All of this comes from thoughts spurred by Natural- Born Cyborgs Clark uses the phrase: Tools for thought and action (p.29 NBC…Natural-Born Cyborgs) Just as computers and phones and cars all help us “file” and “communicate” and “travel” quickly and efficiently, none of which are really questioned at all by Churches or their members, but simply accepted as “tools” that keep Continue Reading
Just started reading. So far, pretty interesting. Good questions about the “status” of “external” pieces of scaffolding; the “extra” pieces of thought flow resources that help us to “handle” cognitive processes. The assumption under question is that of whether the only truly human “thoughts” are those that take place inside the skull, or in the “primitive bioinsulation”, or the “good Continue Reading
Back when I was working on that DMin project (focusing on Online Community and the Church), I ran across this article in WIRED mag. Jennifer Cobb soon published a book entitled Cybergrace, which sits on my bookshelf. She alerted me to a then a somewhat obscure theologian named Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. I had run across some insights of his Continue Reading
Brasher relates a story that I want to relate to all those who dount the “draw” that the web can be for face-to-face communities. It is a story about a webiste of “Christ in the Desert Monastery”, and is followed up by a story about a divorced man in his fifties, who happened upon the site, and ended up visting Continue Reading
Back in October 2002, I blogged some observations about Give Me that Online Religion by Brenda Brasher. (see “Give Me that Online Religion” for that original post). Now, having picke it up again in recent days, as I ran across a few references to the book, I blogged a few days back about something……..let me look it up Anyway, “reloading Continue Reading
The Soul of Cyberspace by Jeff Zaleski is a “on the scene” book of interviews during vistis to several “Web incarnations” of attempts to strike up theological conversatrions with people on the Web. If 55% of the world’s Christians are Catholic, but less than 25% of the sites categorized by Yahoo in 1996 were Catholic, what does this tell us? Continue Reading
This book, which I picked up as soon as it was released last fall, had the same sort of impact on me as Rheingold’s The Virtual Community did ten years ago. It described for me a fascinating social phenomenon of people connecting — getting Wired up with each other, and the ways in which community blossomed in many online places Continue Reading
The “Shop Now” at Amazon button in my left bar will give me a little “cut” from anything bought at Amazon during your visit. It’s a way of giving a little support to Theoblogical. If you need to buy something there in the near future, and can remember me (by coming here and using this link to get into Amazon) Continue Reading
A Book that opned my ideas to the threat posed by the attempts to control various aspects of the Internet. Very interesting, and scary stories about the way monopolies are granted. Even more interesting are the ideas about the commons, and how everybody wins when the Internet, and software, are treated as commons instead of property,
I bought the Cold Fusion MX Web Application Construction Kit just yesterday from Amazon, out of a sense of urgency to get going and learn this….already several contacts I have made are doing work in Cold Fusion. Since I’m already in the Macromedia fan corner, I might as well do it. The frustrating thing is, I had begun to see, Continue Reading
David Weinberger’s “Unified Theory of the Web” After hearing him a couple weeks ago at Vanderbilt, I decided to see if this spoke to me differently than it did year ago. It did.
Give Me That Online Religion by Brenda Brasher Click the picture to be taken to Amazon.com’s page on the book I read it last summer or so and soon after I was without a job. It had more to do with that, but the fact that I was reading this just before all that came down is also a bit Continue Reading
an O’Reilly book describing the various “functions” (usually parameters) that can be employed to spawn certain Google behaviors and activities, for use on one’s own Web page or application. Click the picture to be taken to Amazon.com’s page on the book: Google Hacks
Building An ASP.NET Intranet- I picked this up to help me understand what’s happening in the IBuySpy Portal Kit, an open source .Net framework for building a remotely administrata-able website that uses lots of components and incorporates Web services.
Quentin Schultze is not exactly wrong in much of what he writes in Habits of the High Tech Heart. There is certainly a danger to human community in unquestioned adoption of high-tech values. From where I stand, I consider my call to be in the area of working toward “redemptive technology”. To use a suggestion Schultze offers on p. 72 (in Continue Reading