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 swim and explore the deep end of the pool”.
Bravo.
Given all we’ve been through, any firm this stupid HAS TO BE ALLOWED to fail, OR purged of their STUPID, CARELESS, unable to learn leadership and taken over.
On a conference call with analysts, JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon announced that his firm had lost $2 billion investing in the same species of derivative that exacerbated the 2008 financial crisis.
via Mitt Romney Wants To Repeal The Rule That Would’ve Stopped The Latest Financial Scandal | TPMDC.
In reading Jim Rice’s study on Digital Ecclesiology, this line got me thinking about something I have often “preached” in thepast couple of years.
when people come to church they have found us on an Internet search looking for a progressive church
via New Media Project at Union Theological Seminary | Models of the Church and Social Media.
The question here is, what meta data do we employ to make it easier for people “looking for a progressive church” to find our information? The obvious is to employ “Progressive” as a key word in meta tags, but that strategy is falling behind those that are being birthed by Facebook, such as their Social Graph model. Their data is constantly growing through associations between users, groups, their status updates, likes, shares, etc. I have been talking over the past few months (and blogging about it when a particular angle occurs to me) about the importance of the Social Graph model, and I employ the term “Theological Databases” to try to explain. Using the “Progressive Church” concept, how do we employ “markers” or meta data that would find our particular progressive community? Some (in fact, many) Christians with “Progressive” interests and concerns don’t like to use political language to describe their theology. So what theological terms are often used in those “Progressive-friendly” churches? “Justice”, “Ecology”, “Economy”, even “Occupy”, to use a particularly strong taxonomy for our particular time. Linkage to organizations that focus on particular theological emphases will help us to become more strongly associated with those ministy foci. The more “pages” of particular action oriented organizations around a particular issue we “Like” and “Join” (and in the case of Google Plus , “encircle”, or on Twitter, “follow”, the more our community becomes a part of the mix, and therefore appearing as result on many different kinds of search.
Very rarrely do I ever see such a question. Most church based social media rationale seems to be along the lines of “should the church use social media” and the answer is “yeah, if we want to be relevant and speak the language of your culture”. This question asks the deeper , morer theological rationale question.
do our theological understandings and commitments in the realm of ecclesiology have anything to do with the corporate electronic practices of our church or religious body? Should they?
via New Media Project at Union Theological Seminary: Does our ‘digitology’ match our ecclesiology?.
So does the church embody its theology in the way in which is utilizes social media. Is the prescence style reflective of an incarnate expression of one’s community’s theology? And what does this mean in terms of the technology?
This is what we explored when I was a student at United Theological Seminary’s MA in Religious Communications program in 1990-91. It went beyond the quesiton of SHOULD WE? and asked HOW SHOULD WE? We explored McLuhan. We explored the history of church and communicaitons such as the move from oral to written, and the impact of the Printing Press. It’s more than simply “original content” plugged in to a common channel and technology. Televsion itself began by TELEVISING radio broadcasts, and soon discovered it could tell stories in expanded ways from the audio-only limitations. Commerical interests found they could “IMAGE” their products to associate them with powerful narratives that capture something beyond the mere recitation of ingredients and physical properities. What can the Church learn about dabbling and experimenting in new media, and what new ways of “IMAGING” we can employ that is not an emotional manipulation by associating what we offer with some false effect? What does our theology say about where we are headed; our purpose? This takes us far beyond “SHOULD WE” , but into understanding the myriad levels of the effects and representations we put forth in these new channels?
I will be reading through the article that Jim Rice provides to begin to explore such questions re: a “Digital Ecclesiology” at http://blog.newmediaprojectatunion.org
Found this site via a @hrheingold tweet about taking questions re: his latest bookk , NetSmart
#DigPed Discussion Group: NetSmart | Digital Pedagogy | HYBRID PEDAGOGY.
In the midst of reading NetSmart myself. HR is my original guru for Online Community
