Ok, here are some thoughts that are not fully prepared. So, beware. I'm just throwing them out on the table, not even serving them on a plate. They're just going to land where they may, some might even land on the floor. It's a mess, but, pull up a chair and pick through it with me.
Last night I was watching " The Fifth Estate "an episode called " Strangers in Paradise." It is the story of lure, seduction and potential addiction of creating a second life online. Imagined lives in a virtual world, where users can make their dreams come true...what could possibly be wrong with that? For some, a lot. The fall out of fictional virtual life can have far reaching repercussions for their " real " lives.
Millions of people worldwide visit the Second Life site; 2.5 million are registered users. Through the online game they explore their fantasies by creating their own “avatar”—a user’s idealized persona that embodies the physique and personality of his or her dreams. Want to be better looking, have more money, live in a mansion, travel to exotic places, have the wedding and honeymoon you felt you never had? Second Life makes all that possible in the virtual world. It costs real money in the real world to play this game, but there may be another expense: the cost to players’ real lives. Some players would rather spend more time online in this virtual world than living their real lives.
Strangers in Paradise reveals how deeply someone can be seduced to live life in a virtual space, how they find themselves living life in a virtual world that seems more real to them than reality itself.
Then this morning, have coffee to start me up, I'm reading a review of John Freeman's, " The Tyranny of e-Mail." Jamie Smith says this...
E-mail is addictive, it has been shown, in the same way that slot machines are addictive. You press the send/receive button just as a gambler pulls down a slot machine lever, because you know that yo will receive a reward (mail/a payout) some of the time. The best way to increase the chance of a reward is to press "Send" a lot. In one study, participants manually checked their e-mail thirty to forty times an hour.
Most compelling, though, is Freeman's diagnosis of what this does to the way we inhabit the world:
Working at the speed of e-mail is like trying to gain a topographic understanding of our daily landscape from a speeding train--and the consequences for us as workers are profound. Interrupted every thirty seconds or so, our attention spans are fractured into a thousand tiny fragments. The mind is denied the experience of deep flow, when creative ideas flourish and complicated thinking occurs. We become task-oriented, tetchy, terrible at listening as we try to keep up with the computer. The e-mail inbox turns our mental to-do list into a palimpsest--there's always something new and even more urgent reasing what we originally thought was the day's priority.
Then I thought would take a quick peek at some Facebook statistics...
General Growth
More than 300 million active users
50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day
The fastest growing demographic is those 35 years old and older
User Engagement
Average user has 130 friends on the site
More than 8 billion minutes are spent on Facebook each day (worldwide)
More than 45 million status updates each day
More than 10 million users become fans of Pages each day
Mobile
There are more than 65 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices.
People that use Facebook on their mobile devices are almost 50% more active on Facebook than non-mobile users.
There are more than 180 mobile operators in 60 countries working to deploy and promote Facebook mobile products
And lastly I come to the article by Doug Estes on the Out of Ur blog, called " In Defence of Virtual Church " around his book " SimChurch." In the post Doug says this...
Now watch the sleight-of-hand foisted on an unsuspecting audience. We hear and read the myth that the reason why virtual churches are not real is because they don’t have real community. Really? All this time I thought that church—and real, biblical community—had nothing to do with where a church meets. Isn’t church supposed to be about people in communion with God rather than the building? Does it really matter where the church meets? Does it really matter whether a church meets in a bar (‘pub’) in Portland, in a fancy stained-glass cathedral in Cambridge, under a banana tree in a jungle in Arusha, or in a synthetic space created on the internet? Can someone tell me why the cathedral (or the bar) has a privileged position for ‘real’ community over the internet (or the banana tree)? Since when does the location of a church determine the quality of its community? Is the enlightened church in America really still stuck on buildings? To me, this is enough to doom the myth but there is even something more problematic.
We are increasingly spending more and more time in a virtual culture. It's a world void of physical space, of bits and bytes, of fragmentaion and high speed. It can be a world of misinterpretation, of misunderstanding, of miscommunication. It can be a world where appearances, and personalities can be changed. It is world in which the definition of friendship and community is changing.
On the one hand I'm astonished by the connectivity in this virtual space, and on the other, I'm concerned that it is very one dimensional. It lacks the depth of living life in the real world. It is like trying to understand the topography of life staring out of the window of a high speed train. Much of life is seen in fragments, the art conversation is reduced to something far lifeless than the real thing. It's status updates, fragments.
I guess one of the things that concerns me the most is the loss in the art of conversation, especially in terms of faith. In a sense, I'm talking about evangelism, although I dislike the word because it has so much baggage attached to it. But, in the reality of our lives are we having more " on-line " conversations than face to face conversations. If this is the case, we should be concerned. I think much of the beauty of what it is to be human is lost in face-less conversations. A friendly smile, a tear, a joyful laughter, a pat on the back, the touch of a hand are all lost in face-less conversations. And in the virtual world conversations are fragmented, often it is more difficult to communicate effectively as attention spans seem to be shorter. All this to say is, we communicate far differently in the virtual world. Faith is far more tangible when conversations happen, and are lived out in the real world. We need to regain the art of conversation.
And is the Kingdom alternative for the church to be lived out in the virtual world? Now I know the church is much more than a building. But, in the reality of the Body of Christ, can it be lived out in a virtual space? I think the church can have an on-line presence, but, to call it " church " is a stretch of the imagination.
Anyways, give me some feedback... good or bad.
Or to take it one step further, is the afterlife to be lived out in the virtual world?
Not to stray to far off the topic but there is an intriguing concept made by Frank Tipler, author of the Physics of Immortality and the Physics of Christianity, called the Omega Point.
Physics is beyond me but the Omega Point is described as a supreme point where the universe is evolving,developing, and being drawn towards a supreme point of complexity and consciousness which, as Frank Tipler states, will take the form of an "all knowing" computer intelligence. This omniscience, omnipotent computer with nearly infinite computing power would bring everyone back to life in a virtual world. In this virtual world everything would be perfect as one would create the perfect avatar representing yourself in Second Life. (I used to play Second Life before I had kids and a life.)
http://agod-sizedpuzzle.blogspot.com/2009/01/omega-point.html
Posted by: Eruesso | October 30, 2009 at 07:35 AM
Eruesso, I have a bit of a physics background from my university days. I still remember the physicists struggling with their unified field theory in which they thought they could extrapolate all the laws of physics backwards to this infinite point of origin. It seems the closer they got to this point, the laws seem to unravel and fall apart.But I love Teilhard de Chardin's idea of the omega point. The guy had an incredible imagination. Sadly, I think we need to recover such imagination, especially as this viritual culture becomes more dominant. How do we as people of faith speak into that culture with relevant metaphors, that capture imaginations. Anyways, brother, thanks adding to the conversation here. And, hey, you've already had a second life. It couldn't have been that good, you're back with us (LOL).
Posted by: ron cole | October 30, 2009 at 08:19 AM
Perhaps a new translation of John 1:14 could read "The Word became flesh and blood and moved out of textual abstraction and into our living proximity." While I'm certainly not a Luddite, I think we have to be wise about both the strengths and limitations of on-line communication. I fear the more plugged in we are, frequently, the more isolated we feel.
Posted by: Randy Hein | October 30, 2009 at 09:59 AM
In my journeying, I first started finding people whose thoughts resonated with mine online. My blogroll grows as I 'connect' with people I have never seen or spoken with face to face. Admittedly, this connection is limited, but it demonstrates to me that there are others in this world who share some of my thoughts. And it's a lot easier to find someone who shares your thoughts through a Google search than by walking the streets.
However, my heart needed more than the ethereal friendship offered online. I needed to be able to see into your soul, not just read your words. So, face to face is still where it is at. And I'm so glad you and I can connect regularly over a cuppa something and be more than just cyber friends.
Posted by: Al | October 30, 2009 at 10:08 AM