postmodernbible

Sin Free Social Media - really??? #facegloria #facebook #ummaland #dawah

The other day I received a phone call from BBC Scotland - "have you read about FaceGloria - could you give us an interview?".  Frantic googling and there I saw all the media hype about FaceGloria - a Brazilian Evangelical alternative to Facebook - Facebook without the sin.  I checked on Google Trends to see if this was a major news story and noted a lot of press picking up the story first released by AFP and then by many other news agencies including most of the online newspapers, and the BBC:

My first reaction was that a sin free Facebook was probably a human-free Facebook. But this , site, set up by Atilla Barros in Brazil, really does seem to be suggesting that it wants to be like Facebook (same colour scheme, social interacting, friends, posts, photo folders, messaging) but without the nasty stuff on Facebook - no profanity (600 words are excluded), no nudity (no bikini shots), no homosexuality.  The site has set up 20 morality guardians to patrol the site and remove anything they find that is inappropriate.

I joined. I was appalled at the technology. But I kind of see the idea. A simple way of connecting with like minded evangelical Christians. Perhaps not everyone's cup of tea but you can see how it works sociologically to bring together people with the same views, the same love for Jesus, the same desire to purify themselves from the world. It's a classic Christian holiness trait - separate yourself off from the unholy and you will be more holy yourself.  I still have no friends, though. 

As I stayed on the site, I was worried about a few things - where were the privacy settings? How could I exclude someone from viewing my profile? What if I was being pestered? You can see all the users and their profile pictures. But there is no CEOP button, nothing about guidelines, a FAQ for problems, nothing about an anti-bullying procedure.  All those things that Facebook has set up to make Facebook a better place to be. In fact, if my kids asked whether I thought FaceGloria or Facebook was a better place to be, I'd go for Facebook any day.

That's not to say that Facebook doesn't have its problems. Someone in my friendship group decided to post an explicit picture the other day involving nudity and other content which I thought was obscene. I was rather shocked. I friend people who aren't Christians and so perhaps I am just a bit naive. But I complained to Facebook about the picture because I wouldn't have been happy for my kids to see it or to see it associated with my feed.  Facebook replied to say that the picture did show nudity but it was within the Facebook guidelines. I unfriended the person who initially posted the picture - a slightly awkward thing to do but I saw no alternative.

But note that I was in control. I could adjust my feed, adjust my friendships, change what I saw from who. In other words, Facebook allows us to make our own safe space. And it has all the reporting we would want to see. It is not completely free of bullying, trolling, obscenity but you can control that pretty well.  Well, I think you can.

So, I was asked in the interview, do you say don't go on FaceGloria? No, I replied. It's an interesting social media experiment, but it needs better technology, better funding, lots more security.  At the moment, I think FaceGloria is a dangerous technology. To leave security to 20 moral guardians rather than to code and machines is crazy! Not to have proper safeguards against grooming, trolling and abuse is...well...bad.  I daren't use the word I want to use there.

The bigger issue is whether we should be burying our heads in the digital sand in the first place. We are called not out of the world, but into the world, although remaining as resident aliens: not in the world but not of it (John 15:19, 1 Peter 2:11). But that idea of residents seems important. As does the idea of being salt and light to the world (Matt 5:13-16). Salt is only good if it engages with the world. Salt has no effect on other salt. Light is not needed in a bright room. Light shines in the darkness.  So, as I suggest in the interview, evangelical Christians have long argued that engagement with the world is better than withdrawal from it. 

I argued in the piece - let's make Facebook a better, richer, nicer place by our Christian presence rather than hiving off into niche worlds, sinless echo chambers, holy huddles.

Social media sites are places for interaction, friendships, all the busyness of everyday life to be shared and to bring joy to those reading, sharing, befriending.  That means that social media is not just something we consume but a place for us to work at making it a better place for everyone else. 

While researching I was also directed to look at UmmaLand - an Islamic social networking site which is seen as another, better, place to avoid gossiping, frivolousness, distraction from the core subject of being a better Muslim and a better citizen of the Islamic World (the Ummah).  Now, Ummaland presents a pretty monolithic and conservative form of Islam which has no place for homosexuality, provides extra security options for women and promotes certain Imam who clearly don't present a liberal view of Islam.

The site's founder, Maruf Yusupov, originates from Uzbekistan but is now based in Denmark, however seems less concerned about doctrinal orthodoxy than he is on promoting a different perception of Muslim social action and concern. So, one of the first things you see on the site is the BE HELPFUL button - how can you help out with the project, how can you make your contribution.  This is real social media which engages everyone in the task rather than doing it for you and allowing you to be a consumer of a product.

In several interviews, here and here, Maruf outlines the core focuses on Ummaland:

• Productivity: “It‘s not just about what we do; how we do it is important, too. We believe productivity enables the Ummah to live in a more efficient way, thereby permitting us to reclaim our dignity and integrity.”

• Charity: “While education and productivity relate to self-improvement, we’d also like to focus on charity, gathering donations for worthy local and global causes.”

• Action: “In contrast to other social networks that promote ‘likes’ and ‘shares’ only, we‘d like to change this attitude into something actionable. For example, if a masjid or local community needs support, we want to be able to visit and help out in person if we can.”

• Education: “We believe proper Islamic education is the solution to most of our daily challenges. That’s why we’re integrating Islamic education as the core feature of our network. We welcome all Islamic institutions to join us in this endeavor.”

I think there are some big issues with Ummaland as a social networking site and I am aware of the dangers of removing people from embedded, real-life teaching. But just as that removal can be part of a process of radicalisation, so too, a place like Ummaland which teaches Dawah (social action, mission, engagement) so powerfully can be a place of deradicalisation, a place to embed and enact the values of Islam in a really helpful and worldwide project.

If you asked me where the real example of positive social networking is taking place, in Facegloria or Ummaland, I'd have to say the latter any day.

What do you think? Leave a comment, please.

Political Leaders, Christmas Cards and #ChristmasStarts @ChristmasStarts @codecuk

The following is reposted from the BigBible Project

There has been quite a bit of debunking about alternative learning styles and right brain/left brain stuff lately. And the other day I found myself querying whether our love affair with art means that everything has just become too subjective. After all, a simple arrow does indeed point the way, but more complex images can often just get in the way where a simple statement could have helped so much more. In the end, pictures hit so many buttons with us that we can end up overflowing with meaning.

So in November, we went to see the Tower Poppies. An amazing piece of art - each poppy representing a lost life. But is it a place of honour or guilt? A place of remembrance or mourning. A place of patriotism or shame? Of course, it's a place for every one of those feelings. For me the power was in seeing the ceramic poppies as drops of blood, ceramic clots of death, ceramic clots of life washed away by the horror of war. And of course that links to the Sainsbury ad and all the problems of associating war and commercialism. It's so much easier to stick with penguins. Although perhaps keeping it in the family is the best idea? See here for Miranda Threllfall-Holmes' reflection or the Independent's of the whole Christmas ads saga.

Pictures, images, values, interpretation.

So, then I saw the #ChristmasStarts campaign and the political leaders Christmas cards and wondered if I could pull them together. Let's see...

#ChristmasStarts has launched with a series of Radio Ads.

Here is the first - and check the whole campaign...

Donkey

And then they add an amazing video about the meaning of Christmas to different people...

  

So, how do our political leaders explore the meaning of Christmas?

I was surprised with David Cameron's Christmas Card. Now, there is a power statement. But I did wonder how it related to Christmas. Indeed, how all the leader's cards related to Christmas? Christmas starts with remembrance of ages past? Christmas starts with granddad asleep in the corner? Christmas starts at Number 10? But surely that is a complete reversal of the Christmas message? I mean, #ChristmasStarts in a feeding trough in a stable in a rather insignificant (Micah 5:2 says) place in a backwater of the Roman Empire. It doesn't start at Number 10. #ChristmasStarts with poverty and weakness and risk. #ChristmasStarts with the generosity of God giving his own son. #ChristmasStarts with family and celebration and gift of new life. How does this picture pick up on those themes?

Nick Clegg, of course, is an avowed atheist and so it would strange for him to associate himself with the #ChristmasStarts theme at all. Instead, Mr Clegg pictures himself in a series of passport photos with his wife, Miriam Durantez. Of course, the first thing is the concept of the passport photo - reminiscent of the current debate about immigration and passport control. And, of course, Ms Durantez was born in Spain. And, of course, Mary and Joseph came from up north to Bethlehem - travellers dragged south by government decree. And, at least in one of the Gospel accounts, they become refugees to Egypt after the birth. Part and parcel of the immigration issue? Refugees because of God's meddling in their lives? #ChristmasStarts with problems of where we live, where home is, what nationality we own and inhabit. #ChristmasStarts with knowing who our neighbours are. So, intriguingly, Nick's pic picks up a huge theme - are Mr and Mrs Clegg part of a nativity play representing Mary and Joseph in their wanderings?

The Milibands have made use of a classic family picture. All so Messy Church in the Miliband household. Breathtakingly simple. But also daring for someone who has professed both his Jewish identity and his non-believing stance in previous years.  An adoption of a country's heritage - sticking glitter and cotton wool onto a card. Sharing the call for a Merry Christmas which begins with family laughing together around the kitchen table/play table. #ChristmasStarts. I love the laughter on this card (although those scissors are too close for comfort - a sword to the heart of Mary, a memento mori???). But the parental laughter encapsulates, brackets, includes, the children's awe and curiosity. The role of creativity is both an unknown and a place of security and fun. Hence the whole phenomenon of Messy Church and Christingles which have become so important for helping families celebrate when #ChristmasStarts (although does Kate Bottley go too far?). A simple message which tells an interesting story of embracing the unknown, the uncertain, the moment.

What are the images around your own understanding of Christmas and what are those images opening up for us. What image would you associate with the hashtag #ChristmasStarts?

Of course, for me #ChristmasStarts and ends with the baby and with the amazing picture John paints in the words of the Prologue and so amazingly captured in the Lindisfarne Gospels...In principio erat verbum... In the beginning was the word... and you just can't put that amazing word into one picture at all.

Although, perhaps GoggleBox's very own Rev Kate Bottley manages to???

Pete

 

 

Transhumanism from a Christian perspective? 10 minute keynote given at the Christian New Media Conference, Nov 2014

Premier have released my talk on 'Transhumanism' from the Christian New Media Conference in November 2014.

 

More on Biblical Literacy and a defence of the Church of England #TheTimes #KatieEdwards @codecuk

So, at the end of last week, I was approached by The Times to comment on an article that was being prepared about biblical literacy.  This is what I wrote about the process earlier this week:

You may have also seen Dr Katie Edwards piece in The Times on Saturday exploring Biblical Literacy - sadly the link is behind a paywall. Katie believes that the 'ubiquitous" presence of the Bible in contemporary society means that biblical literacy is on the increase. Personally I think these are cultural echoes rather than evidence of biblical literacy. I am hoping I can write a piece of The Conversation sometime this week to make this point a little more clearly. If not, it will be on here.

Sadly, no hints from The Conversation that they are interested in the pitch but...I thought it would be good to come back to this since there have been some developments.

First of all, the article appeared on Saturday without any reference to the work which I had put together offering a different slant. The article included some very critical comments about the Church of England and it's "intellectual snobbery"; on Rowan Williams "persistently bemoan[ing] the scourge of Bible illiteracy that we are all apparently experiencing". Indeed, this "pandemic" is hitting academics, teachers and public figures such as Joan Bakewell and Andrew Motion. Instead Dr Edwards wants to assert that it is in the cultural arena, amidst the lyrics of hip-hop stars, Eddie Izzard and "pop culture" that the Bible is alive and well. Indeed, the article is a kind of advertisement for the book which is being published in February on this very issue, Rethinking Biblical Literacy.

I think Katie is setting up a whole army of straw men to knock down. The Church of England and its leadership is an easy target in contemporary society. An iconoclast in the grand tradition of Sheffield Biblical Studies (I did my PhD there and so I am aware of the tradition), Katie sets her aim to shoot across the bow of institutional Christianity - it's good fodder for the sensationalist press. I just dont think it matches the reality of this area of research where the Church of England has not been a major contributor. In fact, all of those cultural allusions and echoes of which Katie makes so much, are more likely to have been secured within the British psyche because of the work of the Church of England, because of the Book of Common Prayer, because of Cranmer's obsession with the Bible, further reinforced by the Evangelical Revival springing from the Church of England. I'm not an Anglican, but I think this is a sensationalist pot-shot rather than a valid critique of intellectual snobbery on their part.

Katie's final sentence is interesting: "Yes, the Bible matters for us all, not only Christians, because the Bible is used in contemporary culture to address the big social questions of our time." I'm not sure that I, or anyone else, would disagree with this. However, I would argue that what Katie is talking about is not biblical literacy. Literacy is about reading, about direct engagement with the text of the Bible, or about an awareness of the contents of that text. I'm not sure that those teaching English Literacy would be content with people recognising apples in the street - they would want them to be able to read the word "apple" as well.

Bad example perhaps.

But what Katie is correctly arguing is that biblical imagery, phraseology, motifs are part and parcel of English speaking social identity and cultural heritage. This is of huge benefit to those of us trying to engage people in the task of biblical literacy because they already know some of the basic building blocks. It's easier to teach biblical Greek if people know the Greek alphabet already! But, that's not to say that knowing that Greek letters are used as symobls in Mathematics means you know some Greek.

Those of us who are researching biblical literacy, rather than the intertextual and intersocial echoes of the bible in contemporary society, know that there is a problem with Bible illiteracy. And it is not the Church of England who are beating this drum on their own, nor indeed are they at all conspicuous in this argument. It is the professors of English Literature departments in the USA who wrote the Fairfax Reports almost a decade ago; the Bible Societies who have produced report after report on the decline; the Evangelical Alliance's Biblefresh project which queried the church's own lack of biblical literacy again based on the hard statistical evidence of decline.

It is true that more work needs to be done. CODEC needs to repeat the National Biblical Literacy Survey we carried out in 2008/9. We need to have a steady stream of comparative data to test the anecdotal assumption that biblical literacy is on the decline. We need a thorough look at what we actual mean by biblical literacy (and Katie is providing one side of that examination - I'm hoping to provide another).

But, in the meantime, we do need to be careful to ensure we are actually speaking about the same kind of thing - in the end Biblical literacy is about reading the Bible, engaging with the Bible. I remain convinced that the use of the Bible by the popstars is NOT about addressing the big social issues of the day but about subverting the biblical record and playing upon cultural echoes - certainly that seems to have been the obvious tactic of the Director of the recent Noah film, based more on apocryphal traditions of the Watchers than on the Biblical text about Noah - the Director set out to make the most unbiblical film of all time!

I have now been given the text of the online version of the article which does include some of the stuff I wrote in response to Katie's article and so, for the record, here it is. But I can see this going on for a while...

And lo, Lady Gaga’s Judas begat Kanye West’s Yeezus, and Kanye West’s Yeezus begat Lily Allen’s Sheezus, and together they went forth and offended the Church mightily.

Something like that. Study after study has shown that biblical literacy is on the wane, reduced to a casual plaything of the film and music industries.

Or is it? A new book tries to explode the Church of England’s “intellectual snobbery” about biblical references in popular culture and argue that the stories are reaching a wider audience than ever before.

Katie Edwards, lecturer in The Bible in Contemporary Culture at the University of Sheffield, claims that the prevailing pessimism about young people’s familiarity with chapter and verse is a nonsense.

She said: “The Church of England has a lot of questions to answer in this respect. Its leaders, including Rowan Williams [the former Archbishop of Canterbury], persistently bemoan the scourge of Bible illiteracy that we are all apparently experiencing.

“Worse still, it isn’t actually only the Church of England that seems to view biblical illiteracy as a pandemic — it is also academics, teachers and public figures, for example Joan Bakewell and the former poet laureate Andrew Motion, who assume that biblical literacy is in widespread decline.”

In Rethinking Biblical Literacy, due to be published in the spring, Dr Edwards talks to scholars who contend that scripture is flourishing as vigorously as ever — just not where you would expect. From Eddie Izzard’s riff on the flood story from Genesis — “I want an ark, with a big room for poo” — to echoes of Leviticus in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the academics claim that pop culture gives young people a new and complex way to engage with the Bible.

Dr Edwards, who calls Jesus “the biggest celebrity of them all”, said: “Jesus imagery is very common in hip-hop videos, and Mary Magdalene and Mary, mother of Jesus, can be used in haute couture fashion — see the Jean Paul Gaultier Spring 2007 collection, which was inspired by the biblical Marys.”

Partly to prove her point, and partly, one suspects, to wind up critics, Dr Edwards commissioned the graffiti artist Kid Acne to spray a hip-hop nativity on the side of a Sheffield school for the city’s Festival of the Mind.

“At the heart of a lot of these discussions , I think, is intellectual snobbery,” Dr Edwards said. “Yes, the Bible matters for us all, not only Christians, but not because I think that to be considered ‘truly educated’ or ‘sufficiently cultured’ you should be familiar with certain cultural products like the KJV Bible [King James Version, 1611], as Michael Gove and various public figures suggested during [its] 2011 anniversary, but because the Bible is used in contemporary culture to address the big social questions of our time.”

Studies suggest that the way people consume the Bible is changing. A national survey carried out in 2008 by the University of Durham’s Centre for Biblical Literacy and Communication found that two out of five people knew the story of the Good Samaritan, while only a fifth could tell the researchers anything about Abraham.

On the other hand, half the respondents had seen the 1956 film The Ten Commandments and a quarter had seen Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ.

Peter Phillips, the centre’s director, said that biblical references in film and music were “cultural echoes” and different from grappling with scripture first-hand.

“A colleague pointed out to me that he hears people every day using phrases from the book of Ecclesiastes, but without knowing that such a text even exists,” he said. “There have now been over ten surveys from both Christian and secular projects which point to a decline in biblical literacy in both the UK and the USA.

“All of the reports point to a statistical decline in biblical knowledge both within the Church and in society in general. Not one report has argued for an increase in knowledge - not even from those with a vested interest in saying biblical literacy is on the increase.”

 

Whose the scariest of them all? #internetprivacy @codecuk

I posted the following picture on my Facebook wall this morning, having taken it off Aral Balkan's Twitterfeed a few minutes before. I did ponder the copyright issues of doing this and even tried to see where Aral had absorbed it from but gave up the chase...

Of course, one of my interlocutors on Facebook, Mark Howe, decided to query what I was saying and whether there is any truth in Google being the big problem, and anyway wasn't omniscience a good thing.

My response was as follows:

But the point of the picture is that Orwell's concept of state oppression is dwarfed by contemporary techno-commercial abuse of data and that while we think Facebook is the accepted common enemy, Google is the big issue and lurks above all else. I am happy that my God is omniscient but I am not prepared to make Google my God.

I am a big supporter of internet freedom and tend to agree with those prophets of doom such as Aral Balkan and Cory Doctorow and the Electronic Frontier Foundation who all take a slightly more sinister view of what the commercial internet companies are really up to.  Certainly I think that Google's treatment of copyright issues and their mass scanning of knowledge in the hope to reach the Singularity a la Ray Kurzweil has immense issues for us as a human race - and I don't think I am just being a reactionary old f**t.

And, of course, a lot of my thinking is clouded by reading contemporary science fiction and that's not a very academic form of thinking, is it. Well, it keeps me happy...here are some of the more informative/the one's off the top of my head:

Cory Doctorow's books:

Little Brother (link offers a free download), Homeland (link offers DRM-free audiobook), Rapture of the Nerds (again free to download)

Daniel Wilson's books:

Amped, Robopocalypse, Robogenesis

Simon Morden's Petrovich Trilogy and slightly less impressive sequel The Curve of the Earth:

Max Barry's Machine Man and Lexicon

John Scalzi's Locked In

And the most awesome book I have read this year - Ernest Cline's Ready Player One - a book but the link takes you to whole Ready Player One experience zone...going to get lost there forever one day.

...and you have seen Transcendence (Matrix 1 for the Noughties?) and the H+ series on YouTube and Black Mirror???

Here's the trailer for the H+ Series:

 

What's important is not that we all accept my point of view or Cory Doctorow's or Aral Balkan. It's actually important that we discuss it and talk about it and come to a mind before we find we are all swept up in a wave of revolutionary dystopia or conservative repression which we never saw coming.

If you are interested in my thinking on all this from a completely different perspective, I was asked to write a paper on Security and Privacy in a Digital Age which is to be discussed at the Methodist Council in Britian in the next few days. I wonder what they will make of it all? 

BTW did you know about the Snowden event on Sunday?

And finally, have you see the Guardian's animated video on the NSA surveillance issue?

And finally, finally, have you been to see this show at the Royal Court Theatre?

 

Pete

Digital is what we mean when all the bits hit the fan!? #digitalhumanities #digital #theology @codecuk @melissaterras

The second meeting of the CODEC Book Club has been asked to watch Melissa Terras' inaugural lecture as Professor of Digital Humanities at University College, London.  The talk, given on 27th May 2014, was entitled: "A Decade of Digital Humanities". The lecture is embedded on the UCL website in the previous link.

Prof Terras, whose blog and twitter account are well worth following, started her talk by asking what we mean by this term "Digital Humanities" which first arose in about 2004 as she moved into academia, associated with Schreibman et al's groundbreaking book A Compnaion to Digital Humanities.

The definition of "humanities" is easy - research relating to the human condition (past, present and future) which has a specific bearing on the contemporary context of that human condition.

The issue, of course, is what we mean by Digital! The very thing which I raised in my recent presentation on what we mean by Digital in Digital Theology.

So first of all, Prof Terras points out that "digital" cannot = quantitative. We have been doing that since at least the Renaissance and she points to three digitised books from the UCL library which did quantitative study centuries ago.

So, is it about the use of computers? Of course not, argues Terras. Computers have always attracted humanities scholars to them to see what might be possible - she even enlists Ada Gordon Lovelace (Babbage's colleague, pictured left), who in an academic paper in 1843 (somewhat briefly and tangentially) extolled the virtues of the Analytical Machine for the study of the arts.

So "digital" does not really relate to quantitative data or computer hardware.

Instead, Terras produces two graphs which point to the sweet point where computer technology was risingand computer price was declining to such a degree that suddenly computing was no longer the preserve of the elite but became an everyday reality.

(BTW, to some extent, that same argument had been used in the curating of the Digital Revolution exhibition in London).

Digital is what we mean by when all the bits hit the fan!

In other words, digital is a shorthand not for some form of technology but for a cultural shift - a Kuhnian paradigm shift if you want - where computing technology and the changes it was creating to our society, and the information tidal wave sweeping over academia, began to have such an affect that any study of the human condition which did not take account of the digital was simply arcane.  Suddenly, digital reflected the normative experience of (Western) culture and so needed to be part and parcel of any humanities research.

Digital is where information culture and computer technology become enduring features of mainstream society.

Interestingly, Prof Terras doesn't leave it there - she goes on to point out how Digital Humanities focuses on the innovator/early adopter area of Roger's Innovation Adoption Curve. DH is essential humanities research carried out to the left of The Chasm:

- or alternatively technologies rising towards the peak of the Gartner Hype Cycle

In other words, Digital Humanists tend to be working as innovators or early adopters - those who will have a technological proficiency ahead of the curve and a tendency to hunt out the very latest technology - either to re-engineer it, to play with it, to see how it fits in with other technology around them.

Overall, I found this to be a really good analysis of where we are with Digital Humanities and a helpful re-inforcing of the place where I had just got to with CODEC's definition of Digital Theology - theological research which takes seriously digital culture, digital technology and the plethora of information which both leads to. Of course, I think I want to suggest that there are more ways to read that term "Digital" as well. It is about culture, it is about the ubiquity of technology. But there is stuff there about postmodernism and posthumanism and other innovations which isn't really there is Melissa Terras' talk so far.

I was intrigued therefore to receive a suggestion from Marika that we should perhaps also be looking at David Trend's compilation of essays on Reading Digital Culture. Of course, the problem with that book is that is came out in 2001 - three years before the hype cycle of Digital Humanities got off the ground!!!  

Or perhaps that's the point - Digital Culture hit the point of social commentary and so two years later it Digital Humanities also hit the point of social commentary in time for the 2004 launch? Like a Gartner Hype Cycle for Digital!!!

Thanks for the suggestion, Dave! And thanks for the stimulating lecture, Professor Terras.

Now what's next?

Pete

Thinking some more about Digital Humanities - my presentation

So here is the link to the presentation I did on Digital Theology at the recent interview process I went through with the Department of Theology and Religion. Still awaiting my contract and confirmation from this so just to say that it was *a wonderful experience*.

Basically you'll see that what I want to say by the end of the slide is that "digital" in "digital humanities" or "digital theology" has something more to say about the cultural setting of the theology that we are doing (or the humanities that we are doing) rather than the use of technology or computing forms...

It's all about the culture, stupid!

The next post is a reflection on Prof Melissa Terras' inaugural lecture at UCL which seemed to say much the same kind of thing but with a slightly larger/wider remit.

The Slideshow... 

Trends, Transhumanism, Digital Theology

At the moment, I am confined to doing research-related work. Confined because the docs think this is better for my health than being engaged in some "other stuff". I am happy to take the medicine and find it invigorating and exciting! Good stuff.

So, along with the fun (???) of writing research applications and bid proposals and having meetings left right and centre, I am trying to focus on reading some of those books which I have had piling up while running around doing that 'other stuff'. I'm intrigued by transhumanism - see my mentions in the past of Amped and Robopocalypse, of Cory Doctorow's Rapture of the Nerds and Little Brother (available free from link) and Baroness Greenfield's (awful) 2121.

So, I'm really enjoiying the articles in The Transhumanist Reader. It's good. And the articles are relatively short with large bibliographies!  This just ends up in being an exercise in hyperreading in that you shoot off to explore something else.  But I am enjoying it all the same.  The one today was by Natasha Vita-More (see here for more of her stuff) on "Art and Transhumanism" - so much potential about what the human essence is - is it contained in body or visualised in art - are we what we are made of or could we exist if we were made in something else. Is Michaelangelo's David only real if it is made in marble - is it as real in gold, or silicon, or electricity? What's the essence of things?

After a heads up from Bex, (@drbexl) I've also been watching a new Youtube series, H+ - not Bible Society's hermeneutics course, but rather Humanity+ - an exploration of transhumanism - it involves the injection of a nanocomputer, and viruses, and lots of dystopia - but I'll let you find out for yourself. But what I would give for some utopia or extropia!!! Nobody seems to like where we are going. Dystopia everywhere!

And on that theme, my friend Seymour (@seeingmore) asked if I had seen the tube map future trends thing - I did a search and found this brilliant map from What's Next. It is great fun - if a little dystopic (as usual). It does some good thinking although I do wonder at how technology seems to do nothing but compexify everything and make things worse and worse and worse. I thought technological advances were supposed to make things better.

Here is the map:

http://www.trustmarquesolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/resources/Trends_2010_XCX_print.pdf

Have fun!

Pete

Transhumanism...is human enhancement anathema to Christian theology?

Just a brief introduction to this theme as it seems to keep cropping up in my research and my thinking.

On the face of it, it seems to be very unChristian. I mean God has created us as we are and so how could we contemplate humans being enhanced. We are made in the image of God why would we want to move beyond that. Although of course that is a massive category error - image does not mean physical image - it's not that God looks like a human being but that we are made to love, to be in relationship, community, to engage and to be like God. Human nature is most human when it is divine. (So much to unpack there...)

But you only need to go to a historical tomb or burial site to realise that humanity is evolving still - we're growing taller, fatter, different. Our brains do different things nowadays. Indeed, we are made to adapt and that's why humanity can survive in both extreme heat and extreme cold, in extreme drought and extreme wet. Humans are always enhancing themselves.

We have glasses and hearing aids, prosthetic limbs and plastic surgery. Indeed, we go further these days with gastric and cardiac implants. We lop off pieces of the brain in extreme cases of brain-centred illness. Some of us were our computers and for others they might as well be glued to our palms in any case. Most people recognise that in a few years, we will have implanted chips (see Susan Greenfield's awful 2121 for one view, or Cory Doctorow's Rapture of the Nerds for another, or even his Little Brother (downloadable free from here) for a third...you do know he co-edits Boing Boing, yes???). Google Glass will soon be Google ContactLens and then Google RetinaInplant.  

Are we not made to change, adapt, be enhanced. If God has created us with the ability to co-create, perhaps transhumanism is a God-given gift for us.  Although I can see the comments on how awful this would be!

I was sorry not to be at Greenbelt to hear the talk between Chris Powell, Luke Mason, Steve Fuller and Sarah Chan.  I've downloaded it and along with reading the Transhumanist Reader at the moment, I'm going to have a list and come back to this theme.  Hence this is a just a starter for ten.  

Ahhh...must see the TedTalks on Transhumanism too...

I thought I'd close by giving you the Transhumanist Manifesto...interesting stuff. If Christianity is about life in all its fullness (John 10:10), perhaps there is much more to talk about here...

The Transhumanist Manifesto:

1. Humanity stands to be profoundly affected by science and technology in the future. We envision the possibility of broadening human potential by overcoming aging, cognitive shortcomings, involuntary suffering, and our confinement to planet Earth.
2. We believe that humanity’s potential is still mostly unrealized. There are possible scenarios that lead to wonderful and exceedingly worthwhile enhanced human conditions.
3. We recognize that humanity faces serious risks, especially from the misuse of new technologies. There are possible realistic scenarios that lead to the loss of most, or even all, of what we hold valuable. Some of these scenarios are drastic, others are subtle. Although all progress is change, not all change is progress.
4. Research effort needs to be invested into understanding these prospects. We need to carefully deliberate how best to reduce risks and expedite beneficial applications. We also need forums where people can constructively discuss what should be done, and a social order where responsible decisions can be implemented.
5. Reduction of existential risks, and development of means for the preservation of life and health, the alleviation of grave suffering, and the improvement of human foresight and wisdom should be pursued as urgent priorities, and heavily funded.
6. Policy making ought to be guided by responsible and inclusive moral vision, taking seriously both opportunities and risks, respecting autonomy and individual rights, and showing solidarity with and concern for the interests and dignity of all people around the globe. We must also consider our moral responsibilities towards generations that will exist in the future.
7. We advocate the well-being of all sentience, including humans, non-human animals, and any future artificial intellects, modified life forms, or other intelligences to which technological and scientific advance may give rise.
8. We favour allowing individuals wide personal choice over how they enable their lives. This includes use of techniques that may be developed to assist memory, concentration, and mental energy; life extension therapies; reproductive choice technologies; cryonics procedures; and many other possible human modification and enhancement technologies.

The Transhumanist Declaration was originally crafted in 1998 by an international group of authors: Doug Baily, Anders Sandberg, Gustavo Alves, Max More, Holger Wagner, Natasha Vita-More, Eugene Leitl, Bernie Staring, David Pearce, Bill Fantegrossi, den Otter, Ralf Fletcher, Kathryn Aegis, Tom Morrow, Alexander Chislenko, Lee Daniel Crocker, Darren Reynolds, Keith Elis, Thom Quinn, Mikhail Sverdlov, Arjen Kamphuis, Shane Spaulding, and Nick Bostrom. This Transhumanist Declaration has been modified over the years by several authors and organizations. It was adopted by the Humanity+ Board in March, 2009.

 

p.s. Max More, "The Philosophy of Transhumanism" in Tranhumanism Reader, p.8:

"Since rationalism is an approach to acquiring knowledge and says nothing about the content of knowledge, it is possible in principle for a transhumanist to hold some religious beliefs. And some do. The content of soem religious beliefs is easier to reconcile with transhumanism than the content of others. Christian transhumanists, while not completely unknown, are very rare (and I know of none who are fundamentalists, and such a combination would surely indicate deep confusion)...Those with strong religious views tended to regard transhumanism as competing with their beliefs."

Seven Principles of New Media in a Digital Age #2 #medialit11

So, Friday's post on @andrewgraystone's principles brought a little flurry of comments - more on one post than I have had for ages.

Some of these agree with Andrew, most tended to disagree, with @thechurchmouse voicing the most stringent protests.

So let's take another look at Andrew's list with some comments on what I heard Andrew saying and what I think the issues are. I will end with an alternative seven principles for discussion.

If you haven't read the comments on the previous post, it is probably worth a quick look. I have listed Andrew's principle first and suggested an alternative issue second after the double colon:

1. Singularity of Personality :: Authenticity

Andrew's point here is one that he has made on a number of occasions: I am one person although I may express myself in different ways in different contexts - therefore my online presence should reflect this unity of persona in offline life.

This point raised the most angst among commentators. I am not so sure that the point is singularity of persona. I think the issue is authenticity - in the sense of being true to who you are. In other words, I am different in different situations. I blog differently when I represent different parts of my portfolio career - when I am research director of CODEC I talk digital, I explore, I write geeky, I play with concepts and push boundaries. When I am Secretary to the Faith and Order Committee, I speak bureaucrat, Methodist, ecumenism and all that. I am different.

I cannot have a singularity of personality online because I don't really have such a tight singularity offline. However, I can be true and open to who I am. I can have authenticity as Pete Phillips who has a portfolio life offline and a portfolio life online too. Pete Phillips who does not copy all the trivia off twitter onto facebook; who runs two blogs (posterous as a post site, postmodernbible potentially as a more academic site - but which are often identical). It is this authenticity which is absolutely crucial in online terms. In other words, being true to myself offline and online is an awareness that the values I espouse offline need to be part of my existence online.

Though my language, my interests, my discussions may differ, I think it is important that my authenticity and values are not different. I am married offline and online. I cannot go around pretending to be single online without denying my fidelity to my wife. It is the same as Jesus saying that the very thought of adultery is as bad as adultery.

Offline values broken online are worth nothing. Let your presence online bear the same hallmark of authenticity as your life offline. (David Wall-Jones talks of congruence or coherence)

2. Humanising digital relationships :: Move from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 - from the infoWeb to the socialWeb

I think Church Mouse is right when he points to the basic problem of this principle in terms of content providers vs. consumers. This is a Web 1.0 way of looking at the issue.

In Web 1.0, people provided content for a passive audience to read. Websites were infopoints and the main reason for blogging was to get your message out. Like the broadcast media, we had specialists creating content which the rest of us could consume. On such terms, there could be a problem. However, Andrew's usual discussion of this is in terms of his Direct Debits - where a computer carries out the transaction and no human being is involved. Andrew wants a fair trade approach which links consumer and content producer.

But, as Mouse says, that is precisely what we have in Web 2.0 - the interactive web. Blogs in 2.0 are not about information but about interaction. Twitter is about connecting with people and encouraging even greater interaction. The whole point of social media is that it is social - it builds community.

So this point is valid in so much that we do indeed need to move more and more into a much more interactive world. We need to make sure all the content we provide interacts with people and offers multiple opportunities for people to feed back thoughts and interact with us again. It is about information cycles rather than information transactions. Web 2.0 not Web 1.0.

And as for the direct debits - forget it, the world isn't going back to human bank tellers and machines, automatic transactions and robots are going to become more prevelant - freeing us up for much more interactions with real human beings online and offline. Social is the way forward.

3. Conscientization :: Always play social media in the key of Grace

I'm not so sure that this is a word. According to Wordnik, it is! It refers in marxist theory to a process of becoming aware of social and political differences. In other words, wake up and smell the coffee.

It is important to look at the power imbalances which are prevalent in our lives and in the media which we look at and use. But that isn't so easy as it sounds. The BBC have a huge hand in much of what we do - they have an unequal power balance. At the Church and Media conference, the BBC had all the airplay with no other broadcaster given a space to expound their views. Isn't that a social imbalance? Isn't the web a good place to undermine all of that powerplay and old boy's network?

So, at #medialit11 this week, we were able to allow non-contributors to speak to us through the twitterfall - speakers addressed their queries and it was as if they were there. What if we extended this to academic conferences allowing people to break free of their geographical restraints whether they be in Palestine, China or Lancashire? What if this allowed the poor or the academically less fortunate (non-Etonians?) to have a voice within HE research? What if the Methodist Conference were to allow ordinary Methodists to have a voice on the Conference floor.

Of course, the issue here is how we deal with social media. It isn't really about a marxist political stratagem, it's about basic discipleship. Let God's grace govern the way you act - be as gracious and welcoming and accepting as God and you won't be going too wrong. Act like Jesus did and have a bias to the poor. Act like Jesus did and listen to the outcasts. Act like Jesus did and simply ride roughshod through the old boys clubs of prestige and control. But do it with grace and love.

Always play social media in the key of Grace.

4. Authority and Openness :: Authenticity (again!)

Andrew argued that everything should be traceable to the real you! Be clear and authentic and let people check you! Andrew rejected/rejects the idea of pseudonimity online. In his online church he uses a pseudonym but easily trackable back to the real person. We've discussed this above in terms of a singularity of identity.

Laura (in the comments) talks of the occasional need for pseudonimity. I am less sure of this than Laura or Mouse are. I think I would prefer to know who a blogger is simply because of the power balance/imbalance which is afforded to a pseudonymous blogger. We don't know where they get their info from or whether their info is privileged. Mouse seems to have extraordinarily good access to (published and so public) Anglican finances and investment details. I am NOT saying Mouse has secret knowledge or illegal insider knowledge. He is a mouse not a mole. But he is a really well informed mouse, isn't he. I'd say that authenticity, and coherence in online/offline values, is paramount. But if a nom de plume helps you do your work...

5. Digital Justice :: Justice offline = Justice online

Andrew wanted to make the point that access to the internet and to material which we provide should not depend on wealth. In fact, it does. Does this then create a kind of digital apartheid? Should we not have a preferential option for the digitally poor.

Rallying cries for justice are easy to make. Presumably, this means be just online, just as you are just offline. If you fight for equality offline, then fight for it online too. If you have a specific offline area of justice (women's rights, veganism, the imopact of global warming) then those values need to be carried into the online mode as well.

That's easy (and fits with the authenticity and grace points above) - well, at least straightforward. But what about the concept of digitally rich and poor. Digital costs money - like all technology. But developing nations are using entrepreneurship to challenge the need for high-end technology. Small handsets are the norm in India rather than super-costed smartphones. As the base cost of technology decreases, so more and more people will come online in more and more ways. Sadly the proposals to give away vast numbers of cheap equipment failed. But the move towards a globally connected world moves faster and faster all the time (track the World Internet Stats for more details).

So part of our justice will be to ensure content which we want to be shared with as many people as possible is available in as many forms as possible - high end for those who have it, mobile for others, text only for others. That is part of the just distribution which we can do. Share what you have as justly as you can online and offline too!

6. Mission and Service :: Get on with it!

Global community is connected by digitisation - what does it mean to do mission/to serve in a hyperconnected planet. Agreed. But note Mark Howe's comments about McLuhan meant by this. It is that nowadays each village is more cosmopolitan. Its the seepage of media culture into all culture. It's the integration of different communities. It's the opportunities which globalisation affords us to share the good news.

Blatant plug here for BigBible and its #digidisciple strand...!!!

7. Embodiment :: the priority of embodiment.

Here Andrew was talking about the priority of human-human relationships. We mustn't forget that even the Church Mouse is a real human being. We cannot limit ourselves to purely digital relationships - turning ourselves into a geek in a darkened room (see Social Network, the movie). Mary Ann Hobbs talked about this at Thinking Digital and when the video finally comes up for that conference I will link it through. It's a problem I am teasing around in my Haptic Theology paper - more on that anon.

The question is whether this is true. Which it is. We were made for human-human relations. Or rather whether it is exclusively true. Aren't we made for relationship rather than embodied relationship. David Wilkinson explored this further in the afternoon when he talked of himself as a non-reducible physicalist. I challenged him about whether this denied the very existence of God - he says not! I remain less than convinced. I think we are more than the physical - more than Plato's cage. I think we extend into other places.

More on this later but you might want to look up Ned's blog where we look at this a little together in conversation.

So, my alternatives:

1. Be authentic onlife and offline
2. Move from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 - from the infoWeb to the socialWeb
3. Always play social media in the key of Grace
4. Be authentic even more!
5. Justice offline = justice online
6. Get on with it!
7. Finally, be true to who you are! (i.e. be authentic!)

Pete