The Complex Christ | Signs of Emergence

Prayer - Better Than Broadband?

This sign appear outside my local church the other day.

And I just wondered, does anyone actually believe this? Do the people in this church really believe it? I know that in my more evangelical days I had a more 'hotline' view of prayer - but surely this idea that we can have immediate access to God is just a bare-faced lie? I'm tempted to 'go inside and find out more,' because I'd be interested to know how they would explain to someone who was sick and got immediate access to God that God was very likely to tell them to just deal with it.

Perhaps some people do have this sort of day-to-day experience of prayer. I'd have thought most were on some sort of dial-up. Or worse. We are obsessed with immediacy of connection, of course - higher speeds and more wide coverage. But its helping no one to try to pretend God behaves the same way.

Technorati: Broadband | Prayer

Real Snail Mail | Slowed Down Technology

The people at 'Boredom Research Labs’ have designed ‘the world’s first webmail service using real live snails.’

Yes you read that correctly.

Actually, the thinking behind the project, or at least post-event justification, is to slow technology down, as a form of discipline or meditation. You send your email in the normal way, and this is then stored in a device in the snail’s tank. When a snail, fitted with a RF chip, crawls by, the data is loaded onto the chip. When that snail eventually passes another device, the information is passed from the RF chip, and the mail is delivered as usual. You therefore have no idea when your message is going to eventually be delivered.

Completely barking. But rather nice.

Technorati Tags: snail,mail,slow

Into Great Silence ¦ Sound Pollution

I enjoy most things about city life, but one of the perennial frustrations is noise. Light pollution, on the micro scale at least, is fairly easy to manage. We can shut our curtains or buy special blinds, and shut our eyes if need be. And, while some objects are foul to look at, we only need turn our heads...

Sound, on the other hand, is a far more difficult sense. It doesn't 'shadow' well, and is extremely difficult to insulate against, far harder than light. Noise is therefore a far more antisocial thing than colour or design. If my neighbour paints their house fuscia, I needn't think about it much. If they play loud music, I have no option.

Cities are noisy places, and I think this does contribute in no small way to the general tension, and thus propensity for anger and violence, that cities are also guilty of. Traffic noise is perhaps the most pernicious, particularly since it is almost impossible to control (the infuriating 2-stroke scooter been driven past has long gone before any law-enforcement might arrive) and is also so widely accepted.

But perhaps help is on its way. Mathematicians and scientists have developed a theoretical material which would cloak an object in total silence. The implications for this are enormous. Houses that are properly sound insulated. Engine casings that would render vehicles quiet. Headgear, even, that would drop you into a calm oasis of silence amidst the noise and haste.

I wish them all the best in the trials that are to come. And want to sign up for a sheet of it to go over my back fence. Or round the boom-box in the boot of my neighbour's car.

 

Life after Life ¦ Christianity and Euthanasia ¦ Reverend Death

I finally got round to watching 'Reverend Death', Jon Ronson's documentary about George Exoo, a Unitarian minister who has performed around 100 'assisted suicides', mainly for those who have been turned down by other organisations practising legally in places/states where it is carefully controlled because they do not have terminal illnesses.

Most of the people he seemed to help were suffering depression, or from ME. The film followed him 'helping' one woman who had chronic fatigue and 'couldn't go on', though half way through the first attempt she started buttering a bagel, and announced her house-mate was due back any minute. This sent the guy packing quick-sharp: what he is doing is clearly illegal, and this was taken up in the film as the FBI chased him for extradition to Ireland to face charges of assisting a woman in Dublin to commit suicide.

It is possible to see Exoo as a very prolific serial killer akin to Harold Shipman - a British doctor who ended the lives of perhaps 215 people, most of whom were nearing the end of their lives too. Certainly, it seemed he got some sort of thrill out of 'fulfilling his calling' - which is precisely how Exoo saw things.

One thing he would do for all his clients ('because', as he said many times in almost Pythonesque comic style, 'you've not done this before') is give them a copy of 'Life After Life' - a video detailing the near-death experiences of a bunch of characters (some of whose stories didn't quite seem to hold up).

Exoo's reasoning is that 'death is a great adventure to a wonderful place'. And this is where things get interesting. Because if, as Christians or otherwise, we really believe in some after-life, then should we be critical of Exoo, or of euthenasia at all? (He claims that Jesus practised some sort of suicide, which Stanley Hauerwas refuted, before being able to come up with any proof text to show God didn't approve of suicide.)

I was watching the programme with someone I am close to, who trained as a nurse. She mentioned that in practice, in hospices and elsewhere, euthanasia is pretty common.

She then revealed that as she had watched her father lie dying of cancer in the 60's, his GP had passed her a suitable amount of morphine and told her to 'stop his pain.' She thought about it for a very long time, and then did gradually increase his dose to relieve his pain, knowing that this would kill him.

I personally think this was an incredibly brave and humane thing to do. I don't think it excuses Exoo, or his associate who does the same for a $7000 fee (Exoo takes no money) but I do think if we are to state that we believe in an after life, we need to do so in an active sense, by which I mean making sure that we fully value this life, and don't simply cheapen it as a blip before the 'real' version begins, while permitting people the option to humanely end life at an appropriate moment in a dignified manner.

"Money Having No Impact on Youth Crime" | "MPs Reject Need For Father in IVF"

Two pieces followed one-another on the radio this morning:

MPs voted last night to remove the clause that required IVF clinics to consider the need for a child to have a father and a mother - essentially opening the way for women to have the treatment without any father-figure being present in the prospective child's life.

And a recent report has found that, despite record investment, youth crime has continued to rise. "The government's record on youth crime and tackling the multiple needs of children caught up in the youth justice system is less impressive than many would have expected."

And no one suggested there might be a connection.
I am depressed.

Technorati: Crime | IVF

Saviour Sibling?

A bill regarding the use of human embryos is currently passing through parliament at the moment, and, naturally, causing a huge amount of debate. One piece on the BBC caught my ear the other morning - a Bishop was asked what he thought about the creation of so-called 'saviour siblings': human beings created for the sole purpose of saving another. And I thought, this is going to be interesting, how is a Christian going to respond to that?

He didn't go there of course, but it remains a difficult area of theology: is Jesus just a 'saviour sibling'?

Technorati: Embryo | Saviour Sibling

"If It's On Google, Why Teach It?" | Intel | Education

At a recent education conference I was at, one of the big-wigs at Intel gave a keynote about the future of technology and education. He talked about Moore's law, and some of the probable developments in educational tools, and also about the effect connectivity is having / will have on our lives.

Holding up his Smartphone, he gushed 'look at this thing! Who a couple of years ago would have thought that I would be able to have 300 emails waiting for me on a mobile device this size!'

And I thought, 'who the hell would want to have thought that?'

But it was one comment that interested me in particular. 'If it's on Google,' he said, 'why teach it?' And I just thought that displayed perhaps the poorest understanding of education, and technology's place within it, I have ever heard.

Just yesterday, as I sat reading in the evening light, the laptop shut, kids in bed after a day in the park, I pondered this.
Books and people make me a better person, I thought; the internet does not.

I think this is something to do with space and time. It is not internet access people need to be educated.
It is space and time to think and read and talk to people, and to be guided by a teacher. One cannot educate children by loading them with a smartcard pre-loaded with information. One might as well say 'If it's in the Bible, why preach it?' But that's a whole different can of worms.

Technorati: Education | Google | Intel | Smartphone

Stem Sell Research

Not content with starting a whole new business model for selling music, Radiohead have also now worked to subvert the remix business by making the stems of one of their tracks, Naked, available here.

Nice touch. Release the DNA, see what evolves.

See what people have grown, and vote, here.

Technorati: Naked

Snake on a Plane | In-Flight Mobile Use

Oh dear. The inevitable has happened: someone's come up with a way for us to use our mobiles when on the plane.

"I'M ON THE PLANE"

Next up: 'mobile free areas' on planes, and stickers telling people to keep their voices down.

I think it's sad, to be honest. Planes were one of those places where you could just relax a little, without the pressure of email and phone messages. I'm going to be posting in more detail about this another time, but a good friend sent me a fantastic article (see below) the other day by an English Professor at a US university, who is worried about how much his students are stressed by the constant demands of the infinite possibilities technology now give us. A quote in it from Thoreau came to mind as I read the news above:

"We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate."

"I'M ON THE PLANE." Precisely.

It's 19 pages. You'll have to cut some time out to read it properly. Fewer and fewer of us are willing to do that these days, and skim the surface of learning; no time to plumb depths.

Dwelling in Possibilities.doc

Technorati: Maine | mobile | plane | Texas | Thoreau

Say no to Phorm ¦ Don't Let Your ISP Stalk You

A piece on the BBC news caught my ear yesterday. To the disgust of Tim Berners-Lee British Telecom, Virgin and my ISP Talk Talk have all said that they are going to start using Phorm in the near future. Phorm tracks your internet use, and harvests data to create a profile which these companies will then use to generate revenues from targeted advertising.

Yes, that was my reaction. No bloody way. I immediately sent off a very stroppy message to Talk Talk saying I'd immediately terminate my contract with them if they went ahead. They are hardly the most reliable people on earth anyway, and I don' t think I could trust them to manage an 'opt in' service properly. So I told them that too and said I'd sue their asses if they 'inadvertently' put me on the system.

It seems that Phorm may actually be illegal anyway, which is encouraging, though BT contest this (and claim it will 'increase security' - ffs, do they really think people are that stupid/scared?)

Whether it is or not, it is certainly against the spirit of the service. Imagine - as people have been putting it - Royal Mail opening all of your letters and reading through them, in order to send you more focused junk mail. Totally unacceptable.

We need to be very aware of these developments, and make sure we are active in resisting them. Facebook is already one of the worst offenders in terms of watered down privacy, but if ISPs are going to start, then we really are in trouble. It's all part of the business model of the internet, which in turn reflects on who we are becoming as a society: we want stuff for free, and are prepared to sell our souls to advertising to get it. As I wrote here previously, it's a model that impacts the poor most.

This isn't about 'Big Brother', it's about incrementally slightly bigger brother, who we'll suddenly one day realise has got out of control. So check your ISP. Kick up a fuss. And join BadPhorm.

Leaps of Faith | God Immensurable | 'Life is a series of Estimates'

Friday 29th February. Another leap year, another 'correction' in our faulty estimate of 365 days in a year. We thought perhaps the Universe should have given us tidy integers, orbits that ran to exact days, but the closer we looked, the further away our measures got.

The 4-yearly leap day is an attempt to get our solar clocks back in sync., but even this is slightly out. So we have to have leap seconds too. None this year, the last was in 2005. We'll have to adjust our watches again soon though.

Problems of time and measurement. When is now, and how far away are you? Both incalculable. We zoom in, micro, nano, pico... only to find at the last a haze of leaping particles, refusing to be pinned and bound and ruled. Life, in other words, is a series of estimates.

As is faith. The strangeness of God is parallel to that of particles. The energetic scientists go off in search, determined to nail down truth, demanding we nail our colours and beliefs to their masts... Only to find that bodies nailed to masts die; the life slips from them mysteriously, to rise elsewhere.

And this, in the end, is the problem of theology. It can never be the measure of God, nor provide for us an accurate rule. Instead, we must open ourselves to these divine corrections, these leap moments where we have to adjust, and humbly admit we are not this spinning Universe's pivot, but part of an irrational orbit among myriad other heavenly bodies.

Technorati: Leap Year | Time

Car Commercials | Fantasy

There's a simple rule to follow if you want to make an ad about a car: make it total fantastical. Don't mention traffic jams. Don't mention the boredom of driving along motorways, the taxes and the emissions, the noise or anything else. Instead, make the car like a robot, or a dog. Make it jump between skyscrapers (I mean, who'd actually want to see what it's really like driving in a big city?) or hurtle down mountain roads with no other traffic.

In short, when advertising a car, more than any other product, lie. Because we all know how crap driving really is, and all need some fantasy world dreamscape to picture when we get behind the wheel.

Connected: Advertising Makes Us All Poor

Technorati: Advertising | Cars | Fantasy

Power Religion | Food | The Hunter-Gatherer Eucharist [5]

Power Religion [1] | Power Religion [2] | Power Religion [3] | Power Religion [4]

So, how might we try to gather some of this together into a ritual, a performance, a remembering worthy of the rich tapestry of signs it suggests? I think, firstly, we have to humbly accept that we simply never will do this most mysterious meal full justice. But secondly, we must commit ourselves to trying. The bland, tasteless bread and wine that is served at many of the churches throughout the world is appropriate for the bland and tasteless act of weak theatre that communion has so often become. Here is a ritual, a commandment, an act of collective memory, an enactment that has so much power... and it demands that we don't allow it to be neutered.

The memories that we are working with are loaded with paradox. We remember a man dying, a bloody sacrifice, an injustice... and commemorate the beginning of our reconciliation, the breaking of elements that draw us together. In these posts we have been thinking about the bread and wine acting as prompts for grief at our domestication of the earth, our spread of cultural mediocrity and blandness where there was such vibrant diversity. We have also seen how they suggest to us the breaking of the hunter-gatherer God. (Something I haven't touched on is the symbolism of Jesus as the 'lamb of God' - Diamond makes the case for domestication of animals like sheep as a root cause of much human disease, and thus responsible for the wiping out of many times more indigenous peoples than European guns.)

I wonder then if the Hunter-Gatherer Eucharist ought to contain within it more 'savage' elements. Rather than eating fine bread, perhaps we might incorporate a battering of the wheat, a physical milling and breaking of the grain into flour. Rather than sipping fine wine, we might similarly trample grapes, and thus get back to the raw materials and processes involved in food production. Alternatively, we might celebrate with found or scavenged items. Freegans collect and eat discarded food from dumpsters behind restaurants. There is risk here, and dirt, and life.

The Hunter-Gatherer / Food Producer distinction does not simply exonerate the Hunter-Gatherer as some wild and truer way of life. Food production began in part because the hunters had exterminated most of the large, passive mammals that once roamed the earth. And food production has led us to have to get along, to be interdependent, rather than simply killing the stranger.

So we must also turn the Eucharist into a meditation on our own use of resources. Are we living lightly on the earth, or are we feasting from it? Are we drinking fine wine and ripping into fresh bread as exponents of a religion of power, or are we partaking in the body of Christ, the body of the hunted, the broken, the condemned, the poor, the misunderstood, the dying prophet who, like a grain of wheat, fell to the ground and had to be buried before bearing wild fruit?

I hope for one that my eating of this strange meal might lean more toward the latter, and somehow sow the seed within it, as Christ's eating did, the downfall of power religion.

Thanks for journeying on this little series.

Technorati: Anarchy | Body of Christ | Guns, Germs and Steel | Hunter-Gatherer | Jared Diamond | Power | Agriculture

Power Religion | Food | The Hunter-Gatherer Eucharist [2]

Power Religion [1]

You might be wondering what the hell the last post was about, and where I'm going with this. Join the club.

In the previous post, I outlined Diamond's basic thesis in Guns, Germs and Steel, and retold the story of Pizarro's conquest of the Inca Emperor Atahuallpa. But what is the significance?

The pertinent question is this: how could 160 Europeans overcome 80000 Inca soldiers? The answer is simple: they'd domesticated horses, and had guns. But why had Europeans ended up doing this, and not the Incas? Were the Incas less intelligent?

2008 will be about...

...action on climate change; governments will admit it will hurt

...reaction against privacy breaches: overuse of CCTV / government data-loss

...reaction against the classical liberal agenda: immigration caps / multiculturalism as a worthy but more-difficult-than-we-thought project / communitarianism

...serious criticism of democracy as a way of getting things done

...the collapse of the emerging church as a popular project

...nanotechnology: virtually invisible, DNA-scale activity, and thus:

...nanofaith

...convergence: collapse of email/mobile/facebook/blog/linkedin/yada into synched platforms

...the realisation that, as McLuhan foresaw, "technologies are not simply inventions which people employ, but are the means by which people are re-invented," and thus a retreat from screen-time, and thus:

...paradox.

Or... what do you think?

Technorati: McLuhan

Break/Down | D-evolution

A couple of weeks ago my daughter broke her leg. Ouch. I have to say, the A&E (ER) department at the local hospital were brilliant, and the treatment she's received has been second to none. But as for the administration...

Today I had to take her for a follow-up X-ray and consultation. We arrived in good time and the X-ray was done. But we were then told what strikes fear into everyone dealing with public bodies or corporations these days: 'the computer system is down'. With those dreaded words full-scale melt-down occurred. They couldn't process the appointment. They couldn't find anybody's notes. They couldn't make any further appointments.

This is not a rant against the NHS or its Staff - they were genuinely doing their best. But this is a fine example of the risks that come with technological solutions: when they go down, we are paralysed. The people simply did not know what to do or where to turn.

What worries me is that all of humanity is increasingly putting its trust in IT systems, and becoming so reliant on them that we are losing the skills we used to have to deal with the processes that the technology replaced. When the RIM system had an outage recently, people with their Blackberries were literally going stir-crazy, so reliant on them were they to function.

I wonder then if we continue in this way whether we will actually start d-evolving as a race. WHAT? This is the problem: we have stopped evolving as a species; instead, all our evolutionary energy is going into evolving a system which we rely on, one that is external to us, yet increasingly is necessary for the stability of our economy, our health, our education and good governance. And when it goes down, we'll go with it.

Yesterday I listened to a programme which told the story of the Battle of New Orleans, in which many people died, which was actually fought after the signing of the Paris Peace Treaty declaring US independence. News travelled so slowly that people simply didn't know peace had broken out. The programme was arguing that this could never happen today because of the speed of our communications systems. But imagine a future war so dependent on digital communication devices and networks, in which peace was to be declared, but the systems were down.... It's New Orleans all over again.

Moral: technology is simply a tool. It is meant to aid us in our work, and make it more efficient. But if we lack contingencies for when the technology breaks, we're leaving ourselves open to huge problems. So if you're reading this - good, your system is working. Now make a back up and pray it continues that way ;-)

Technorati: Independence | NHS | System Down | US

Kindle | Physicality

I, for one, won't be buying an Amazon 'Kindle', at least for some time yet. I think the prediction of this being 'iPod for books' is way off for the simple reason that the media are totally different. Music is not physical. Sure, you could thumb through the album artwork, and that was a great bonus with a 12" gatefold. But it was always subsiduary to the actual thing: the music. And music is simply to be listened to. In stereo. No more.

With a book, the text is the object. Fine - the text can be inked digitally, but what I don't think can be replicated is the 'flick value' of a book. I never just read a book - I read a bit, flick around, look at the cover again, turn back... It's a much more physical experience than we often think. And I just don't want to give that up.

With music, the emotional centre is the listening. With a book, the whole object - the spine, the binding, the font, the leading, the stock - all of these things are tied up with the emotional content of the actual text.

I read news online. But a novel? Forget it. Won't kindle no spark for me.

ID Cards | Data Protection | Education/Legislation

The Customs and Revenue department announced today that it had somehow 'mislaid' discs containing all of the details of 25 million people in Britain claiming Child Benefit. Personal details, bank details, National Insurance numbers and addresses were all part of the records that went missing in an internal mail delivery.

And this is within a government that wants to spend £5.6bn - three times that much, say experts - on a National Identity Database, linked to ID cards. Well they can bugger off. Quite why I should pay £50 to have a card that is going to cause me grief, leave my ID and details being more open to theft is beyond me. The reasoning is that it will stop terrorism. Ah yes - terror plots like the ones perpetrated by full British citizens Mohammed Siddique Khan et al. It's total nonsense.

With more CCTV cameras per capita than any other nation in the world, with data security breaches like this one part of a pattern of systemic failure of central government to protect information, and with spiraling costs, it seems we are being sleep-walked into a crazy Orwellian world. As I mention in the book, education is always more preferable to legislation. It internalizes the desired effect: I don't commit terrorist acts because I believe they are wrong, not because I'm afraid of being caught.

Imagine £5.6bn - or more like £12bn ring-fenced into community-based education, or programmes to target those most at risk from offending. Surely this would have better outcomes, and leave the rest of the law-abiding society to get on with their business without a camera prying into every damn thing.

Technorati: Child Benefit | Education | HMRC | ID Cards | Orwell | Legislation | Terrorism

Digital Obesity | Personal Bandwidth

Apologies for those of you who've been waiting on tenterhooks for the Facebook article I blogged about a while ago (it's OK - I don't really believe that ;-) It got bumped to December's issue, so will be out shortly. I've led two discussion groups recently, one in a crypt, one in a library - go figure - along the same lines as the article, and one of the themes that has come up in discussion both times is that of personal bandwidth, or digital obesity. Check email / check blog / check phone for messages / check other blog / check Facebook / check work email... hell, you could spend all day checking devices. And that's before you've even tried to get them synced.

I've met about 10 or 15 people this month who've talked - to use this metaphor - about dieting. Just trying to thin out the time they spend online checking stuff. Some have closed Facebook accounts, others have deleted messaging services. All are trying to spend more time with actual people. And, to be honest, I've been doing the same. (Though, ironically, I've just met a wonderful blogger who lives in the next road)

I wonder what our kids will be doing when they get to the age of virtual communication. Will the childhood obesity problem hit their bandwidth as well as their waistbands? Or will things have become more integrated? I'm thinking it may be a bit of both, but I'm always pleased when some integration technology makes things easier now. Like Gmail doing IMAP. Or Bento - this new offering from Filemaker that is a one-stop database for all your contacts, events etc.. Looks good.

Either way, I think my thesis in the article still holds: we are desperate for connection, and will get it down wires if we don't get it down the street. Question is how much of which is healthy.

Technorati: Bento | Facebook | GMail | IMAP

In The Shadow of The Moon

In The Shadow Of The Moon is a magnificent movie. No voice-over. No animation. No mock-ups. Just archive footage, and interviews with the Apollo astronauts. It's stunning as a film, stunning to be reminded of perhaps the single greatest technological feat of mankind, and stunning to be reminded - in a way Gore never quite achieves in AIT - that the earth really is immensely precious. Armstrong's continued absence from any documentary - literary or on film - only serves to add mystery to an already ethereal and epiphanic event. He was the first to step out onto another world; what God whispered to him before leaving for someplace else he will continue to keep to himself.

If, you're in London, you'll have to catch it soon, as it's been on a scandalously limited release. If you miss it, buy the DVD, with the largest screen you can lay your hands on. Or, better still, read Andrew Smith's 'Moondust' - which very likely inspired the film.

Technorati: Al Gore | Andrew Smith | In The Shadow of The Moon | Moondust | Neil Armstrong

Storyquest | Lara Croft is no Wise Guide | Antisocial Behaviour

Storyquest is the national festival of story-telling and the spoken word, and runs for the whole of November. Alongside many keynote events, the organizers - the Prince of Wales' Foundation for Children & the Arts - are simply encouraging families to 'fill their homes with stories, capturing the moment when a story gets inside you and fires the imagination.'

One idea they have is to simply open an old photo album and start talking about the people within it - whether alive or dead. Doing exactly this is something I remember fondly from my own childhood.

With the heavy-handed 'National Literacy Strategy', story-telling has been rather gutted of its emotional heart. Reading is to be 'done' and stories are to be studied. This is a tragedy, not simply for the pure enjoyment of stories, but because - as Christopher Booker argues in The Seven Basic Plots - it is stories that forge our emotional and spiritual development. Remove them and you stunt growth and maturity.

Of course, people will argue that stories still abound in childhood. What is Lara Croft other than a story animated and controlled by the player? True. But the issue is the commonality. A child playing alone at a computer is in control of their own story. Left alone to navigate a world with no narrator or guide. And this, I am convinced, leads to a wounded and insecure heart that finds love and grace and appreciation of the other difficult. In other speak, it contributes to anti-social behaviour.

So turn the screen off, go grab a book, an album, or just your imagination, and tell someone a story. The fire is lit.

Technorati: Antisocial Behaviour | Arcade Game | Christopher Booker | Gaming | Lara Croft | Prince of Wales | Story-telling | Storyquest

Life For Free (as long as the poor keep buying) | Ad(non)Sense

Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised by the news today that Virgin Atlantic are soon to announce a free trans-atlantic service. On each flight, a small number of fee-free passengers will simply have to put up with being pinned into their seats having commercials fired at them for the entire trip. Like the NYT, the WSJ and London's FT, they are simply following the same business model that makes a free-to-use site like Facebook 'over $10bn': we get life without paying, as long as we put up with commercials.

Gaza: Christian Bookseller Murdered | US: Pastors Use 'Shoot 'em Up' Halo Game to Attract Teens

Two stories on two pages in the Independent today:

Gaza's only Christian bookseller has been murdered by the Righteous Swords of Islam. As if Gaza didn't have enough problems, these fundamentalists think they're saving the world by killing off Christians. There are only 3000 or so left.

While in the US, 'church groups across the country are holding special "Halo 3" gaming nights'. Said one, "Halo is all about saving the galaxy from an invading force of aliens. And saving the world is Jesus' message."

This world is too f*cked up for me sometimes. I want to get off.

Technorati: Evangelical | Halo 3 | Islam | Fundamentalism | Violence

Is Your Faith Endo- or Exoskeletal?

Manuel de Landa, in his brilliant book A Thousand Years of Non-Linear History writes of the two skeletons that humankind have developed. Our endo(internal)skeleton "made new forms of movement control possible, freeing [us] to conquer every available niche." Later, around 8000 years ago, we then developed the urban exo(external)skeleton, whereby "bricks of sun-dried clay became building materials for homes [...] and defensive walls."

Snails have exoskeletons. A protective shell within which to hide. Our early cities were simply exoskeletal defensive structures to protect communities against constant pillage and plunder, thus allowing culture and community to grow.

Mammals have developed endoskeletons. Non-protective, they instead allow huge improvements in a body's motion control. We can stand, run, hold, sew, build.

So, in the manifestation of the Body of Christ that you are a part of, is that body endo- or exoskeletal? Is it there as hard external shell to protect and shield us from the plundering of 'the world'? Or is it an internal strength, allowing new forms of motion control, allowing a gathered people to join and stand and build?

The question is pertinent for all of our networks. Are they protective covers that help us feel connected, but prevent real engagement, and are they in fact in danger of being so big-boned that they crush us into inactivity?

Technorati: de Landa | Endoskeleton | Non-Linear History | Exoskeleton

Why I'm Bored with Blogging and the 'Emerging Conversation', and Why I'm Switching to Conch

It'll be pretty plain to see that I haven't been posting that much recently. Stuff happens, and, on top of that, I've been feeling a little faded/bored with it. By it, I mean blogging. And by blogging I mean, in this context, stuff connected with the 'emerging conversation'. Perhaps it's just me.

I've just written a piece for Third Way - coming out in November - about Facebook, and other social networks. In the article I quote two things from Bauman's Liquid Life. Firstly Bauman himself who writes that:

"flattened into a perpetual present and filled to the brim with survival-gratification concerns, [the world] leaves no room for worries about anything other than what can be consumed and relished on the spot"

Secondly, Bauman quotes a Stasuik, another cultural commentator, who notes that:

“it is highly probable that the quantity of digital, celluloid and analogue beings met in the course of a bodily life comes close to the volume which eternal life and resurrection of the flesh could offer."

And what I'm feeling at the moment, springing out of these thoughts, is just the volume of noise in the blogosphere. I've likened it in the past to being at a party where everyone in the room is shouting, but no one is actually listening. Conversation is thus impossible. To converse we must be quiet and listen, and digest what others are saying, and reflect and then reply.

(By the way - welcome to those readers who've made it past the 240 word mark. You've done better than most web-readers do, according to studies)

For me the 'emerging conversation' has become too much like a whole bunch of people mouthing off... Pretending to listen, by occasionally quoting others, but, for the most part, just yabbering on about their little world regardless of what others are saying. In the book I mention some of the conditions under which a system might become 'emergent', or 'self-organizing', or 'a learning system', to use different syntax. One of the key conditions is an ability to sense and respond to its environment. And this requires careful listening. I think we've lost the art.

So I'm moving over to a new blogging-style system called Conch. The creators say that Conch is "designed to emphasise the connectedness side of being part of a network, not unlike sitting round a dinner table, where certain rules about listening before speaking are important."

You thus start by creating what they call a 'table' of other members. Once your table is set, you can begin posting, just as you would with any other blogging system. The difference is in the discussion element. Conch uses an algorithm to detect how the conversation around any post is going, and table members can rate other members' comments. These ratings are then used, along with the algorithm, to invite a member of the table to post a new thought once discussion around the previous one has died down. This member can then either: post a new piece or defer to someone else in the group who they feel ought to 'have the conch' that time round - the allusion obviously being to Golding's Lord of the Flies. Such a deferral gains a member ratings; members can force a new post themselves, but doing so is ratings-costly.

Of course, for the small part of the bell-curve who made it to the end of a post this long, you'll realize Conch doesn't exist. But sometimes, amidst the noise and haste of a movement that appears to be whirling around in hyperspace like a dervish, constantly spinning and going nowhere fast, I wish it did. Thus ends, according to Technorati, the 17,754th post on 'emerging church', the 100th in 24 hours, and that's including a Sunday, when good bloggers like TSK don't even post ;-)

Technorati: Bauman | Blogging | Conch | Emerging Conversation | Golding | Lord of the Flies | Stasuik

Wikiklesia Paperback Available | A Tale of Two Publishers

I'm really pleased to see the Wikiklesia book published in physical form. Go get your copy here and support Not For Sale as you do. I contributed a chapter on the move between text, audio and video, which seems to have gone down well.

Wikiklesia is one of those great publishing projects you are happy to be a part of, with no thought of payment. Good people doing good things... the gifts have cycled well.

Unfortunately this isn't always the case. Many months ago now I was keenly asked to provide a couple of articles for a large and very well known US Christian publication. The deadlines were tight, the turnaround not easy with juggling other things, but hey - they seemed so keen and nice about it! My queries were answered by the editor within hours, they seemed really pleased with what I'd produced... And then it came to payment. I was patient, I can tell you - I don't like hassling people for cash - but suddenly, with the articles published, I couldn't get a squeak out of them.

Finally, after a number of unanswered emails, a cheque for one of the articles arrived, with a copy of the piece for my file, which I was more concerned about to be honest. I've since heard nothing about the other one, which was published months back, but for which I'm still owed.

Should I be bothered? I can take or leave the cash. Some can't, but I'm lucky enough to have income from my teaching. But I just feel that the principle is important. It's basically theft, right? Should writers have to hassle people for what their due, however small it might be? I know for a fact that this publication has treated others in a similar way. Is this the sort of way we'd want a Christian publication to run? I've no desire to write for them again, and if that means I'm shooting my US Christian publishing empire in the foot, well, so be it ;-) I'd rather spend the rest of my days pushing work out for free to projects like Wikiklesia than have the sour taste of having to chase poorly run, industrial-sized Christian publishing houses for cash.

Rant over.

Technorati: Christian | Publishing

Hidden Trees and Weeds | The Interstitial Jesus

I have been reading, sitting quietly with, meditating on Richard Deakin's wonderful book, Wildwood - A Journey Through Trees. Having previous written of his swims around England, this book is simply a series of reflections on the transformative power of this 'fifth element'. Much of it is taken with stories of sleeping out in the middle of woodland, fully engaged with and alive to the busyness of this environment.

There are a number of things that I want to blog about from it, but, to begin with, the book has simply opened my eyes to an new appreciation of our forests. I spent yesterday out in the Surrey hills, which Deakin mentions (he died almost a year ago to the day) and it was wonderful to read the book in the very environment it spoke of.

But it was when traveling back into London by train that the book gave me a wonderful insight: there are scattered forests everywhere along our railways. These inbetween spaces, tucked safely between dangerous high-voltage rails, are havens for all manner of plant life. And with the plants, animal life too. I was surprised to learn recently that the best honey the UK has to offer is made in London. Why? Because London has such high bio-diversity, and thus the bees carry a rich mix of flavours into their hives. In the countryside, where much of the land is given over to industrial agriculture, the honey is bland.

Those who have read here before will know about the allotment that a few of us keep, and this is one sort of 'hidden land' that excites me about the city. But it was only traveling through Clapham Junction, East Croydon and London Bridge that I began to see that there are huge acreages of small clumps of trees and bushes, all living with no threat from mankind. All growing in the gaps that our developments have left. All working their quiet transformations of our air, our ecology, our sight.

And I can't help but think that, hidden away in these places, an interstitial Jesus is camping. Quietly working. Beyond our boundaries, and in places we simply miss as we glide along rails in steel carriages. I need to look more closely.

Technorati: Deakin | Ecology | Environment | London | Railways | Wildwood

Wise Traveller...

Just out is this set of three books of reflections, to which I contributed 8 or 9 pieces.

Nice thoughts for the journey to pop in and out of.

Here's one I submitted for book titled 'Loss'

Fruit

I want to change the fruits of my labours.

When someone says ‘Apple’,
I shouldn't want sleek plastic and titanium,
but England’s Coxes,
heavy hung in dappled orchards.

When someone says ‘Orange’,
I don’t want to know about free minutes and the latest upgrades.
I want to think citrus thoughts;
the appeal of slowly peeling skin.

And when someone says ‘Blackberry’,
I don’t want my head to rush with virtual thoughts
of emails and deadlines and documents and settings
and schedules and coverage and battery life.

I want, instead, my tongue to rush with sweet sensation,
a bowl of fruits shared with friends.
A rug.
Open space and blue sky.

Lech Walesa came to the West and said:
“You have riches and freedom here,
but I feel no sense of faith or direction.
You have so many computers,
why don’t you use them in the search for love?”

Devices all sold to connect me.
When all I had to do was pick some fruit, and share it.

© KB 2007

Walesa's quote is strangely prophetic, I think.
We've all heeded his advice in some way.

Technorati: Blackberry | Fruit | Love | Scripture Union | Walesa

Another Day with the Soliton Geek Show

Technorati: Pete Rollins | Higgins | Russinger

Your Digital Carbon Footprint

It's obviously rich of me talking about this, flying as I am to LA on Monday, but it's an often over-looked fact that the net runs on servers, and servers draw power. Nic mentioned the other day that a simple calculation of the server power-draw for Second Life, divided by the average number of users online at any one time, gives the incredible fact that Second Life avatars use more CO2 than an average Brazilian (or should I say, person in Brazil ;-). Another great reason for never going back there.

So when do Typepad release a 'Green Tariff', which allows you to ensure your power-draw is coming from renewables?

Technorati: Environment | Green | Second Life | Typepad

Web 2.0 | It's All About the Sacred | Festival and Carnival

I guess sometimes you can't see the woods for the trees. I recently posted a piece about René Girard's thoughts on the essentiality of the sacred to human experience - something Dawkins et al ignore in their anti-religion positions - and I also posted something on Facebook and friendship.

But it took a beer with Nic - as so often it does - for the obvious connection to jump out: all social networking sites are simply virtual ways of touching the sacred.

In the Girard piece, Roger Scruton defines the sacred as "moments that stand outside time, in which the loneliness and anxiety of the human individual is confronted and overcome, through immersion in the group"

There can be no better definition of why Web 2.0 / Social Networking has taken off: we are all desperately raising antennae, trying to channel from the web these moments of immersion, moments when someone wants to link to us, wants to comment on our thoughts, wants to tag us, accepts us in their group.

My skepticism about the extent to which these moments actually can occur on the web thus highlight a further problem, and a further opportunity. The historic ways in which people have accessed the sacred have been eroded: community, church, neighbours - even conscription - and yet the virtual substitutes of MySpace, Facebook etc., are proving inadequate. Easy as it may be to whip up a n