welcome to multiple strands

a place to converse, virtually, on a variety of topics, bringing together multiple strands to encourage, question, challenge, ponder, and edify. A cord of three strands is not quickly torn apart. (Eccl. 4.12)

Thursday, February 20, 2014

Neil Postman. Informing Ourselves to Death

This is a fascinating article (excerpts below), delivered as a speech in 1990.  It is self-indicting since I am an “Information Architect”, and this is the world I live in on a daily basis, and promote professionally.  However, it is good to step back for a critical consideration of what it is I, and we, are doing to ourselves and our neighbor.

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The great English playwright and social philosopher George Bernard Shaw once remarked that all professions are conspiracies against the common folk.  He meant that those who belong to elite trades -physicians, lawyers, teachers, and scientists - protect their special status by creating vocabularies that are incomprehensible to the general public. …

I have heard many experts in computer technology speak about the advantages that computers will bring. With [few] exception ... I have never heard anyone speak seriously and comprehensively about the disadvantages of computer technology, which strikes me as odd, and makes me wonder if the profession is hiding something important. That is to say, what seems to be lacking among computer experts is a sense of technological modesty.  …

In the case of computer technology, there can be no disputing that the computer has increased the power of large-scale organizations like military establishments or airline companies or banks or tax collecting agencies. And it is equally clear that the computer is now indispensable to high-level researchers in physics and other natural sciences. But to what extent has computer technology been an advantage to the masses of people? …These people have had their private matters made more accessible to powerful institutions.  They are more easily tracked and controlled; they are subjected to more examinations, and are increasingly mystified by the decisions made about them. They are more often reduced to mere numerical objects. They are being buried by junk mail. They are easy targets for advertising agencies and political organizations. The schools teach their children to operate computerized systems instead of teaching things that are more valuable to children. In a word, almost nothing happens to the losers that they need, which is why they are losers.  …

Technology always has unforeseen consequences, and it is not always clear, at the beginning, who or what will win, and who or what will lose.  But what started out as a liberating stream has turned into a deluge of chaos.  If I may take my own country as an example, here is what we are faced with: In America, there are 260,000 billboards; 11,520 newspapers; 11,556 periodicals; 27,000 video outlets for renting tapes; 362 million TV sets; and over 400 million radios. There are 40,000 new book titles published every year (300,000 world-wide) and every day in America 41 million photographs are taken, and just for the record, over 60 billion pieces of advertising junk mail come into our mail boxes every year. Everything from telegraphy and photography in the 19th century to the silicon chip in the twentieth has amplified the din of information, until matters have reached such proportions today that for the average person, information no longer has any relation to the solution of problems.

The tie between information and action has been severed. Information is now a commodity that can be bought and sold, or used as a form of entertainment, or worn like a garment to enhance one's status. It comes indiscriminately, directed at no one in particular, disconnected from usefulness; we are glutted with information, drowning in information, have no control over it, don't know what to do with it.

And there are two reasons we do not know what to do with it. First, … we no longer have a coherent conception of ourselves, and our universe, and our relation to one another and our world. We no longer know, as the Middle Ages did, where we come from, and where we are going, or why. That is, we don't know what information is relevant, and what information is irrelevant to our lives. Second, we have directed all of our energies and intelligence to inventing machinery that does nothing but increase the supply of information.  As a consequence, our defenses against information glut have broken down; our information immune system is inoperable. We don't know how to filter it out; we don't know how to reduce it; we don't know to use it. …

Through the computer, the heralds say, we will make education better, religion better, politics better, our minds better - best of all, ourselves better. This is, of course, nonsense, and only the young or the ignorant or the foolish could believe it.  I said a moment ago that computers are not to blame for this. And that is true, at least in the sense that we do not blame an elephant for its huge appetite or a stone for being hard or a cloud for hiding the sun.  That is their nature, and we expect nothing different from them. But the computer has a nature, as well. True, it is only a machine but a machinedesigned to manipulate and generate information. That is what computers do, and therefore they have an agenda and an unmistakable message.

The message is that through more and more information, more conveniently packaged, more swiftly delivered, we will find solutions to our problems.  …

Here is what Henry David Thoreau told us: “All our inventions are but improved means to an unimproved end.”  Here is what Goethe told us: “One should, each day, try to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if possible, speak a few reasonable words.”  And here is what Socrates told us: “The unexamined life is not worth living.”  And here is what the prophet Micah told us: “What does the Lord require of thee but to do justly, and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God?”… There is no escaping ourselves.  The human dilemma is as it has always been, and we solve nothing fundamental by cloaking ourselves in technological glory.

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From the text of a speech delivered to the  German Informatics Society, 11 Oct 1990 in Stuttgart  https://w2.eff.org/Net_culture/Criticisms/informing_ourselves_to_death.paper

Dec 08 1990 interview on the same topic is available here:  http://vimeo.com/19897055

Philosophy is the Parent of Heresy (Tertullian)

For philosophy is the material of the world’s wisdom, the rash interpreter of the nature and the dispensation of God. Indeed heresies are themselves instigated by philosophy. ... The same subject-matter is discussed over and over again by heretics and philosophers; the same arguments are reconsidered. Whence comes evil? and why? Whence man? and how? Besides the question which Valentinus has very lately proposed—Whence comes God? No doubt from desire and abortion!.…  What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem?  What has the Academy to do with the Church?  What have heretics to do with Christians? Our instruction comes from the porch of Solomon, who had himself taught that the Lord should be sought in simplicity of heart. Away with all attempts to produce a Stoic, Platonic, and dialectic Christianity! We want no curious disputation after possessing Christ Jesus, no inquisition after receiving the gospel! When we believe, we desire no further belief. For this is our first article of faith, that there is nothing which we ought to believe besides.

Tertullian, De Praescriptione Haereticorum

Thursday, February 6, 2014

“Thus was fulfilled..."

Today people interpret John 16.2 as only a future event, rather than one which has been fulfilled.

“Thus was fulfilled that which was said by the Lord: The time will come, when whosoever killeth you shall think that he offereth service unto God. 
From that time on the holy martyrs endured punishments beyond all description, Satan earnestly endeavouring to elicit from their lips also some of the slanders."

The Martyrs of Lyons and Vienna
A New Eusebius: Documents Illustrating the History of the Church to AD 337
http://ref.ly/o/neweusebius/127820 via the Logos Bible Android app.

2 Cities, 2 Loves

Accordingly, two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly by the love of self, even to the contempt of God; the heavenly by the love of God, even to the contempt of self. The former, in a word, glories in itself, the latter in the Lord. For the one seeks glory from men; but the greatest glory of the other is God, the witness of conscience. The one lifts up its head in its own glory; the other says to its God, “Thou art my glory, and the lifter up of mine head.” In the one, the princes and the nations it subdues are ruled by the love of ruling; in the other, the princes and the subjects serve one another in love, the latter obeying, while the former take thought for all. The one delights in its own strength, represented in the persons of its rulers; the other says to its God, “I will love Thee, O Lord, my strength.” And therefore the wise men of the one city, living according to man, have sought for profit to their own bodies or souls, or both, and those who have known God “glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened; professing themselves to be wise,”—that is, glorying in their own wisdom, and being possessed by pride,—“they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things.” For they were either leaders or followers of the people in adoring images, “and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever.” But in the other city there is no human wisdom, but only godliness, which offers due worship to the true God, and looks for its reward in the society of the saints, of holy angels as well as holy men, “that God may be all in all.

- St. Augustine,  City of God,  Book 14, chapter 28   


This is the key idea of the entire book.  This quote begs self reflection:  To which city do I belong?  In which city is my citizenship?

Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Christian Worship (Tertullian)

Apology, 39.1–6

We are a society with a common religious feeling, unity of discipline, a  common bond of hope. We meet in gathering and congregation to approach God in prayer, massing our forces to surround him. This violence that we do him pleases God. We pray also for emperors, for their ministers and those in authority, for the security of the world, for  peace on earth, for postponement of the end. We meet to read the books of God—if anything in the nature of the times bids us look to the future or open our eyes to facts. In any case, with those holy words we feed our faith, we lift up our hope, we confirm our confidence; and no less we reinforce our teaching by inculcation of God’s precepts. There is, besides, exhortation in our gatherings, rebuke,  divine censure. For judgement is passed, and it carries great weight, as it must among men certain that God sees them; and it is a notable foretaste of judgement to come, if any man has so sinned as to be banished from all share in our prayer, our assembly, and all holy intercourse. Our presidents are elders of proved character, men who have reached this honour not for a price, but by character; for nothing that is God’s goes for a price.

Even if there is a chest of a sort, it is not made up of money paid in entrance-fees, as if religion were a matter of contract. Every man once a month brings some modest coin—or whenever he wishes, and only if he does wish, and if he can; for nobody is compelled; it is a voluntary  offering. You might call them the trust funds of piety. For they are not spent upon banquets nor drinking-parties nor thankless eating-houses; but to feed the poor and to bury them, for boys and girls who lack property and parents, and then for slaves grown old and ship-wrecked mariners; and any who may be in mines, islands or prisons, provided that it is for the sake of God’s school, become the pensioners of their confession. (Tr. T. R. Glover (Loeb Library), pp. 175–7.)

http://ref.ly/o/neweusebius/429241

Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Source of satisfaction

Daily we read the scriptures and experience dryness of soul until God grants food to satisfy the soul’s hunger.

- Origen