Category Archives: Geek

I’m a geek. I love technology, especially communications technology. So, any time I’m dealing with geeky stuff it’ll show up here. As my geekiness is linked to my pastoral call, however, this stuff will often be found elsewhere.

The odd-relevance of “hoodie-gate” for the Church

Posted on May 11, 2012 | 4 Comments

Mark Zuckerberg, who is a rather odd guy (I say that by way of affection, “normal” people annoy me), started Facebook.  He made millions upon millions of dollars and created a platform where people re-connect and share with one another.  Yes, it has problems.  They like to play fast and loose with privacy a good amount of time, and the timeline is evil.  Still, it’s quite an accomplishment for a guy who is under thirty.

Now Zuck is planning Facebook’s IPO, and when it happens he’ll turn into a Billionaire overnight.  That boggles my mind.  Still, all that he’s accomplished before turning thirty is not impressive enough for the parasites of Wall Street.  For them, apparently, Zuckerberg much bow down in homage and wear “grown up clothes” when coming and asking for money.  Instead Zuckerberg work jeans and a hoodie, which sent Wall Street in a tizzy about being “disrespected.”  Sigh.

Then, today, I read a post on CNet regarding comments by an analyst named Michael Pachter who linked coming to Wall Street in a hoodie to going to a Church wearing a hoodie and said, “You shouldn’t do that.”  Why?  Because it doesn’t show respect for the institution.

I made two quick points on Facebook regarding these comments.  I’ll share those here and then add one more.

First, there are enough grungy links between the greed of Wall Street and the Church (in people’s minds, even if not in reality).  Please leave us out of the financial sector’s huff, OK?

Second, if the Church, Wall Street, or any institution is either so insecure or arrogant that it get’s freaked out by a sweatshirt then, frankly, to the nether-regions with the institution.  Such a thin veil of security shows just how fragile and weak such institutions are – and I’m tired of their games.  Zuckerberg was right to wear his hoodie – as if to say, “Look, here I am.  This is who I am and it’s what brought me to this point in my life.  If you want me, you get me – not some grown-up version you think I should be.”

Third, Wall Street (much like the Church) has completely missed the point of this entire exchange.  They assume Zuckerberg is coming to Wall Street asking for money – because that’s their motivation.  May I strongly suggest that Zuckerberg is heading to Wall Street out of curiosity – offering what he’s made to the market just to see what it’s worth.  He’s not coming his hands empty, asking for more, he’s got something to give, and he expected the offended bankers to understand the difference.  The Church does this, doesn’t it?  We have people come in and the system says, “Oh, you want what we have?  Well, let’s see how you smarten up some before we let you all the way through the door.”  The reality is, if people come to a church, which is getting rarer and rarer the longer we don’t learn this lesson, they come because they want to give themselves to see what can happen through their service.  They’ll show respect for the institution when it proves it’s worth to help them serve.

So, wear your hoodies to worship – and if the institution balks then tell it to take a gut check about what’s really important, and then tell it to repent.

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Distractions smactions…

Posted on May 4, 2012 | Leave a comment

One of the first objections I hear from pastors regarding the use of digital technology in worship is,

“Then people will be too distracted, I want them to be completely focused on the sermon.”

I don’t buy it, for several reasons.

First, this makes the assumption that people ever were “completely focused on the sermon.” Well, perhaps “ever” is too strong a word.  It makes the assumption that people have been focused on the sermon at any point since the advent of recorded (and then broadcast) media.  Since this advent, the choice has been between mostly “ok” preachers, and a recording of your favorite entertainment or a really good preacher/teacher.  Is it any wonder people have been finding it difficult to listen to what is preached in churches since the late 1800′s?

Second, the desire as expressed above is too narrow.  I guess I can’t blame the preachers I know.  After all, in Protestant circles, we spend a lot of time being taught how to preach during our education.  On the other hand, we don’t spend a significant amount of time on the nature of worship.  Is it any wonder we think of worship as, “Three songs, an offering, and a sermon?”  The reality is, we need to help people focus on the entire pageant of worship – and not simply the sermon.  If this is the case, and I believe it is, then perhaps digital technology could be helpful rather than distracting.

Third, it assumes that taking away people’s digital devices would mean their attention would be automatically focused where we want people to focus.  This isn’t the case.  Taking away digital devices will merely shift a people who are naturally distracted and shift their attention to a  new distraction.  These range anywhere from writing out a shopping list, playing hangman with a neighbor, doodling on the bulletin, or (when all else fails) napping.  My working theory would be the subtraction of digital devices in low-church Protestant worship, in particular, would actually increase the amount of people being distracted from worship by their bad napping habit.

So, if people are going to be distracted anyway, what can we do?  Do we simply give up and never hope people learn/grow/change through worship?  Not at all.

People are distracted, but many are able to sit through  a sporting event, movie, or TV show with no problems – and even point out details later on.  Why?  Because there is movement.  The shifts in these media are such that it changes people’s perceptions and keeps their attention.  Churches, particularly low-Church Protestants, need to remember worship needs a movement to it.  People need to be able to change their eye levels, move their body position, and even cheer when the drama of God is unfolded (a good  liturgical “Alleluia!” is a wonderful example of this).

We can also, frankly, preach differently.  Aside from using a screen well (which I cover here), we can also work our content to match our audience.  Preaching is about communication, not about getting through a weighty manuscript and tossing out huge amounts of data at people.  We can always stretch people to be able to focus for longer periods of time, and we should do this, but perhaps preaching isn’t the best venue for this.  How many of us have been in, or preached, sermons where the main point was covered ten minutes earlier – but the sermon keeps on going because there are stories to tell and quotations to utter forth?  What if we just cut off the sermon when the main point was made?

Finally we need to allow for the truth that people will be distracted.  We are not an “all there” society, and haven’t been for generations.  We are a “here and elsewhere” society, and this was true long before the advent of texting.    If we use digital devices to aid in the awareness that worship is a movement, however, perhaps we can subvert a distracting influence and make it an ally to help people be more “present.”  No, it’s not an easy path to walk – and for some people a digital device will never help them focus.  I do know, however, that it’s easier help people turn the wheel toward a different heading, than it is to scream out against a forward momentum which has been gaining steam for over a century.  One lands us in a different location, the other gets us run over and bitter.  I’ll choose the former.

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I see bad habits

Posted on April 20, 2012 | Leave a comment
Keynote Notes

All presentation software allows you to add speaker notes to a presentation, why doesn't anyone use this feature?

Wednesday night my wife and I headed out to the Middle School parent’s orientation.  I’ve been a bit leery about this transition, so I was looking forward to getting into the school and seeing what was up.  The evening began with a series of presentations which were redeemed by presence of personality in the speakers.  Nevertheless, each of the presentations was an example of a bad us of projection.  So much so that my wife, who normally tells me to behave myself (she has to because I rarely listen), pointed out one of  the worst offenses.  Let me run down some, not to show how awful the people presenting were but to encourage anyone who reads this to approach creating a presentation differently when given the chance.

First, the screen in the auditorium was rather large, and dominated the stage area.  The angle of the projector also allowed people to walk in front of the image without being blinded or casting a shadow on the screen.  The set up of the screen elements was well done – but fell flat at the moment the computer was connected. There were two main flaws in how the computer was connected to the system.

  • There were six separate presentation files which were thrown up on the screen.  In addition to these, there was also a movie file played on screen.  These separate presentations should have been stitched together into one whole, in order to avoid the jarring pause when one presentation came to an end and another was loaded.
  • The first problem could have been alleviated some if the computer’s display settings were set to extend the desktop, they weren’t.  Instead, the laptop was set to mirror the display on to the projection screen.  This meant that whenever one presentation ended, the audience got to watch as the computer operator moved their mouse around looking for the next file.  This a huge, but common, blunder, because so few people even know their laptops can be set to use multiple monitors (and, to be honest, in Windows it’s a pain to search for).

The result of these two issues was the creation of a sloppy feeling regarding the hand-off between speakers, one which could have easily been avoided.

Second, the presentations were 90% text, and far too many of the few graphic images used were generic clip-art.  Each presentation contained at least one bullet-point list of multi-sentence elements, often shrinking the text to the point where it was unreadable.

The generic images made the slides feel oddly impersonal in a world where a classroom may have several dozen cameras at any given time.  As a parent who has a child arriving in that school next year, I would have liked to see what her classes would look like when in session, or what her workbooks are going to look like.  Generic clip-art fails to help create the emotional connected needed for good communication.

While the bullet-point lists were often difficult to read, it was obvious they weren’t designed for the audience anyway.  As my wife pointed out to me, “Everyone had their backs to us and just read the screen!”  This is one of my pet-peeves in public speaking, and I see it all too often.  Whenever a speaker creates a bullet list with massive amounts of text they are tipping their hand regarding the purpose of their slides.  While the audience can see such slides, they are really nothing more than publicly displayed speaker notes.  Speakers flood their slides with lists like this from a fear they will “miss” something.  When slides are used this way, speakers too often cease communicating, and join the audience while the crowd reads through the notes.  A good lesson to remember is imagery created by the word “bullet.”  Bullets are fast, and a list of bullets should have elements which can be glanced at and understood in a moment.  This frees the audience to return their attention to the speaker. I typically tell people avoid the temptation of bullet points all together – but if you want to use them, you might as well use them as intended.  Speakers who want to have their notes with them can put them on their screen or print them out – a projection screen should be used to communicate with the audience, not the speaker.

I could go on, but those were the major snags.  We met some clearly dedicated people on Wednesday night, but they suffer from the same systemic problem I see in every other venue I find myself in.  Too many organizations assume the presence of technology is enough to create communication, there isn’t enough being done to teach people how to use technology wisely in order to facilitate it.

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Harry Potter and the future of eBooks

Posted on March 27, 2012 | 5 Comments

When I first tracked down some rumors that JK Rowling was pursuing options to offer eBook versions of Harry Potter, I was ecstatic. I love the books, as do my wife and daughter. I wanted my son to be able to enjoy them as well, but without an eBook option it wasn’t in the realm of possibility. We did eventually find a book library for the blind and visually impaired called Book Share, but the reading experience there is… lacking. So I waited, and hoped.

Then over the summer JK Rowling announced that eBooks were definitely coming, but would be sold only through a site she would create called “Pottermore.” There people would be able to purchase the books for use in various readers, and use the site to read them interactively with others. I was skeptical about the nature of the endeavor because I wasn’t sure how book purchases would be handled, or if I was going to be forced to jump through some painful hoops just to load the books on whatever device I wanted to use. I have a problem with DRM in general, but at least the ease of going through Amazon and Barnes and Noble is numbingly simple. Having to download a file and jump through hoops to use it wasn’t my idea of a good time.

As the rumored date for the opening of Pottermore (Halloween) came and went without so much as a peep from the site, I began to get worried. When I read an announcement in the site’s blog in January that the site was being re-done I thought I may never get my Nook app around these books. Then last week I stopped by and read a new blog post which detailed the problems their beta test had uncovered, their joy at having made the site better, and an announcement that the site would open in early April!

Today a friend of mine told me, “Go to Barnes and Noble’s web page” – and there I was greeted by the announcement that Harry Potter eBooks were now on sale! The entire series can be had for just under $59, a great price for seven books. I immediately followed the link to the Pottermore store, wondering how the downloads of the books would be handled, and what I found was the future of eBook sales.

One of the things which makes people leery of purchasing eBooks is the idea of “vendor lock-in.” If you purchase a book from Amazon, you can read it in Kindle branded ways. Yes, they have apps everywhere, and even an html5 web-reader, but you’re still stuck with Kindle. It’s similar for the Nook. Once you purchase a Nook book, it will always be a Nook book. We encountered a problem with vendor lock-in when Barnes and Noble first came out with a Nook-branded e-reader for the iPad. Their previous reader had fantastic font options which were perfect for my son, but the Nook app had a bug which make the large fonts tiny – a bug which went unresolved for months. When I asked fir a refund after going nowhere with tech support (who wouldnt even acknowledge the problem), I was told Nook book sales were final and non-returnable. We had Nook books which were unusable, but Nook books they would always remain. This is one problem vendor lock-in can lead to.

What JK Rowling has done with Pottermore is break vendor lock-in. When you purchase the books through the site you may link it to your Barnes and Noble or Amazon accounts and wireless receive your books as normal. You may also download the file and use Adobe digital editions to load the book on to any device compatible with that software. Finally, the file can be dropped into the books section of iTunes and synced with iBooks. You can download each book eight times (as far as I can tell, the Kindle and Nook links each count as one download). Additionally, the Pottermore store encourages parents to download the books and put them on any devices their children use for reading without purchasing another copy. They do state that they expect parents to get their children to purchase their own copies once they are 18 – but that’s it. They don’t use a draconian “age check” lock-down, they don’t tell you to choose your reading device wisely because you’ll always be tied to it, they don’t treat their customers like criminals waiting to pirate their books.

Pottermore will sell gobs of books. No question.

This is the future of book sales – where books aren’t tied to a vendor forever and ever and ever, and authors can use other technologies to change how their books are read. I’ve not used Pottermore yet, but the idea of being sorted into a house, and reading with others is sure to excite my daughter and son (and, honestly, I want to see what house I get in to). I don’t know how Amazon and Barnes and Noble get a portion of the sales of books which get linked to their respective accounts, but I’m sure they must (they wouldn’t advertise the books otherwise). JK Rowling, however, sets her price. She controls the content, and the publishing of it. In the world of Pottermore Amazon and Barnes and Noble return to being vendors in a world that isn’t permanently locked into one ecosystem. On the other hand, iBooks, tied as it it to the iTunes licensing scheme, won’t see anything from sales of Harry Potter eBooks – and it may be the first of many such books which Apple will never be able to sell unless they make some allowances (which they should, books are not apps).

Pottermore may also be the lifeline traditional publishers have been waiting for. For years the assumed narrative has been, “Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other eBook stores will eventually cut out the publishers from the book selling process.” JK Rowling has taken that narrative and shredded it to pieces. In it’s place is a world in which publishers can do their work, and once again add value to the works under their care by offering generous terms for reading and creating a space where conversations can form around each book. It’s a whole new world, again. Can we expect anything Iess in this age of rapid transition?

 

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Mobile Suite Showdown – Editor Layout

Posted on February 11, 2012 | Leave a comment

Productivity apps on the iPad continue to be one of the top selling points for the device. It’s no surprise, then, that there are several office suites available in the App Store. This post is going to explore the three main “all in one” suites which are available on the iPad – Documents to Go, Quick Office, and Office2 HD. Apple’s iWork is also available in the App store, but the “separate app” nature of the suite sets it outside the scope of this comparison.

Each suite will be explored for file management, editor layout, editing features, and importing/exporting. We’ll primarily look at the word-processing features of each suite, but will also compare the spreadsheet and presentations modules for each app. Today we’ll be looking at the second comparison – editor layout.

Quick Office Editor

Quick Office

Quick office places  it’s formatting buttons at the top of the editor screen. The number of buttons is minimalist, with text formatting options to the left and tools to the right.  The buttons are persistent, allowing for quick formatting without too much trouble.  Oddly, many formatting options are hidden behind a gear icon – grouped with the tools.  Found under the gear icon are font options, alignment, lists, colors, and indents.  While I applaud the attempt at a minimalist interface, I don’t find burying the bulk of formatting options in one cluttered interface to be an elegant solution.

Quick office also displays it’s content in a page-layout format – allowing a content creator to see how their content will look when printed or exported to a PDF.  This can be a useful feature in some instances, but it ends up wasting most of the iPad’s screen real-estate with an exciting display of document margins.

Office 2 HD editor

Office2 HD

If Quick Office to be minimalist in its layout, Office2 HD celebrates complexity.  There are two “pages” of buttons in it’s interface – the first holds text formatting options and the second contains paragraph level formatting like alignments, lists, and intents.  There is, however, one paragraph level formatting option which can be found in the first page of options – paragraph styles.  While is is more a “feature” than a layout choice, Office2 HD is the only “all in one” mobile office suite which supports paragraph styles, and their inclusion as an obvious option is welcome.  The buttons are not persistent, though, they only appear when the keyboard is engaged.  They also feel cramped, and accidental  taps are not uncommon when flicking between button pages.

This suite also defaults to page layout view.  Unlike Quick Office, however, there is an option to switch to “screen layout.” This makes much better use of the iPad’s screen size, and also allows users to zoom the text to a comfortable level without affecting the layout of the page.

Documents to Go editor

Documents to Go

Documents to Go places it buttons at the bottom of the editor.  This is likely a carry-over from the iPhone UI, where bottom buttons are easier to reach while typing, but it translates well on to the larger screen.  There are five buttons in this row – file options, text formatting, paragraph formatting, lists, and tools.  Each button tap reveals a list of common options for that category, along with a “more” option to access more complex formatting.  The buttons, however, are not persistent and actually disappear when the on-screen keyboard is active. Again, this is likely a by-product of the suite being a universal app.  Hiding the buttons when typing makes some sense when using a smaller screen, but on the iPad the vanishing act gets frustrating.

Unlike the other two suites, Documents to Go doesn’t have a page layout view.  It uses a screen layout view only, reflowing the text as a user pinches and zooms the content.  Given that screen layout view makes much better use of the iPad’s screen, the lack of a page layout option isn’t missed much.

Conclusion

Quick Office attempts to create a fast, minimalist, interface while laying out content with a metaphor common to a desktop suite (page view). In the end it ends up failing in both button layout and content layout.  Office2 HD has a complex, and cramped, interface.  It does, however, have two views for content – allowing a user to view content in a way which makes sense on an iPad’s screen.  Documents to Go manages to split the difference and uses a simple button layout and has no page view option at all.  While Documents to Go has some quirks, mostly due to it’s universal nature, it’s still the best editor layout among the three suites.

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“Always on”

Posted on January 28, 2012 | 4 Comments
A brand-new iPad!

 A few days ago my friend Elmo (no, not the one one From Sesame Street) posted this article on Facebook about the power of Introversion.  It’s a thought-provoking piece and, coming from the Philippines, one which spoke to my friend about the nature of Western Civilization (particularly the USA).  The scales in this culture are set up for Extroverts to thrive, and Introverts to adapt.  It’s an astute point.  In fact the article actually quotes a pastor who believes that God isn’t pleased with him because he “likes spending time alone.”  That’s just twisted.

Being a Geek, however, I immediately took the contents of that article and pondered how the spectrum of Introversion to Extraversion might impact the way that we interact with this “always connected world.”  I’ve come accross several blog posts over the last year which attempt to wrestle with the our digitially connected world.  All have spoken of being chained to their phones, laptops, tablets – slaves to the digital world.  They speak of the stress hearing the notifications for e-mail, text messages, and phone calles because it feels like they are trapped at work.  Invariably, the articles speak of turning off their devices and learning to take a sabbath from tech.  When I read them I tend to be confused.  There are times where I turn my phone on vibrate or my IM client off because I just need some time to collect my thoughts or read and there is just too much going on.  These are usually during crunch-times, like rolling out a new web-site or the final stretch before Annual Session, when I’ve got too many pans in the fire and multiple people are asking me when their food is going to be done.  Most of my time, however, my tools are generally left on – and I don’t stress out about recieving a notification or letting a message wait until I’m ready to process it.  To me, being “always connected” is what frees me to be alone to think, read, process, and create.

I used to think this was a generational divide.  The posts I read (and comments I hear) about the negative pervasiveness of technology come, almost invariably, from Boomers.  They grew up in, and remember, a time before these tools were pervasive – and so tend to lack the instincitve filters that their children and grandchildren tend to possess regarding our communications tools.  As I read the linked article, however, I began to wonder if introversion and extraversion were an additional factor in the way we related to our personal communication devices.  I think perhaps it is.

Extraverts tend to crave stimulus.  Crowds and racous gatherings not only don’t phase extraverts, they thrive on them.  Their instinct tends to be surrounded by such.  Yet, whether introverted or extraverted, human beings need both quiet and stimulus – this is what makes being “always connected” potentially disasterous for extraverts.  They lean away from quiet and crave stimulus – and so they jump whenever they hear their devices beep, chirp, and (for the truly retro) ring.  It is their instinct to do so.  When I read posts of people who are crying to be free of their digital chains, I’m wondering if this isn’t the cry of the extravert.  They feel their lack of quiet, but can’t find it when they’re always being connected.  For an extravert, unplugging for set times may be essential for their well-being.

Introverts, on the other hand, tend to crave quiet.  Loud parties and crowds wear them out.  For an introvert like me, then, our digital tools appear to be a God-send.  Like all people, I need both quiet and stimulus to be healthy – by my instinct is to be quiet and alone.  I could easily spend hours reading, watching a movie, or playing a game and never feel the need to talk to another human-being.  I notice, however, how being in such a position too long is detrimental for me.  After hours on my own, I often have a difficult time relating to people when I have the chance to be out in community.  The digital tools at my disposal, however, mitigate some of the negatives of my instinctual tendencies.  I can be alone with my thoughts, ideas, and writing – yet while I do so I can check in on a person preparing for an operation, comfort someone who is grieving, or get a “life-update” from someone I haven’t seen in a bit.  I can even see some of the goings-on of the people who are in my social circles on sites like FaceBook and Google+.  What I find in these digital connections is a bridge between my need for quiet and community stimulus.  I get to interact in a way that doesn’t immediately stress me out, and when I then find myself in a situation which does stress me out, I find myself better prepared for the experience.

Like all things, however, how we deal with digitial technology isn’t (ironically) “on or off.”  There are extraverts who don’t feel like these tools are a chain around their necks becuase they know how to carve space out for quiet.  My daughter is one of these people – extraverted though she is, she’ll spend hours reading books closeted in her room (Heaven help the introverts when she emerges in need of community stimulus).  There are also introverts who view digital tools with mistrust because they feel pressured into turing “always connected” into “always responding.”  Some of the introverted pastors (who will remain nameless, but you know who you are) I work with have expressed as much to me.  Still, I’d like to see some work done on how the combination of generation and introversion/extraversion affect the way we relate to our digital tools.

 

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Wounded Animals

Posted on January 13, 2012 | Leave a comment
SOPA - animals are most dangerous when wounded

If you haven’t heard of SOPA (and PIPA in the Senate) then you really need to. Supposedly, it’s about protecting IP from revenue-destroying piracy. In reality, it’s about old-school cabals desperately hanging on to a buisiness model which afforded them monopoly-like profits. In so doing, it will give the Federal government a Orwellian like ability to censure the Internet by enabling them to order DNS (the service which turns an ip address into “http://www.painfullyhopeful.me”) to block access to “rogue sites.”

“So what’s the problem?” you might ask. After all, only the “bad guys” are goign to be blocked, right? Wrong, dead wrong. See, in SOPA there’s no recourse for sites which are accused of being “rogue.” They simply get shut out, end of story. The responsibility, then, is for the people running those sites to prove their innocence — this is the opposite of how our legal system supposedly works. Moreover, DNS is the very backbone of the internet, and our foreign policy is to blast any government which blocks DNS as violating human-rights. The fact that the people making these Laws don’t see this as ironic at all is mind-boggling.

SOPA and PIPA must be stopped becuase, in reality, there is no problem. iTunes and Amazon have shown, beyond a doubt, that when people are afforded an easy way to pay for content (which they can use as they want) they will. The pirates will continue to pirate no matter what draconian measures the MPAA and RIAA purchase from Congress – most poeople will be happy to pay for a decent experience for the content they want. It has always been that way, and the sooner people demand this from content providers the better off we’ll be.

If you want to read up on SOPA and PIPA I recommend this excellent post from CNet. Then, write your representives and tell them this is a horrible idea.

I also recommend this wonderful piece “How Copyright Industries Con Congress” to find out where the bogus numbers used to promote SOPA actually come from.

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Pleasantly Disrupted

Posted on December 19, 2011 | Leave a comment
I remember watching the initial iPad announcement and thinking, “Well, it’s kinda cool, but underwhelming.” It didn’t have a camera, and it really looked like nothing more than a big iPod Touch. As I already had an iPhone, I saw no need for “another device.” Then my neighbor got one to be his “take along computer” for his handyman business and let me play with it. I was shocked at how much I enjoyed using it. Manipulating the screen through touch was an emotional experience, and the experience of using the iPad felt nothing like using my iPhone. I was hooked.

Several months later, as we were wrestling with getting a device for my son so he could read the Bible and his books for school, we knew the iPad was what he needed (he’s significantly visually impaired). I generally kept my hands off, but I borrowed it from time to time to see how I would use an iPad in my pastoral work. Before the year was up, I knew this was a device I wanted to have. I saved up my Christmas and Birthday money, added some from my ministry reimbursements, and stood out in line last March to be among the first to get an iPad 2. It’s changed the way I do computing.

Initially I categorized my iPad as “another device.” It was useful, but for the majority of my takes I still opened up my MacBook and did my “serious” work. I continued to write my sermons in GoogleDocs, my video editing in Final Cut Express and iMovie, my blogging from the web-interface, and my presentations in Keynote’s desktop incarnation. I used my iPad for editing existing documents, quick references, and e-mail – “light” tasks that I could do quickly and the move on to other things.

Over the months, however, I noticed a change my my mental categories. More and more I found myself packing up my iPad when I went “out and about” to work, even when I was doing “serious” tasks. This shift was aided, no doubt, by my acquisition of an inexpensive keyboard and apps like Blogsy (the best blogging tool I have ever used). The real motivation for this shift, however, was the emotional attachment I have to the iPad. When I am using it, even with the keyboard, I have a sense of being more connected to the task on which I’m working. I used to say I loved the iPad because when I used it the wall between myself, and anyone with whom I happened to be collaborating, was removed. Three quarters of a year into my life as an iPad user, however, has revealed to me how using the iPad also removes the wall of separation between me and the content I create. I now see my iPad as my computer, and my MacBook as “another device.” The MacBook is a necessary device for storage, and for large projects and presentations, but it’s what I go to when I simply can’t use my iPad.

It was an unexpected transition, and this disruptive tool isn’t even two years old. I’m almost giddy as the thought of what’s coming next.

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From the Garden to the City: Imagination

Posted on September 13, 2011 | Leave a comment

Note: If you’re interested in checking out From the Garden to the City before you buy the book – you can help unlock chapters by clicking here.

When the assignments came out for this blog tour I have to confess that I saw my name next to “imagination” and did a little jig. As you can see from this blog post I wrote two years ago, imagination is where my heart, mind, and soul dwell. I realize a tendency towards imaginative play may put me in the minority as an adult (it certainly gets me into trouble from time to time). As John puts it so well in chapter 2,

It’s commonly held that adults have lot the propensity for imaginative play. While kids have the ability to look past the world as it is and see the world as it could be, adults are only able to see the real world.

On the other hand, John asserts that this propensity for imaginative play is awakened even for adults through the presence of our tools. If a person looks at a tool and embraces it, they have done so because they imagined it’s usefulness to shape the world around them. Equally true, however, is the imagination needed to see a tool and reject it. After all, even a rejection of a tool is done by seeing how it might impact our interactions with the world. Perhaps the greatest example we can see of this today is with Twitter. Many have used their imagination to see how twitter can be useful for spreading short bits of information. Others, however, imagine what life would be like with this tool and reject it. Both take imagination, and it’s to John’s credit that he’s pointed this out to his readers.

The bulk of this chapter, is spent on exploring the impact a tool has on us when we take it up and actually use it. When we do so, John asserts that we see three separate narratives in play:

  1. The story of how we human-beings shape this world through the use of tools
  2. The story of how our tools end up shaping us
  3. The story of our our shaping, and being shaped, finds it’s way into our souls

Rather than write an abstract on each of these narratives, I thought I’d write about how I’ve seen these stories playing out in my own pastoral ministry. Writing about a narrative with a narrative makes sense to me.

Story 1 – Reshaping the environment

As I mentioned above, I put a strong emphasis on imagination in my life. I enjoy playing with a new “toy” – be it a book, device, web-technology, or anything else that comes my way. As I explore the aspects of each new toy, I imagine how the tool can be used to help me in my various callings – pastor, teacher, husband, and father (just to name a few). As I’ve grown up post television, my imagination tends to gravitate towards visual and narrative outlets rather than analytical and spoken. In other words, in my first story my imagination is already spiraling out from the way I’ve been transformed by the other two narratives!

To help fulfill my calling as pastor and teacher, the congregation I pastor has implemented various new(ish) communications technologies to maintain a connection with one another. Facebook, texting, and e-mail are now primary means of communication. In worship, I put my visual affinity to work though use of a projector – “painting” my sermon with images as I go through. This means that every point that might be made with a bullet, has an image placed on the screen instead. The combination of these two tracks has allowed the congregation to communicate better (not very well, as of yet, but better) than it had in many years. Information is passed on, and the use of visual metaphors in a sermon ties in well with a congregation which has already had it’s minds re-wired by TV and other visual media.

Story 2 – Being reshaped

The use of these various communications technologies has had an impact on the way the members are connected with one another.

First, it’s almost turned the church office into an unnecessary appendage. In the congregation’s previous communications model, the office was the clearing house for all information. Now that the communications style is more distributed, however, the office has almost become a residual appendage. The phone is largely silent, and the “relay” function the office used to serve as is now limited to activating the prayer chain and updating the web-site. The office isn’t even needed to update the congregational calendar anymore, as we update it with our events the moment we make a decision to hold them.

Second, the combination of visual stimulus in our teaching and the persistent stream of small blocks of information has accelerated the sense of frustration many have with the way that events are managed in the congregation. As a new wave of disciples, who are used to visual and rapid-fire communication, have come into the fellowship many of the long-standing ministries of the church have not been able to offer a compelling reason to participate. Two long-standing Sunday school classes have folded due to this inability to draw in new participants, and our venerable women’s missionary society has suffered a similar fate. Another tradition, the Sunday School Opening, has likewise failed to draw people in – despite efforts to make it more dynamic. “This is the way we do things” is no longer enough to compel people to participate – people are encountering a faster-paced and more dynamic way of “doing things” within the congregation.

Story 3 – Into our souls

The transformations illustrated above, however, beg the question, “Is rapid-fire and dynamic communication something which will inevitably lead to a good outcome?” The answer is, of course, no. For example, Twitter has helped people stand up to oppressive regimes around the world – but it was also used to help the recent London riots avoid efforts to contain the violence. Rapid-fire and dynamic communication is transforming us, but how can we make room for the Holy Spirit to shepherd that transformation into something which accentuates our presence as God’s image in this world? In answer to this question, our congregation has turned to yet another venerable tradition which was on the brink of extinction – the prayer meeting.

Prayer meetings at our church, like many churches around the world, used to consist of going around a circle sharing prayer requests, perhaps doing a short Bible study, and then going around the circle allowing people to pray “as they feel led.” It was meaningful for some, but many more (including myself, a confessed ADD-addled geek) chaffed under this format – it was neither rapid-fire nor dynamic. We needed to create a sense of progression, which allowed for people to have time to digest smaller bit of ideas, while making them feel the meeting was moving. To achieve this, we turned to the liturgical and contemplative traditions. The liturgical tradition creates a sense that the prayer meeting is following a deliberate trajectory. We center-down, confess our sins, pray for our town and our congregation, meditate on Scripture (via a community lectio divina), and then share our own prayer concerns. The trajectory creates the type of movement people crave (in a format people are familiar with by transitioning the movement and giving instructions via the projector). Hand in hand with this sense of movement, the contemplative tradition allows us to appeal to the rapid-fire existence in which we live. Contemplative prayers tend to rely less on the verbosity of our words, and more on the power of the Spirit to communicate through a profound lack of speech (or even silence).

We approximate this idea by holding to a common discipline as we pray out loud. As we pray for ourselves, our neighbors, our church, and others we will often lead with the invitation, “As you pray, please pray as you are lead but limit yourself to 1 sentence at a time (with minimal semi-colons).” Other times, we will even limit prayers to a single word! This brings, into moments that are largely filled with silence, a form of the “rapid fire” communication to which we have become accustomed. Most of the prayers people utter are probably no longer than what you can put in a Tweet! We do, however, make room for compulsive semi-colon users. At a prayer meeting several months ago one part of our movement went for nearly 45 minutes – and people couldn’t believe it because they’d been able to actually hear the bulk of the prayers which were offered.

Conclusion

I hope, in the telling of these three narratives, I’ve communicated something faithful to John’s intent. Our church reached out and changed our environment, saw that we were being transformed by the very tools we used, and then moved to direct that inevitable transformation back towards the God who created our desire to use tools in the first place. Have we been successful? I don’t know, you’d have to ask me that question again in a few years to even hazard a guess. I do hope, however, that we’ve moved wisely. All transformations are dangerous endeavors and fraught with spiritual potholes. We’ve tried to keep our eyes on Jesus, who calls us to follow him.

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From the Garden to the City – Perspective

Posted on September 6, 2011 | 5 Comments

Note: Click here to follow the rest of the blog tour on this chapter.

John opens up chapter 1 by dealing with a truth that most of us fail to realize – we are all heavy technology users. HE illustrates his own discovery of this truth through a story of his time as a youth pastor. He was at a Bible Church, and so needed to (rightly) make sure the students were fluent in the Bible. What he discovered, however, was that his students weren’t bringing Bibles with them to the group. In response, he switched to projecting the Scripture on a screen – with highlights and such to make the text more accessible. To John’s chagrin, he found that once the Scripture was projected on the screen even the students who brought their Bibles with them to group stopped opening them. Instead, they would listen, and read, along with the rest of the group. John felt like a failure, almost like he had reduced the importance of the Bible for his students. I have to confess, as I read his account I was cheering that his students had been enabled to read the Bible in a way that more closely approximated the way the Scripture was originally meant to be experienced – audibly and communally. He himself discovered this as it began to dawn on him that the possibility of a owning personal Bible has only been real for a few decades, and the possibility of a family Bible only came into existence in the wake of the Gutenberg press several centuries ago. The truth is, for over a thousand years the way Christians experienced the Bible was in community, and with their ears as it was read among the faithful. As much as we might want to bemoan how projecting the word of God on a screen led students to open their personal Bibles less, we need to accept that technology (cheap printing and binding) had changed the way we experienced the Bible long before digital projection came about. In fact, it would be my contention the shift towards the communal experience afforded by a projector have some benefits in the way we read Scripture together. John puts it well, “By transitioning from print to projector, we had moved forward technologically and yet backward culturally.” This summation fits my ancient-future bent well – my goal in utilizing technology in Christian ministry is always to tie us back into the centuries old story of the Body of Christ.

Why, however, had John failed to see the technologies used in our “ordinary” experience of God’s word? To explain this he leans on Neil Postman, Arthur C. Clarke, and Douglas Adams – essentially, he had a different “myth” surrounding technological innovation. The “myth” is what each successive generation of people sees as “normal.” As I see it, the “myth” of technology are the blind spots we inherit simply by being born in a given time. John picks up a technological interpretation from Douglas Adams which claims that any technology already in existence when we are born is automatically accepted as “normal.” For John, in his youth pastor example, the technology that was so “normal” that it had ceased to be perceived as technology at all was the printed page. Adams further continues his technological interpretation by claiming that any technology that is developed in the period from birth to the time we are thirty (never trust anyone over thirty) is viewed as exciting. Again, in John’s example, the “exciting” technology was the digital projector. Finally Adam’s claimed that anything invented after we turned thirty is perceived as begin against the natural order of things. John’s earlier example can’t speak to this, but as I read this I couldn’t help but reflect on my own annoyance at the push towards 3D everything in popular culture!

John points out, correctly I believe, that the shift in the ways we perceive technology is something we need to be aware of – especially given how rapidly technology development is progressing in our current age. Christians cannot afford to either blindly embrace or obtusely reject new technological developments. Rather, technology is always a “yellow light.” It requires us to use caution, while embracing the possibility that a way will open to move forward into the change. I appreciate his perspective – technology is always transformative, and the technologies we fail to actually see are usually the ones which are transforming our perspectives the most.

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