextscribe ubiqsie a Roman Catholic incarnation of this idea).
Rachel’s talk on the Census at School project was an excellent overview identifying issues to do with data collection, working with children and teachers online, and some implications of the “digital divide”. (Plus some open-source techy bits and a informative demo of the system).
One thing that came afterwards is how to publish things like this. How should the individual’s intellectual property and effort be protected while at the same time making resources available to encourage others and to become part of their creative processes and engagement. I’m still thinking this out. I want my resources to be used for the Kingdom by others but I don’t want to be misrepresented or for them to be credited to others. So I’m thinking about Creative Commons licencing (Click on the link for a helpful FLASH movie introducing it).
Any thoughts on how that works from those who’ve used it.
Social Justice Series: Caritas Aotearoa New Zealand is a series of booklets looking at the eradication of poverty. Really helpfual material with NZ examples. I’ve been reading the fifth book in the series “The Digital Divide: Poverty and Wealth in the Information Age” as I think about cyberspirituality.
How does the proclamation of the Kingdom of God, in both word and social action, interact with cyberspace, technoculture and its effects? How should we live in a world where we are, in William Gibson’s words, “wrapped in media”?
The books are really cheap ($2-$4 each) and its worthwhile buying them all. I plan to use them to start discussion questions in class and with house groups etc.
Having spent the last year looking at the image of God, Christian anthropology and its development over the last 2000 years I’m somewhat encouraged to see this. All this dying and going to heaven as spirits borders on Gnostic and neo-Platonic thought a lot of the time. Personally, I can’t wait to see creation restored and to be able to physically enjoy it as God meant it to be.
Feel like my head is going to explode. I’ve got about 10 different competing ideas running around about this topic for Saturday – each of which I think are interesting and relevant. Some include:
Hopefully it will be clearer in the morning. (And I can figure out how to include a “Babylon 5” reference into the work).
I’m working on a couple of things at the moment relating to techno- or cyber-spirituality and I’ve posted a brief bibliography (with web links) in the resources section. The references here are to take you beyond the “how do I get Powerpoint into worship?” and “our church needs a web site” stages and to get you thinking about how those sorts of technologies actually shape faith and its practice.
What does it mean to be the people of God in a technocultural world? And what challenges and opportunities do technologies like the Internet offer to religion and spirituality?