I’ve long been critical of how the rise of the micro-blogging (starting with the most micro of all, Twitter, and the slightly longer form Google + and Facebook, and the services like Tumblr, where I tend to go to make longer-than-Twitter comments on things that elicit a response from me that I read online. Last night (or early this morning, Continue Reading
Another “Discarded intellectual” group that is sorely needed by the church, is the “theologian of network technology”. It is kept from playing a significant role largely because the church organizations have followed the market tendencies in technology to the exclusion of sound theological discernment about how to let the “Social” actually BE social. It has much to do with theological Continue Reading
The issue of the role of social media in movements dovetails nicely into a lot of my thinking about “online church”. I have long said that there are several avenues INTO Church from online spaces that can and do happen. But the “virtual space” becomes inhabited by the “physical space” as veterans from the physical spaces and events come back in via Continue Reading
I found this video on Howard Rheingold’s Google Plus page, and found this particular quote interesting: His daughter asks for a first question: “Is Google making us stupid?” He says its a good question for conversation, and he says: “If you believe that our use of Social Media is making us shallow, then why not teach more people how to Continue Reading
My biggest peeve in perusing the daily, hourly, constant stream of Social Media (Twitter in particular) is the barrage of self-promotion that most organizations think is “doing Social Media”. If I weren’t committed to trying to lend my voice and my skills to helping the church understand and utilize Social Media* , I would have unfollowed a lot of “church” Continue Reading
Several minutes ago I tweeted: “Saying we’re doing social media because we use some of the tools is like saying my pet bird reads because he shits on the newspapers in the bottom of his cage. “ If you’re not using social media for conversations to get to know your audience, what’s "social" about that? You’re just using and being Continue Reading
I saw this tweet on my twitter stream this morning: From my buddy @brynn "“Social†can’t be solved by an algorithm" much respect http://bit.ly/5Jj71X #SxD link: http://twitter.com/semanticwill/statuses/7904723615 And it caught my eye, since it seemed to be a promising post on what I have been feeling is a crucial piece of what services like Twitter can make available to us: Continue Reading
spiritual director looked him square in the eye and said, “The antidote to exhaustion is wholeheartedness.†“You are so tired,†continued the director, “because a good half of what you are doing has nothing to do with your true powers, or the place you have reached in your life. You are only half here, and half here will kill Continue Reading
I posted a tweet minutes ago: 2010 lays before me- What is God calling me to? Something Geeky and Theological. Techno-Theo Geek is available for work. Then I began to post a follow up (the title of this post), but as usual, the 140 character limit stopped me, so I came back to a post (whose title , in which Continue Reading
An article from sojo has Julie Clawson taking NT Wright to task for bad mouthing Social Media. The following quote attempts to use a Pew Study to dispel the notion that people spend less time face to face and instead spend more time online. Let’s just get it out of the way: The warning that Wright and others give is Continue Reading
Cory Doctorow, of BoingBoing fame, and author of such short stories as Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, has an article about the inane things we hear from various media writers and pundits. Here is my favorite: Facebook will blow over in a year and something else will be along Totally correct, but this is a feature, not a Continue Reading
The podcast in my previous post had Steve Brown posing a question for after the break: “Can we “do Church†on Facebookâ€, but Steve never really re-posed that particular question when they got back. I think that a lot of people looked into the book out of that kind of expectation. I think that we have a lot of people Continue Reading
I’m just going to keep hitting this. Despite my status as an online “evangelistâ€, I am in agreement with Jesse Rice and his thesis in The Church of Facebook. There is a need for us to engage in battle against those things about a hyperconnected world that would rob us of just a small portion of our humanity and wholeness Continue Reading
John Saddington has an article today that I just ate up. It’s a call for the kind of attention to technology channels that moves WAY beyond the usual bandwagon “this is cool†, “try this and that and back to this†approach. The Church’s future doesn’t sit with web technology alone, but it sure is important, and it’s going to Continue Reading
Developers without theology and theology without awareness/insight of tools we could leverage. This is the impetus of my previous blog post. We miss the boat on both ends. We seemingly feel no qualms or danger in adopting the tools and use them in exactly the same way. The people who could tell us about the possibilities that are out there Continue Reading