To my amazement and relief, our Wednesday night study was at least as full as the one before, and the discussion was lively. What was the difference? Everyone, except one person who ordered the book themselves, had bought the book electronically. That includes myself. For the first time ever, I am teaching a book study from an electronic device.

The convenience for me as a teacher is notable. I can highlight passages with a touch, and enter notes on the highlighted passage with equal ease. I can bookmark pages I want to return to with a flick of the finger. I can swap from the book we are studying to the Bible with ease. In the iPad version of the book, the author has videos embedded at the beginning of some of the chapters explaining his thoughts. That sort of thing astounds me. Imagine if you had a copy of Augustine’s “Confessions” wherein Augustine himself gave you a little intro to a few of the chapters. Mind-blowing, isn’t it?

This summer, if God wills, I will be heading to Tanzania to teach a pastor’s conference. Is it possible that my little e-reader is the only “book” I will need to bring? If I have it, I can bring an entire library without over-stuffing my suitcase. The potential there is incredible, when you think of it.

I suspect that we will begin to see more and more e-readers instead of thick Study Bibles on Sunday mornings. The only drawback to this that I have found is that it is sometimes easier to thumb through pages than it is to sort through a e-reader’s Bible directory. In book studies, it is difficult for us all to get on the “same page” when I single out a quote because the font size and read that you choose will cause the “page number” to vary. (In the future, will we still call them “page numbers”?)

I believe that this trend of using e-readers instead of books is only going to grow. Does this help the church? Yes, I believe that it does. It makes it easy to access more good literature, it will make books cheaper to own, and if book “sharing” becomes more common, that will make it even better. Also, imagine giving an e-reader to a pastor overseas. You could literally ship him an entire theological library in one device. The money you spend on the device will be far cheaper than the cost of shipping a physical library. Most of the classic works are either free or only cost a dollar.

My advice at this point is to rejoice that we have such technology, and that we should begin thinking carefully about how we as a church might take full advantage of it.

Both bills share a common goal: They are attempts to fight online piracy. If passed, they would give the U.S. government incredible power when it comes to dealing with Web sites that are suspected of hosting, trafficking, and otherwise dealing in illegally copied movies, music, books, software, etc. Proponents say that SOPA/PIPA represent necessary steps to combat piracy and protect content creators, such as movie studios and publishers, from losing vast amounts of revenue. One of SOPA’s primary sponsors, Representative Lamar Smith (R., Texas), wrote a National Review Online piece defending SOPA:

The Stop Online Piracy Act is a constitutional bill that protects free speech and America’s intellectual property. The First Amendment is not an excuse for illegal activity. Simply because the illegal activity occurs online does not mean that it is protected speech. Like online piracy, child pornography is a billion-dollar business operated online. It is also illegal. That’s why law enforcement officials are authorized to block access to child-porn sites.

Similarly, this bill authorizes the attorney general to seek an injunction against a foreign website that is dedicated to illegal and infringing activity. The attorney general must go to a federal judge and lay out the case against the site. If the judge agrees, a court order will be issued that authorizes the Justice Department to request that the site be blocked.

Standing alongside Smith are a host of companies that include everything from the Motion Picture Association of America, the Recording Industry Association of America, and Time Warner to L’Oreal, True Religion Brand Jeans, and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

However, critics of SOPA/PIPA say that the bills will do little to stop online piracy. Rather, SOPA/PIPA may weaken the Internet and make it less secure and present significant hurdles to free speech. The White House has discussed the bills in terms best described as “measured” and certainly far from enthusiastic. But perhaps the biggest knock against SOPA/PIPA is the many technology and Internet-related firms of note who have spoken out against the bills, including Google, Yahoo!, Facebook, and Twitter. Google’s Sergey Brin and Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, along with a host of other tech luminaries, spoke out against SOPA/PIPA, saying the bills would “[g]ive the U.S. Government the power to censor the web using techniques similar to those used by China, Malaysia and Iran,” among other things.

But criticism of SOPA/PIPA hasn’t been limited to only their potential ramifications. Criticism has also been leveled at the method with which the bills have made their way through Congress. For example, during the House Judiciary Committee meeting on November 16 concerning SOPA, committee members were criticized for largely lacking the technical expertise to adequately discuss even basic Internet concepts. Critics also argued that the meeting was little more than a sounding board for lobbyists supporting SOPA, with only one dissenting opinion — that of Google lawyer Katherine Oyama — allowed to make their case.

But criticism of SOPA/PIPA hasn’t been limited to editorials and blogs: It’s taken on an almost grassroots approach. When it was revealed that domain name registrar Go Daddy supported SOPA, a backlash started brewing on sites like Reddit. A boycott was subsequently announced and individuals were encouraged to move their domains away from Go Daddy on December 29. Stung by the outpouring of criticism, Go Daddy dropped their support for SOPA. And Reddit users launched “Operation Pull Ryan,” in which they targeted Rep. Paul Ryan for his support of SOPA and promised to support one of his rivals unless he promised to vote against the bill. On January 9, Ryan said he would not support SOPA, saying that “it creates the precedent and possibility for undue regulation, censorship and legal abuse.”

Which brings us to today’s black-out, the most visible criticism of SOPA/PIPA to date. And so far, such criticism seems to be working, and even seems to be picking up steam. Following the White House’s lukewarm statements regarding SOPA/PIPA, House majority leader Eric Cantor announced that he was shelving SOPA for the time being, thus leaving PIPA as the primary focus for protest efforts.

So what does all of this mean for Christians? On the one hand, you have online piracy and content theft that robs legitimate content creators of compensation that is rightfully theirs (though some have argued that the financial impact of online piracy has been overstated). Clearly, we should want justice for those Internet-based charlatans who see undue profits from the work of others. On the other hand, we have efforts to implement justice that are, to say the least, questionable both in terms of their efficacy and their legality. Justice should always be our goal, but as the SOPA/PIPA controversy has revealed, justice is often far more complicated than we think — especially in as complicated a setting as the online sphere — and simplistic approaches are never the solution. Indeed, such solutions may turn out to be far worse than the problems.

And so I just asked myself, “What were my top 5 favorite memes of 2011?” and I was able to come up with my own list pretty quickly. Then I thought, “What do all these memes have in common?” And frankly, what they all had in common was that I remembered them.

This list (which is pretty close to my original) represents the memes of 2011 that we all most likely remember, which is kind of the whole point. Memes are not necessarily memes because of some particular quality or set of qualities; memes are memes because whatever qualities they may or may not have, they enter public consciousness in a pervasive, culture-affecting way. Some Internet fads pass into meme because they’re funny, some because they’re moving, some because they’re fun to take part in, some because they’re particularly meaningful. But all of them affected our lives in a way that we remember.

So here you go. The top 5 memes of 2011.

***

#5 The many phrases of Charlie Sheen.

It was hard to decide on #5. This was the point where things start to get fuzzy, where things like Steve Buscemi, Pop-Tart cats, and “first world problems” start to feel about the same. But when I searched my heart, the answer came to me in perfect clarity: It’s all that weird stuff Charlie Sheen said.

Sheen had a phenomenal year of being a jerk. Phrases like “tiger blood,” “Adonis DNA,” and “winning!” (the most popular) from his ludicrous interviews quickly became priceless bits of sleazy nonsense, all too good to not be things we procured for our own ends. Through Twitter hashtags, autotuned YouTube vids, and just plain personal over-quoting, we made sure our lives were tinged with the words of Charlie Sheen for quite a while. We will always remember “winning!” every time we see a rerun of Two and a Half Men.

#4 Tebowing

Tim Tebow is our famous Christian of the moment. I like the guy a lot; he’s turning out to be a great example of integrity and sincerity in the midst of the usual cesspool of professional athletes. But in late 2011, his celebratory touchdown position of taking one knee in thankful payer was something fans and detractors began lampooning to no end. In this act of “Tebowing,” people took pics of themselves in the pose all over the place, submitting them to sites for public perusal.

Though Tebowing is basically a spin-off of the year’s earlier internet hit “planking” and a latecomer to the 2011 list, it has quickly made itself worthy of the Top 5, mainly because of Tebow himself. He’s everywhere these days, the current centerpiece for public dialogue on religion and personal sincerity. And whenever we think of Tebow, we will always think of “Tebowing.”

#3 Occupy Wall Street’s Pepper Spraying Policeman

I wanted to avoid this one, but it just kept popping up for me. This is probably the only one that I’ve included mostly due to its poignancy.

The Occupy Wall Street movement was one of the major newsmakers of 2011, bringing conversation and contention to light between all sorts of people. One of the more controversial moments of the movement involved a police force dressed in riot gear sent to disperse a group of students on the UC Davis campus. The event ended with a policeman nonchalantly spraying a can of pepper spray on a seated line of college students, with the action invoking outrage from a variety of commentators and media outlets.

In response, images of the pepper spraying policeman began to be superimposed on countless photos in silly and serious ways, highlighting what many considered to be the senselessness of the event. Here was a meme that was funny in effect, but funny with a serious point. We will always remember the images the pepper spraying policeman when we think about Occupy Wall Street.

#2 Planking

Planking was the most egalitarian of this year’s memes. Any man, woman, or child can lie face down on something and have someone take their picture. There is no learning curve or set of higher aptitudes needed to take part in planking (and also no potential issues of conscience to sort through like in Tebowing).

The competition of planking was in creativity of location and setup. People planked at weddings, in the middle of rush hour, at the Grand Canyon, on top of telephone poles, alone, and in groups. They submitted their pics to sites across the Web, hoping a shot of their horizontalizations would rise to the top of the list and be seen by someone somewhere. Needless to say, things tended toward further and further extremes in people’s hopes of garnering attention, sometimes with sad results when things went awry.

We will always remember planking, mostly because it’s way too ridiculous to forget.

#1 Rebecca Black “Friday”

No contest here. Rebecca Black’s terrible music video for a terrible song was this year’s top meme. It was awkward, catchy, viral, quotable, and malleable enough to be lampoon-able again and again. And since it was tied to a day of the week, it kept coming up over and over and over and over in offices and schools around the world. We sang it, got tired of singing it, and then sang it again. A meme that can’t die is a true meme indeed.

“Friday” is now an archetype — the rare kind of meme we compare other memes to (i.e., “it’s not as funny as Rebecca Black”). “Friday” is the 2011 meme that we can now add to the class of high memes like “Double Rainbow,” “Charlie bit my finger,” and “LOLcats.” It’s a modern meme classic, and the meme of 2011. We will never forget Rebecca Black because she’s, well, Rebecca Black. 

***

The meme stream of 2011 contained a number of strange, fascinating bits of pop culture. These bits tell us a number of things: We still don’t like putting up with jerks (at least not the really big ones), we’re looking for sincerity and not quite sure what to do when we find it, and we all want to be part of something meaningful and world changing. We also want to be part of a community and feel included even if it’s because of something silly, and, as always, we can’t live without the things we all “love to hate.”

Memes always bring out interesting facets of our culture, and it definitely was an interesting year. It leaves me curious to see what the ‘net holds for us in 2012. And maybe next year will be graph-able.

More changes to our beloved Facebook are being forced upon us by the trampling hordes of social media developers, the programmers who seek to uncaringly pillage our consistencies and set fire to our comforts. This time they call it “Timeline.”

If you haven’t checked out Timeline, you should. This update is big — perhaps the biggest one to date — mainly because of what it seems to signify.

Timeline represents a major shift in Facebook’s philosophy of what it is supposed to be and do. It will be moving our profiles away from a simple platform for share-as-you-go posting to a more ambitious attempt at encapsulating our entire lives from birth to now on a Web page. Instead of being a marketplace for haphazard interpersonal interaction, Facebook wants to be an intensive personal scrapbook for every human being, replete with all life events chronicled in multiple forms of media from birth to now.

When you turn it on, the obvious becomes obvious: Timeline is an actual timeline for each person — just like the timelines we studied and drew in eighth grade history class. It’s a line marked in years with dots pertaining to each of my inputs to the Facebook grid. If I already have school and birthday information entered, Facebook automatically adds it. If I keep scrolling down, Facebook is basically begging me to upload my baby pic. From recent new feeds, my friends are already beginning to key in their special extra “life events” as well.

This is pretty big. Thus far we’ve crafted our digital self-representations out of random Likes and Pages, school and work info, a few boxes for our own text, and a wall for posting our “whatevers.” But now we are being asked to create a history lesson of ourselves, a full presentation of “where we’ve been to where we are now.” The emphasis seems to be shifting from interaction with others through an online profile to an online profile through which we can potentially interact with others. That’s a pretty big shift.

I won’t say here whether I think this shift is good or bad or neutral, but I will say this: It creeps me out a bit. Facebook is emphasizing birth to now (reference the promo video at the Timeline link above), with the arrow happily continuing forward. But when you attach a timeline to a human being, that line will eventually end. There’s really no way to avoid that realization.

And to force us all to face life as beginning/middle/end every time we check our profile seems a tad morbid to me. I can’t imagine discussions of mortality didn’t come up during Timeline programmer meetings. But though it’s kind of creepy, maybe it’s kind of helpful.

Is Timeline Facebook’s attempt at encouraging us to cherish our lives, to look beyond the potential pettiness inherent in social media? Is Facebook starting to categorize our updates and life events as “important” and “not as important” to try to teach us that this is actually, in fact, how life really works? Is the movement to these points on lines an attempt to “teach us to number our days” and to “[redeem] the time”? A bit over the top, I know, but perhaps pillaging programmers can tap into the wisdom of the ages. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt.

Maybe Timeline is Facebook’s conscious attempt at making us face life as life: something beautiful and brief we are called to fill with as many meaningful dots as we can. That’s almost an anti-social media form of social media.

[C]assette devotees say that tapes are underappreciated. They see cassettes following in the shadows of their analog brethren, vinyl records, which are currently enjoying a renaissance.

[...]

Most music lovers don’t miss the hiss, the background noise caused when the tape passes over the playback head. “Listening to a cassette for quality is like driving a Smart Car in the Indy 500,” says Bob Lefsetz, author of a music newsletter and blog, who says the cassette is a poor music medium.

The hiss is part of the magic for cassette lovers. “Tape hiss has the same amount of charm as a little crackle when listening to a record has,” says Mr. Thordarson. “It makes it seem more real.”

Then there’s the smell. “I want them fresh, sealed in the package,” says André Sirois, 31, who hunts for unopened tapes to add to his collection. “I know one day I’ll rip them open and smell that sweet plasticy smell, and I’m going to enjoy how I used to enjoy music, as an old dude.”

I was recently cleaning out the basement when I came across a box of old cassettes, most of them mixtapes that I’d either made for playing in the car or received from various Internet acquaintances as part of the many mixtape swaps I once participated in. There were also several old Christian alternative titles in there — e.g., The Prayer Chain’s Whirlpool EP, Under Midnight’s self-titled debut, My Little Dog China’s The Velvis Carnival — that I listened to religiously (npi) in high school.

And finally, there was the battered old black cassette of Cure songs that my friend Leah gave me as a birthday gift, a formative event in my development as both a music fan and an angst-ridden teenager. Leah was one of the coolest kids I knew in high school — and in our senior year, she was in a car accident and died just a few weeks before her 18th birthday, an event that haunted me long after I graduated. I’d forgotten about that cassette, but upon seeing it again, I realized just how important it had been over the years as a reminder of a very good friend. I haven’t listened to it in almost two decades now, and it’s in such bad shape that I’ll probably never listen to it again for fear of ruining it, but I can never throw it away: too many memories are wrapped around its spools.

Discovering that cache of cassettes was an instant nostalgia rush, but it had nothing to do with their smell. Cassettes, like vinyl, do indeed have a sensorily affecting aspect to them. Like most folks these days, I don’t really miss cassettes themselves — CDs sound better and don’t wear out so easily, and digital formats like MP3s are much more convenient — but I do miss both the physicality and the intentionality that cassettes lent to music. And there was no better example of these aspects than the mixtape process.

Creating a mixtape was an editorial process: You were forced to consider the limitations of the cassette’s sides when compiling your playlist so that you could fit in all of the songs you wanted to share with someone and in the right order. (For the record, I always used high-quality 90-minute Maxell tapes: nothing but the best if you were getting one of my mixes!) You had to carefully consider the recipient: you had no room for filler so you had to think about their tastes and requests. If the recipient was someone you had a crush on, this became even more important: every song on that mixtape had to leave them swooning over your taste, coolness, and thoughtfulness.

You then spent hours hunkered down in front of your stereo, focused on pressing the “Record” and “Pause” buttons at just the right times while, if necessary, fading the volume between songs to create perfect transitions. If you made a mistake, you had to rewind without going too far back lest you overwrote any of the previous song, and then try again — or you just threw away the cassette and started over from scratch. You had to listen to every minute of this process as you were creating your mix (high-speed dubbing was, let’s be honest, a cheat). And finally, you had to write down the song titles on those flimsy little sleeves that blank cassettes came with. (Disclosure: I made most of my tape covers on my dad’s Macintosh LC. They represented some of my first forays into graphic design… and they really sucked.) All in all, it was a task that, in all of its frustrating and painstaking glory, just can’t be duplicated in this day and age of iTunes playlists.

At the risk of sounding like a Luddite, I realized, as I was cracking open those plastic cases for the first time in at least a decade, how much I missed those things. I was reminded of how disembodied, disconnected, and disposable music can seem in this era of iTunes, MP3s, and “the cloud.” There are, of course, many benefits to these modern technologies, such as near-instant access to massive music libraries. However, I’m kidding myself if I think that I’m not giving up something valuable in its own right, something that can add another layer of meaning and context to my music. That old black cassette, with Leah’s ornate handwriting all over the cover, is a powerful anchor for the relationships and memories borne out of a shared love for music, an anchor that stands in spite of loss. The same holds true, to a lesser degree, for all of the mixtapes that I’ve recently uncovered.

Now, such an anchor is not necessarily essential to enjoying music and finding it rewarding: I certainly not suggesting that people who have never used cassettes have some sort of hurdle to appreciating music. But I do know that the tens of thousands of MP3s in my iTunes library have little that’s comparable to the intentionality, thoughtfulness, and time contained within old cassettes from friends now long gone.

Have you seen the new thermostat that’s taking the marketplace by storm? It’s called Nest.

Pretty nifty, eh? Nest is a start-up company whose founders hail from Apple. The thermostat’s ease of use and sleek aesthetic form an intricate and complex system, reminiscent of Apple product design (a recent Nest blog post title reads, “From iPod to thermostat.”).

I wouldn’t have guessed that a promo for a thermostat would spark creative thinking in me, but it did. Not only is the product itself appealing, I love the time-lapse story showing how Nest is used throughout the course of days. From a marketing standpoint, Nest is fantastic.

Nest is like the technological offspring of an iPod/thermostat union. And if iPod could fuse with a thermostat, what other products could benefit from an Apple-esque design upgrade? I appreciate the leap Nest takes from music player to thermostat. That leap inspires me to seek fresh ideas in my own field of communications. As I look at how Nest made this leap, I see two principles at play.

First, creativity grows when connections are made where once there were none. Nest founders could envision Apple design principles at work in something as simple as a thermostat. They took the design from one product field and applied it to another. Likewise, if I want fresh ideas, I don’t need to start from scratch. I can look at effective communications and powerful copy from other fields and launch from there.

Second, creativity builds when imaginative minds huddle together. Apple attracts creative people, and that environment is conducive to collaboration, dreaming, and trial and error. Writing is a solitary task, but I’ve found some of my best writing comes after a brainstorming session with other creative writers.

When these two creative principles are in play around me, there is also a buzz within me. That’s when I have an excitement for work and a willingness to take my own creative leaps. I’ve always sensed a deeper communion with God when I put my hands to the work that best uses the gifts He has given me. We are creative because we are made in the image of our Creator. It is the Creator of all who inspires the creative leaps we take, whether in thermostats or writing or lawn care or cooking.

Whatever your field, keep leaping.

With the death of Steve Jobs, Christians find themselves asking “Whyyyy???!!!” then “Why do I care so much?” then “Well why wouldn’t I care so much, he’s kind of a big deal?” then “Well isn’t everyone kind of a big deal in their own way?” and so on until it coalesces into a communal shame spiral that plays out on Twitter, Facebook, and around water coolers (they still make those, right?). This week, editor-in-chief Richard Clark and associate editors Jason Morehead and Erin Straza discuss the death of Steve Jobs, whether Apple products are implicitly better, and what benefits and dangers technology in general thrusts onto us as Christians.

Note: due to technical difficulties, there is no fancy intro music this episode. Sorry!

Further Reading:
Thank You, Steve
Podcast #84: Ben and Rich discuss their opinion of Steve Jobs’ desire to keep iPhone users “free from porn.”
Is Apple Making Us Discontent?

Every week, various Christ and Pop Culture writers delve deeper into recent articles and address some of the bigger issues in popular culture.

We love feedback! If you’d like to respond you can comment on the website, send an email to christandpopculture@gmail.com. We would love to respond to feedback on the show, so do it now!

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Jobs, as I wrote back in August, was a visonary in the truest sense of the word, a man who had an incredible impact on the way that we think about, and interact with, technology. And he did so, not simply by making the technology bigger and more powerful — though that occurred as well — but by making it simpler, more elegant, and more beautiful. My iPhone is a beautifully enginered device, and I’m thankful — truly — that I have something so beautiful, and yet so functional, in my possession.

I don’t pretend to be a tech pundit — I’m just some guy who has used and loved Apple products for nearly two decades — but this is what I think Jobs’ ultimate legacy will be: he helped us realize that the smartphones, MP3 players, and computers in our lives are not merely gadgets or trendy trinkets. Rather, they can be tools that have the potential to actually enrich and improve our lives, if we are able to harness them well. Geeks and nerds may have always thought this, but Jobs was able to communicate that idea to distinctly non-geek audiences (like my in-laws, who recently bought an iPad) and then empower them to make it a reality like noone else could.

Or, as Brett McCracken put it:

[Jobs] was a populist advocate for technology, bringing it out of the provinces of geekdom and making it more user-friendly, accessible, intuitive. In an era when technological progress sometimes felt overwhelming and gizmos and gadgets too complicated to bother with, Jobs and his Apple brand focused on simplicity, user-friendliness, and an attitude of “even you can understand this device!”

So thank you, Steve. Thanks for the beautiful devices, like my iPhone, that you played so crucial a role in developing. Thanks for the relentless and inspiring pursuit of excellence and elegance. Thanks for getting it, for understanding and communicating the human side of technology, that technology is no good unless it allows humans to develop and flourish. And thanks for making it possible for more people to do just that.

Thanks, and rest in peace.

This post was originally published at Jason Morehead’s personal web site, Opus.fm. 

For years now we have wondered if social networking was increasing our socializing or keeping us from it. I’m not sure if that answer will ever be determined. But I would say that social networking both helps and hinders me, just as most technology does. Striking a balance between using technology versus technology using you is tricky.

Toyota tackles this cosmic question of balance using the perfect dose of humor in its spot titled “Social Network” for its Venza.

The comparison between the daughter and parents carries the conflict of the message. The young woman is stationed behind her computer, at home, and “socializing alone.” The parents are outside, biking on rugged trails, with socializing with friends.

Viewers are led, by clever copy narration, to see that the daughter’s concern for her parents social health is unfounded. They are out, engaging people and life in direct face-to-face social interaction. The conclusion is that they are fulfilled (despite having only 19 Facebook Friends).

I am amused by the young woman’s assertion that she has “687 Friends; this is living.” Despite having hundreds of Facebook Friends, the unspoken question is whether this woman really is living.

And there’s the social networking rub. We can collect hundreds of online Friends, but we would likely only spend a free afternoon with a small number of them. (Probably a group of 19 people or less.)

Every time I see this spot, I am motivated to make plans with dear friends doing something outside, where I can laugh and talk and feel the sun on my back and know that I am truly living.

Go grab a box of tissues before you buffer this one.

Usually a video goes viral because its content is outrageous or humorous, either intentionally or unintentionally, and typically at someone’s unfortunate expense.  But every so often, a video makes its way through the group-share ringer because it’s incredibly moving or shockingly beautiful.

The woman in this video is hearing for the first time in her life thanks to an auditory implant.  Her husband recorded her reaction to the moment, and her response to the implant being activated is breathtaking.  The woman begins weeping – not at the first-heard sound of music, birds chirping, or the words of a loved one – she begins weeping at the sound of her own voice.  Weeping and laughing, and then weeping more at the sound of her own laughter.  It’s extremely difficult to watch this moment without joining in.

In our examinations of meme and modern culture, it’s easy for me to find the evidences of brokenness (an obsession with pointing these things out is itself an evidence of the break). But sometimes there are moments where we see past the jagged pieces to vestiges of a divine image and types of redemption – the places where we groan along with creation for the revealing of the sons of God.

We’re going to ignore the incessant YouTube commentators on this one: I’m not really interested in turning this moment into a debate over short-sighted and juvenile divisions between science and religion.  That sort of debate misses the point.  When I first viewed this video last week, it had 50,000 hits; yesterday it had 5 million, now going on 6.  Something about this moment resonates with us – we are moved by the deaf hearing because, even though we were blessed with the ability to hear from birth, most of us “get it”.

We know what it’s like to not have something “essential”, whether real or perceived; sitting in a room full of people feeling like everyone else has something we don’t have.  This feeling of being incomplete is common, and we can extrapolate that feeling of ache to those we imagine must be even more desperate.

But when the desperate are actually given that thing they’re missing?  That’s redemption.  That’s worth getting worked up over.  Many times our days drone on in an acceptance of what we assume (and are told) will never change.  This video is moving because we rejoice when the deaf hear their own voice — that kind of thing that doesn’t happen much.  And such an unprecedented a case of redemption resonates with the groaning in us, and with the hope that we someday will be made complete.

All that said, I hope this video makes your day a little brighter.  ”The night is almost gone, and the day is near.”

An Imperfect Message Framed by an Unloving Method, by Alan Noble
I am glad that Comfort works so hard to share the Gospel and confront the serious problem of abortion. I am confident that God will use them to accomplish His good work. That said, I also think that the 180 movie is poorly conceived and could very well be a hinderance to our witness, particularly in the area of abortion. In addition, I reject the notion that Christians are forbidden from criticizing (in love, naturally) fellow believers in their work.

To begin with, the content of the movie is rhetorically flawed. Take one example: Nazis. As Justin Taylor has discussed, the film’s evocation of Hitler and the Nazis is, at the very least, a bad rhetorical decision; I suspect that many viewers of 180 will tune out immediately after seeing Hitler.

However, there is a more fundamental problem: the movie works under a false concept of the human person and how we form beliefs. Comfort’s method of discussing abortion is to engage people on the street with a series of questions meant to reveal their prior moral commitment to the sanctity of life, and then to force them to admit that if they would preserve life in one situation, then they must logically preserve it in another; therefore, they should oppose abortion.

But this method assumes that our beliefs are essentially logically determined cognitive positions. In reality, our beliefs are shaped by our culture, biology, families, experience, and our reasoning. Attempts to argue someone to a Pro-Life position using socratic questions and abstract thought-experiments are misguided because they disembody the issue and the other person by focusing entirely on drawing the interviewee into a logical trap. Such arguments fail to acknowledge the complex way a low view of human life is intricately woven into our entire cultural system.

In Comfort’s case, the conversations are even more disembodied since the interview scenarios are so contrived. We don’t see raw documentary footage of serious dialogues about abortion between friends. Rather, the interviews typically involve Ray Comfort posing challenging questions to a stranger who has a camera and microphone awkwardly stuck in his or her face. Is it any wonder that some of these people “change” their beliefs?

Aside from the content, I am also concerned about the way the film as been marketed as a viral YouTube video. Comfort has been asking his followers to share and promote the video, even going so far as to urge them to “save lives” (or something to that effect) by using the 180 logo as their Facebook image. But we ought to ask whether or not this medium is really appropriate.

Is a 30-minute video posted on your Facebook page really a reasonable and effective way to publicly address abortion, probably the most controversial topic in our culture? Can a YouTube video accurately, thoughtfully, and fairly present the moral problems with abortion? I believe that their method borrows more from the secular advertising industry than the Great Commission, and that this mistake can lead to seriously uncharitable and counter-productive exchanges. For example, a few days after 180 was released, a number of Christians spammed the Planned Parenthood Facebook page with links to the movie. The administrators kept deleting the posts, but Christians continued to post them, encouraging each other to spam the page.

Of course this was done by what I assume was a small group of overzealous Christians who don’t represent the intentions of Comfort. But, my point is that the marketing strategy that they encouraged and the medium of their message naturally lend themselves to this kind of Internet warfare. Faux-documentaries do not encourage open discourse; they encourage partisan posturing. Viral marketing encourages “fans” to promote a product without restraint or discernment. Spamming a Facebook Page with a Pro-Life faux-documentary does not create a good impression of the kindness, reasonableness, or love of Christians.

In general, most Christian attempts to address abortion have focused on two strategies: make abortions illegal and/or convert people so that they oppose abortion from their hearts. The 180 movie uses both methods. Comfort seems to be trying to convert people in order to help win support for outlawing abortion. But I’d like to suggest that our task is much broader: we must make an effort to create a culture that promotes life at every level.

Instead of merely fighting for the sanctity of life in the extreme cases (euthanasia and abortion), we need to promote it in the more mundane, typical ways. We need to ask ourselves some difficult questions about our cultural habits and values and what we can do to effect them:

How do we celebrate pregnancy and childbirth in our communities, including those among the poor and unmarried?

How can we embody the sanctity of life and the beauty and goodness of children among those most likely to seek abortions?

How can we oppose the cultural view that poor children are insignificant and a burden to our society?

How can we challenge the individualism in our cultural practices that provides the philosophical foundation for abortion?

How can we provide for the hundreds of thousands of orphans that would be born if women stopped seeking abortions?

How can we alter the current economic and civic system so that single parents are able to care for their children?

What kinds of laws will reduce all abortions, not just legal ones?

The answers to these questions will give Christians a firm foundation to work against abortion, because  to answer these questions we must view our public witness as broad and complex, as opposed to confining it to politics or disembodied witnessing.

I am grateful for Ray Comfort’s work, but I hope that we might learn more charitable, effective, and loving methods of sharing the Gospel and opposing abortion.

Flawed But Helpful, by Brad Williams
I found out about Ray Comfort’s 180 video through the internet rumor pipeline. I am fairly familiar with Ray Comfort and The Way of the Master materials, so I made a mental note to check the video out when I got the chance. When the video went viral on the internet, I figured that I should take a look sooner rather than later.

I went into the video thinking that it would be an evangelistic video, and while it has evangelistic elements, that is not the main thrust of the production. The main purpose of the video is to serve as an apologetic against abortion, and in order to do that, Comfort compares abortion in America to the holocaust of World War II.

I admit that I was shocked by this video, and I am not easily shocked. First, I was shocked to find that Ray Comfort is Australian. How have I missed this? My next shock was that there are people out there who have no idea who Adolf Hitler is. I simply cannot understand this since Hitler and the Nazis come up in every single comment section on Yahoo per Godwin’s Law. After I recovered from those two initial shocks, I settled in to see where Comfort was going with his questions.

I admired a lot of what I saw in the video. My admiration centers mostly around Ray Comfort’s bravery and craftiness, and I mean crafty in a good way. It isn’t everyone who is willing to call someone a lying, fornication, blasphemous sinner to their face, and it is even rarer that a guy is crafty enough to get someone else to admit he is right. Ray Comfort is able to do both without getting punched. That is no easy feat.

As I watched this video of Ray Comfort doing what he does, it brought up an uncomfortable dilemma for me. What exactly am I supposed to do with this video? This led me to a greater question: What should I do about abortion? What is my responsibility? 180 demonstrates what Ray Comfort and Way of the Master do all the time, and I, for one, am glad for it. But what am I supposed to do?

I am a pro-life Christian. I support the local Crisis Pregnancy Center. I agree with Ray Comfort that abortion is a holocaust. I once begged a young girl who was pregnant with twins not to terminate the pregnancy. My wife and I, with tears, pled with her for her babies. We swore to her before Almighty God  that we would raise them as our own, and if that wasn’t agreeable, we said we would find a home for them. She moved away, and we soon got word that she had “lost” both babies. I grieve for those children, even as I write this, because I would have taken them as my own. I would have loved them and given them a home.

So yes, we may point out that Ray Comfort’s tendency to argue unsuspecting, ignorant people into an logical cul-de-sac is unfair. It may offend us that he uses Nazis and Hitler to drive his point home. But I will not blame one person for linking that video or another one like it. I know the feeling of helplessness that one feels in the face of an atrocity that has claimed 50 million lives already, and more go into the disposal every day that abortion is legal. Every day, another woman succumbs to the Satanic lie that children are an inconvenience or that death is preferable to poverty.

What else can I do? Go to jail for peaceful abortion clinic sit ins? Should our church make more propaganda videos? If I did, I certainly would not go over to Planned Parenthood’s website and spam it with a hundred links to my new video. I do not think that spamming propaganda will win hearts and influence people towards Christ’s gospel or a pro-life stance, as spam is universally condemned as a terrible sin.

Here’s what I am determined to do: propagate of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The reason that people murder children in the womb or grown-ups on the street  isn’t because they don’t know God’s Holy Law. No one needs Ray Comfort to tell them that murder is bad. The real problem is that people are dead in trespass and sin. The real problem is that people’s consciences are seared by sinfulness. People don’t need Jesus as a parachute. We need Jesus to raise us from the dead. We don’t need a little help. We need a Savior.

Preaching the gospel is not a cop-out, and it’s not an either/or proposition. It is both/and. If you believe that linking 180 is part of that resistance; link away.

Just kidding — about the apocalypse, not about the coffee.  Like the recent Netflix/Qwikster (I still gag a little bit when I say the Q-word) debacle, another web-based standard that we all heavily rely on is causing trouble for our well-established life patterns.  They are taking things away, giving us new things we don’t remember asking for, and generally wreaking havoc on our rituals and habits.  What should we make of all of this?

I still haven’t been able to go throught the tutorial stuff yet (have you?), but it appears that the new Facebook has incorporated some powerful changes that people may really like in the long run.  Facebook seems to be morphing further from simply a “Friends and Likes” format to an all-you-can-eat digital buffet that will allow you to connect up anything you want to your profile and share it with anyone you want. In an everything-at-your-fingertips iPad world, that’s not really a bad thing — it may even become a necessity.

Those who cry out in anguish “but simplicity!” have a point, but compare your first NES controller with your current XBox controller.  We’ll all be fine.  People have proven to be pretty good at adding to their prior technological prowess quickly, and we tend to like it in the end.  The same will prove true with “New Facebook”.

So why all the incessant complaining? More lessons in human nature, I guess. The “little quirks” of brokenness: pettiness, neediness, demanding-ness, complaining-ness. Along with snarkiness, these “little sins” mark much of our digital experience. As we have consistently seen, the ‘net has brought out our passive-aggressive selfishness, a false sense of “assertiveness” that we would never indulge in face to face, and a communal record of complaint that would make even Moses and the wandering Israelites sigh and shake their heads.

I include myself squarely in the middle of the offenders, with hands held high.  Taking away face to face interaction and offering an immediate outlet for venting my every frustration has affected my ability to empathize, which in turn has affected my view of loving others.  My all-time favorite xkcd comic illustrates perfectly this problem as I see it in myself.

Anyways… enjoy new Facebook. Let it wash over you, let it take hold. Stop complaining. There’s always next year.

Laval-Jeantet described her hybridization experience in an interview with a French newspaper:

I had the feeling of being extra-human… I was not in my usual body. I was hyper-powerful, hyper-sensitive, hyper-nervous and very diffident. The emotionalism of an herbivore. I could not sleep. I probably felt a bit like a horse.

May the Horse Live in Me raises yet again the age-old discussion of what, exactly, art is supposed to be and do. Several commenters on the Wired article called out Laval-Jeantet for engaging less in art and more in a publicity stunt, and for being provocative and shocking for their own sake. Certainly, Laval-Jeantet’s piece flies in the face of more traditional understandings of art — e.g., art ought to promote and convey a sense of meaning, purpose, and even beauty — and is the latest in a long string of works to do so.

However, I’m not so certain that we should be surprised by the existence of May the Horse Live in Me. Disturbed perhaps, due to the ethical concerns that it raises, but not necessarily surprised. Several years ago, I attended a L’Abri conference where the theme was modern society’s rapidly changing concept of what, exactly, distinguishes humanity. In various panels and workshops, we discussed the interesting challenges that recent scientific, medical, and engineering advances have presented to traditional notions of human uniqueness.

The traditional Christian belief that human beings are somehow unique and set apart from the rest of Creation (because we’ve been created in image of God) and have been set in a position of governance and stewardship over Creation has been called into question by these numerous advances. If we’re able to develop robots and computers that are increasingly capable of artifical intelligence, what does that do to notions of our own reasoning capabilities? As we become increasingly capable of improving and enhancing the body via cybernetics, genetic engineering, and other such “upgrades”, how does that shape our view of the human body, which we believe to be a temple meant to honor God? (This doesn’t even take into account our increasing knowledge of the many other species that fill this planet, knowledge that reveals these species can seem incredibly “human” when it comes to communication and language, empathy, social structure, and even art.)

In the past, such questions were primarily the domain of science-fiction novels. Not so much anymore, as science and technology have given us increasing amounts of control over our world and our own bodies. And whereas Laval-Jeantet’s art project may at one time have seemed plausible only in the pages of The Island of Doctor Moreau, I doubt we’ll see the last of such projects. Put simply, these issues and questions surrounding the nature of humanity are not going away any time soon, especially as numerous individuals seek to embrace and promote them (see the transhumanist movement for an extreme example of this sort of advocacy). This presents yet another challenge for Christians who affirm the aforementioned view of humanity.

There are several things that we must keep in mind when considering this issue. First, we must not brush them off as trivial or fanciful issues that only have relevance within a specific niche (such as scientists or performance artists). As I said before, these are no longer limited to the realm of science-fiction. They are happening right now, and they will have dramatic effects, for good or for ill, on our species in the very near future. So let us educate ourselves so that we can enter into the dialog and conversation surrounding these issues in good faith, and not look like blithering idiots who know nothing of which we speak.

Second, we must enter into those conversations with a spirit of grace. As I’ve delved into these issues via articles, journals, and blogs, I’ve run into a wide range of perspectives and opinions, ranging from ardent environmentalists and animal rights activists intent on doing away with humanity’s “speciesism” to transhumanists intent on pushing humanity to the extremes of development. In my experience, a good number of these people are secularists who are, at best, indifferent to Christianity’s claims, particularly Christianity’s claims concerning humanity’s status and role in creation. More often than not, they are fairly hostile to such views, viewing them as antiquated and limiting. So let us respond charitably, seasoning our conversation with grace and conviction, not to mention nuance even as we (strongly) disagree.

Finally, if we must stand up and condemn and criticize, let us be incredibly wise and careful in doing so. It may be tempting, for example, to rail against geneticists who are seeking to manipulate and work with the very building blocks of life itself. However, genetic engineering and research in and of itself is not an evil thing. Certainly, it can (and has) been used to support horrific evils. But as R.C. Sproul puts it:

…genetic engineering also involves serious researchers doing everything in their power by examining the genetic code to see if there are ways in which serious illnesses, diseases, and distortions can be therapeutically treated through genetic means. Now, here you’re talking about science’s legitimate task of having dominion over the earth and exercising mercy and compassion toward the ill and finding cures for horrible deformities and diseases.

It’s a safe bet that you, or someone you know, will benefit greatly from the advances being made in such an area (if you haven’t already). As Christians, we ought to celebrate such advances even as we may cast a wary eye on the greyer, more ethically challenging aspects of the research that gave birth to them.

We live in a very exciting point in history. Technology that was a dream even ten years ago is now ubiquitous, and the next ten, twenty, and thirty years promise even greater things. But make no mistake: as we inevitably move forward as a species, our humanity — whatever it is that makes us us — will undergo significant re-evaluation. There are many who see humanity as nothing special, as nothing more than yet another animal roaming the Earth or as raw material to manipulate and build upon as we see fit. As Christians, we should give serious thought as to what a Biblically shaped view of humanity might look like, and how we can best respond to the challenging, even disturbing questions that lay before us — whether they come from an engineer developing increasingly intelligent computers, a reseacher working with the very stuff of life, an ethicist reflecting on our position in the world, or an artist trying to make herself something other than human.

Illustration courtesy of Seth T. Hahne.

Any discussion of the spiritual disciplines that I have ever been part of has inevitably emphasized a major problem for the modern spiritual life: distraction. This is fair. Constant noise, media, and anxiety hinder our study, thinking, and prayer, and often just waste our time.

But because of this sort of talk, distraction gets a bad rap. I’d argue that distraction can be a good, God-honoring, emotionally healthy activity, depending on how we distract ourselves and what we are distracting ourselves from.

In Pascal’s Pensées, the thinker muses over why people spend so much time on “diversion” — why we insist on games and hunting instead of spending time in quiet contemplation. He concludes that humanity’s fallen state has caused a deep distress and unhappiness in all of us that we simply do not want to face.

“To bid a man live quietly is to bid him live happily… This is to misunderstand nature. As men who naturally understand their own condition avoid nothing so much as rest, so there is nothing they leave undone in seeking turmoil.”

Pascal further clarifies: due to our fallen state, diversion or distraction makes sense, and can even be a good thing when done correctly – when we understand that it is simply self-forgetting fun and not the key to real, lasting happiness.

“…we are wrong in blaming them [i.e. those who divert themselves]. Their error does not lie in seeking excitement, if they seek it only as a diversion; the evil is that they seek it as if the possession of the objects of their quest would make them really happy.”

Enter LOLcats, one of my favorite internet distractions. You’re probably familiar with it, but if not, it’s pictures of cats. Like, really, really silly pictures of cats — with really silly captions. There is lots of bad grammar and poor spelling involved because, obviously, cats use really bad grammar and are poor spellers. All content is user-submitted, which means part of the fun is sifting the brilliant from the banal. I could go through them for hours… and have. LOLcats and sites like it are fun, healthy, humorous distractions that can add a dimension of enjoyment and self-forgetfulness that our world-weary hearts desperately need.

Oh, yeah — these cats are all very interested in procuring cheeseburgers. Just so you know.

Distract yourself for a few minutes with something silly today. We are broken and self-centered, and we need to get our minds off ourselves. Let’s call it a spiritual discipline. Laugh at something silly, share something fun with someone on your Facebook page or Twitter feed, and generally participate in something ridiculous for the glory of God. And make sure it has cats in it.

People love contests. Especially contests that give cash prizes. Miracle Whip got this part right in
their contest titled Not for Every Relationship. The winner is awarded $25,000. So far, so good.

Then things get goopy.

Submissions are via video, in which contestants are to explain how Miracle Whip has either
enhanced or destroyed their relationship. Contest rules state: “Tell us your story in 60 seconds or
less for a chance to win $25K towards your wedding . . . or divorce.”

It’s possible that many of the submissions were couples simply trying to be the most entertaining
in order to win the prize. And I doubt that couples going to divorce court would site Miracle
Whip as the cause of irreconcilable differences.

Yes, this contest is all in good fun. I realize Miracle Whip just wanted a fun way to juxtapose its
adoring fans with those who prefer plain old mayonnaise.

The part I am uncomfortable with the casual way in which marriage and divorce are presented.
Getting a divorce for any reason is devastating to everyone involved (always at the top of the list
of life’s most stressful events). This contest suggests that a divorce over condiment preferences is
something comical.

In real life, with your friends and family, when has divorce ever been casual or humorous?

This is advertising’s formula for success: making light of something serious and making grave
something that isn’t. But beyond the marketing hype, the message is what we need to judge.
That’s why discernment is needed, because those messages may be packaged within a humorous
contest, making things palatable that never would be otherwise.

So be sure to check what the advertising machine is feeding you—it may go down with a giggle
but it will have its revenge upon the way we approach very serious matters in life.

Late had I loved thee. You came into existence after I had graduated from college. Like text messaging and smartphones, you did not color my high school and undergraduate social experiences. My generation was the last before The Fall, and all after us will call you “Friend” from cradle to grave.

Facebook, there are reasons to love you. You plan events, you consolidate communication, you keep me connected with people I actually like in a world of disconnect and exile. You can be so much fun.

But Facebook, I have one small problem: I didn’t think you would usher in a whole new era of social awkwardness, an oppressive regime of social-media-dictatorship resulting in relational stress like no other. The rules have never been put forward for us, and the expectations we all carry are so varied. I have rekindled a few old friendships and have had the opportunity for fun, spur-of-the-moment communication with the people I already see frequently. But when it comes to everyone else, you’ve just made it weird.

That person that I talked to that one time who I thought I would see again and get to be friends with? I never saw them again. That girl I met at that get-together at that person’s house? Sometimes her invite lingers in my inbox. Usually mine lingers in hers. What does her invite mean? What does she think mine means? And generally speaking, how many times do I need to meet a person in real life before we are friends enough to be “Friends”?

“But it’s not a big deal”, I say to myself. I click a button. But the voice in the back of my mind protests: “But it actually is a big deal, isn’t it?” I used to only have one voice in my head. Thanks, Facebook.

Once the insanity of this “friending” process is finally dealt with, abject horror hits me fresh every time. Should I comment on their posts? Should I “like” things they say? Sometimes I run into the person later and they look at me like I’m crazy as if to say, “You commented?” Sometimes they look at me with creepy, over-the-top kindness and appreciation as if to say, “You commented!” I m never sure whether these comments are making me a new best friend or a new pariah, and the stress of these encounters is ever-present.

Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, there are those who continue to post awkward, mildly insulting comments and updates. The guy from college who is so painfully sarcastic, the girl who feels she should correct my every grammar mistake, the friend of my parents who adds those cringe-inducing old people remarks – do I just endure it forever?  Should I eventually “unfriend” those I never see or who make things difficult?

And if I do, what happens if I actually meet them in the real world? The other day I ran into someone, and I couldn’t remember if I had unfriended them or if they had unfriended me. All I know is that they acted like I had hit their dog with my car. It was a terrifying encounter. This never used to happen to me.

The stress of guessing why people do the things they do has always plagued us. But Facebook, you compound the issue. Like the interest on a bad loan, the debt is never finally paid. Stretching this hacky metaphor further: You, Facebook, are like a bad credit card that we are all secretly ashamed to have signed up for. And now we’re stuck, and we need the “credit”: the attention, the voice, the sense of connection. Like all addictions, if it didn’t fill the hole a bit, we would never keep coming back. We would gladly shred the card in a second, but it buys us the things we need. And like all addictions, we’re willing to wade through the demeaning and dehumanizing just to get our fix.

If we’re paying attention, we’ll be forced to examine and sort through the mess that our fallenness and brokenness causes in our shoddy attempts at connection with others.  The presence of social awkwardness (rooted in our deep loneliness and fear of rejection) is perhaps one of the most constant and present ways we are made to face this in our lives.  The evils of mind and heart, the deep hypocrisies and inauthenticities in our spirits, our judgmental nature, our avoidance of anything and everything that might bring about real intimacy – all of it is stirred up and brought to the surface.  We’re reminded of this sickness we carry, that sin truly does cause separation, and that for some reason – despite the countless opportunities for connection a digital age affords – loving others deeply and authentically is hard.  We are still lonely and broken, and still in need of redemption.  We still need One who can heal us, One who can find us without us having to dance the proper circles and jump through the proper hoops.  One who never really cared that much about our Facebook pages in the first place.

I guess, Facebook, when I signed up for this, I wasn’t really looking for another mirror to my own brokenness masquerading as a replacement for my MySpace page.  I just wanted to keep track of old friends, not come face to face with my selfish insecurities once again.  I guess I wanted an escape, not a lesson in my own imperfections.  Thanks, Facebook. Thank a lot.

Facebook, is it possible for you to do something about this? I’m starting to get a sense that you laugh at our silliness behind our backs. Or is it just me? Am I assuming too much? I still have no idea.

Sincerely,

Kirk Bozeman

Illustration courtesy of Seth T. Hahne.

Of all people, Christians ought to have the highest view of people and relationships (Mark 12:30-31). Facebook is important because people are important. There are over 500 million active users on Facebook, of which 50% log on to the site in any given day. These users spend 700 billion minutes per month on the site and the average user creates 90 pieces of content each month (status updates, links, notes, wall posts, etc.).

These stats have many wondering about the long term effects of social networking. Does all this time spent socializing online make us inept at communication in the “real” world? Are our interpersonal relationships suffering because of social media? Are our Facebook friendships worth the time and effort they require?

These questions motivated the ICMPA to ask 1,000 students in ten countries on five contents to abstain from all media for a full day and report on the results. Here are some of their responses to a day without media:

• “Sometimes I felt ‘dead’.”
• “I felt sad, lonely and depressed.”
• “I felt so lonely as if I were in a small cage on an island.”
• “We call our friends or chat with them when we need them — that is the way we have gotten used to relationships.”

ICMPA and others have drawn some strange conclusions from these comments. In response to the students’ comments, the ICMPA claimed that “for many students, going without media for 24 hours ripped back the curtain on their hidden loneliness.” This conclusion simply cannot be drawn from these student’s responses. The students reported feeling lonely after refraining from using social media and text messaging. In other words the lack of social media resulted in feelings of loneliness. If anything, these student’s statements reveal how integral social media is to their socialization. And yet, the ICMPA’s study has led some to make imbalanced conclusions about the effects of social media.

Tim Challies, writing for Boundless, recently reflected on this study:

This study’s results are striking and consistent with a growing list of similar studies. They offer a penetrating glimpse into the painful emptiness of the digital soul. In an age of constant amusement we are sad; in a world of constant communication, we are afraid and lonely . . . .

The students who participated in this study learned that in the midst of all of their e-mailing and Facebooking and text messaging they are actually sad and lonely. All this time they had thought they were forming deep and meaningful friendships. But as their phones and computers were taken away, as they unplugged, they quickly saw that most of their friendships, and even the friendships they thought most significant, were trite, ethereal.

Is it really surprising that when a central means of communication is taken out of the hands of students that they feel sad and lonely? They didn’t “learn” that they were “sad and lonely,” they felt sad and lonely because they couldn’t talk to their friends without their phones and computers. It could be that most of these student’s relationships are “trite” and “ethereal” but that value judgment cannot be made from this study. It would take a lot more than 24 hours to verify any such claim. Furthermore, given how upset these college students were by being cut off from their friends on social media, it’s disingenuous to describe the many relationships that are formed therein as trite.

This last week, my wife and I were blessed to welcome our first child into the world. I posted updates and pictures on Facebook and Twitter and we were overwhelmed by the responses of our friends and family on Facebook. Every single retweet, comment, and “like” mattered to us — it was a way for friends of all types to join us in celebrating the birth of our daughter. CaPC writers regularly post their articles on Facebook and the exchange of ideas that takes place there is valuable. People make plans, share birthdays, and discuss faith and ideology on Facebook. It’s these sort of interactions on Facebook that have allowed me to make some great friends and maintain some relationships that I probably would not have otherwise maintained. Social media has changed the way a generation communicates and relates but that doesn’t make those relationships ethereal.

Life will certainly present us with interpersonal demands that will require us to carefully consider our relationship to social media. That said, we must always remember that the people on Facebook are no less real than we are. They have similar needs, longings, and problems. Put your family and your church first but the people on Facebook are indeed your neighbor (Luke 10:25-37). They need you too.

Social media isn’t going anywhere any time soon. It remains unclear whether the Facebook generation suffers greater loneliness than any previous generation. However, there is one thing we can draw from the ICMPA’s study: there is a generation that cares deeply about Facebook because it’s their means of social communication. You don’t have to be invested in Facebook to the extent that the average college student is. However, Facebook hosts 500 million active users with children, birthdays, thoughts, hopes, and dreams that they will inevitably share with their friends. If you are remotely interested in reaching people for Christ all those things should matter.

Our culture is constantly leaning forward, always oriented towards the future as a source of hope. It is scarcely possible to buy a product and enjoy it for what it is without anticipating how it will be improved upon in the future. For example, I don’t think my iPhone was out of its box for a day before I began imagining how much greater its next iteration would be. And I often compulsively check the Apple App Store to see if there are updates for my applications. When there are updates, I feel an inordinate measure of excitement and anticipation as I download them, as if these new versions of the applications held the potential to bring real, significant improvements to my life. When none of my apps can be updated, I feel disappointed. What is remarkable about this is that I typically don’t have any problems with the applications I use on my iPhone. It is not is if I have a running list of changes and improvements that I would like to see the developers make. I am simply excited and interested in the prospect of “new” features.

Just like my App Store update-fetish, this habit of treating news of future products as entertainment is a manifestation of our forward-leaning times. Although it is certainly the case that there is something good and noble about looking forward to some technology or work that has been well made, it is also true that a preoccupation with the release of new technologies and products can be a sign that we have accepted a view of what it means to live a “good life” that is in contradiction with the vision provided in the Gospel (See James K. A Smith’s interesting book, Desiring the Kingdom for more on how culture shapes our understanding of the “good life” through habits).

One of the challenges of living in America at this time is having a balanced view of material possessions. It is good for humans to be creative and build and innovate and to delight in what God has blessed us with. It is also a sin to covet and be envious and greedy and to make our material possessions into idols. So while we want to enjoy the things God has blessed us with, when we find ourselves so enchanted with the prospect of new products that we will devote significant amounts of time to reading news about these products we also need to question whether our love for material possessions is inappropriate. And since habits can shape what we love, we need to consider how a habit of following product news might nurture in us an exaggerated view of the significance and value of things which will be obsolete and helping to fill a landfill in a few years.

Issues like this one not easy to address as a Christian because it is not always clear when we are in sin, when we are being foolish and making provision for our flesh (in this case, practicing a habit which might nurture covetousness), and when we are merely showing appreciation for something good that somebody has made to be enjoyed. Here are a few suggestions that might help you think about the way you view product news:

1. Consider how you value news about technology and products in comparison to news about global events. It is hard to love your neighbors if you are unaware of their needs, and it is hard to pray for Christians who are suffering when you don’t know what they’re suffering from. Following news of important world events can help you love your neighbor. It can affect the way you vote, give charitably, send missions, and pray. While I do not believe that we are commanded biblically to read the newspaper, I do think that it is one profitable way to practically love our neighbor. One question worth asking then is how much time, thought, and concern do you put towards learning about the needs of your neighbor in comparison to the time, thought, and concern you spend learning about new things to buy? Similarly, what has a greater effect on your emotions? Which is more likely to move you, news of a natural disaster or of an announcement for a new iPad?
2. Stop leaning forward. At the heart of treating product news as real news or entertainment is the hope and belief that things will be better tomorrow, that when we have this new technology or good, some part of us will be fulfilled. By making a conscious effort to delight in what God has already blessed you with in an attitude of contentment, you can help to challenge the myth that you will be happier tomorrow with some new thing. In addition, this can help you to be grateful and appreciate, to praise and take delight in, the good things that people have made. One of the reasons it is not always a sign of materialism when we are excited about news of some new invention is that it can be good and proper to show excitement about something that people have excellently made. This, it seems to me, is in keeping with Philippians 4:8. However, I don’t think that most of us need any encouragement to work up excitement for the latest movies, songs, computers, phones, or cars that are made with excellence and are worthy of praise. I do think that many of us, myself especially, could learn to better be grateful for, content with, and enjoy those things that we already own so as to give them their due honor (See these old posts: “Beyond New Releases Part 1″ and “Part 2″).

My concern is not just that being a product news junkie is not a good use of our time; the problem is that if we come to see news about products as entertainment, then it is likely that we’ve already accepted a certain definition of what it means to live a fulfilled, happy life. And this definition is in direct conflict with the vision of good life presented in Christianity. However, we also need to be aware that habits shape the way we view the good life, what we idealize as a life of flourishing. If we treat news about products as important and significant then it could be a sign that we are identifying ourselves primarily as consumers, people for whom the “good life” is defined as a life where one must constantly purchasing something new to gain fulfillment. While it might not sound particularly valuable or important or enjoyable to reflect on the way our habits might nurture a distorted view of our identity and the value of material possessions, part of our burden living in  consumer-driven America is that we must be particularly aware that covetousness, greed, and material idolatry are high virtues in our culture, and also sins.

Where’s my XBOX720?

The PlayStation was released in the US in 1995. The PS2 and XBOX were released in 2000-01, and were followed by the XBOX360 and PS3 in ‘05-06. So where’s the next generation of consoles? There’s a simple answer: they’re not coming. The seventh generation of gaming consoles was built for growth, using software updates to make them more efficient and to add new features.

Instead of a new generation of thumb-straining consoles, Microsoft and Sony have followed Nintendo’s lead into motion-based gaming with the Kinect and the Move. These technologies are opening up a ton of new possibilities for the industry’s new target market: casual gamers. So even though there’s no new generation of consoles, there’s still a new generation of gaming.

TV without the TV Set

For the last few years, netbooks – those 10-inch laptops you could pickup for under $300 – were making a place for themselves in the market. They seemed like something that was here to stay. Then a few things happened to knock them off their path, and create a new market for home entertainment (presented in no particular order):

• The iPad: Everything your netbook does, but cooler.
• The $350 full-size laptop: When you look at a 10-inch screen for $300, and a 15-inch for $350, you suddenly realize that it’s tiny. It’s like you couldn’t see it before, but now it’s there, and you can’t not think about it.
• Netflix, Hulu, and streaming TV: They’ve been around for a couple of years, but 2010 was the watershed year, when it suddenly wasn’t odd to watch TV on your computer.
• Falling LCD prices: In November of 2008 I bought an LCD TV for $400. In 2007 that TV cost $600, and today it costs $279. When you put that together with free streaming TV on your PC, you get…
• Streamed TV and Movies in the living room: the XBOX360 offered Netflix streaming to your TV first, but now all three consoles, a number of set top boxes, Blu-Ray players, and Net-enabled TV’s have followed suit. Apple and Google have even entered the game (with the creatively named ‘AppleTV’ and ‘GoogleTV’, respectively).

It’s no surprise that no one wants a netbook anymore. It’s also no surprise that cable companies started acting shady.

Comcast, Verizon, and the FCC

With the growth of streaming services, cable companies worry that Netflix and Hulu will hurt the cable TV market. To calm themselves they made a deal to charge a middle-man extra to “transmit Internet online movies and other content to Comcast’s customers who request such content.”

This is just the kind of thing that Verizon teamed up with Google to prevent. In a much misunderstood proposal (at the end of this Wired article), they propose rules which would guarantee a free and open internet, while creating a second network which providers could use to serve premium content for a fee.

The Federal Communications Commission is trying to run the show as industry players negotiate these situations, but they (and the rest of the country) seem to still be confused about whether they have any authority over the internet. Don’t worry, though – eventually, someone will do something, and half the crowd will get mad.

Apple v. Google

No, they haven’t gone to court – not yet anyway. The massive and opposing philosophies of these two giants are like the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD format wars, except this fight is for mind-share, rather than market-share.

Apple’s philosophy is simple: make it sleek, make it sexy, make it work, and don’t let anyone screw it up. They push a closed system where everything is designed together, built together, and approved together. The two results of this philosophy are that a) every product is seemless, and b) they have total control.

Google’s philosophy is equally simple: make it open, make it flexible, and make sure anyone can change it. They endorse free (as in beer AND as in choice) in as many ways as possible. They help design parts – parts that you can use together, mix and match, or use toward your own project. They have no control, and they don’t seem to want it.

Consider the respective app stores: Steve Jobs taking a strict ‘no porn’ stance, and pointing out the presence of a ‘porn store for Android.’ Is Google making a statement in favor of porn by not having a similar ban? Not really, it’s just their philosophy: open means open, even when it’s controversial. The same philosophy has the iPad competing with an untold number of variations, from Samsung’s GalaxyTab and the Dell Streak, to the VelocityMicro Cruz Reader.

Now consider that Android has 26% of the market, while the iPhone has 25%. While the iPhone’s share is made up of 4 iterations of the same (stellar) product, there are dozens of Android devices, each with a different set of features (and problems); manufacturers even have the ability to make Android look and work however they please. Their competitiveness shows how torn we are about which is better. It will be interesting to see if one of these philosophies pulls ahead this year.

So that’s the wrap up. I know a lot more happened this year (Boxee, 4G, LED TVs, wireless broadband), but I couldn’t possibly get to it all. What do you think about what’s here, and what important things did I leave out?

Consider these realities of our digital world:

• According to Pingdom.com, 12.5 billion videos are viewed each month on YouTube. We’re watching nearly 200 videos on computers, cell phones, iPads, and other digital gear every month.
• Twitter claims that tweets rose from 5000 a day in 2007 to 50 million tweets a day this year – 600 tweets per second!
• My fourteen-year old daughter edits more (and arguably better) video on her laptop than I did in four years as a film student in college.

Our means, as well as our craving, for media is growing exponentially, today anyone with a computer or a cell phone (and that’s everyone) can contribute to the steady drip of noise. But what happens when supply overwhelms demand, when the stuff we are producing spills over the rim of what society can drink in? Our ability to hear vital messages among the heavy overgrowth of the less-than-vital is a casualty of our times we may not even recognize. To the one with the global platform, every message seems urgent.

J. R. R. Tolkien was a keen believer in content creation; his Middle-earth mythology lovingly grew out of his personal theology that we are sub-creators. Like his angelic Valar, we are allies with God under his direction in a great symphony of creation. To Tolkien, participating in the act of sub-creating connects us to our image-bearing nature as children of the Creator. But does this mean that every kid with a Flip cam and a Wi-Fi network is an echo of the Divine image? Not exactly. For Tolkien, it was never just about producing output. He was more absorbed with adding to the Story – affirming our place and our struggle inside God’s narrative. From The Hobbit to his unfinished works, whether we encounter eagles, orcs, ents, or elves, Tolkien provides possibly the best starting point for would-be sub-creators: our impulse to create seems to be about the sacred privilege of being a messenger, and humble task of holding up a mirror to glorious and fallen humanity. So what are the lessons to be had here in this new digital landscape, and how do we tread cautiously yet confidently?

First, we ought to recognize that in any communication between people – whether face to face or via Ethernet – there are at least two very compelling needs in us that drive our messages: a longing to be heard, and a longing to belong. The kid uploading his video rant about what happened at school is not too different from the middle-aged housewife reconnecting with her high school pals on Facebook. They both are expressing something fundamental in us that says, “Listen to me! I have a story!”  In creating unique and intensely niche-oriented content, we are asking, “Who’s with me?” We are reaching out to an invisible community, and hoping someone else is reaching back.  The environment of social networks, blogs, and other new media enable us to search for belonging and a voice in ways only ten years ago were unheard of. To discount this search is to ignore a fundamental and noble part of who we are.

Secondly, we need to become better listeners, embracing an intentional listening that begins to sift through the deluge of noise thrown at us each day. Over 400 years before you accepted your ex-girlfriend’s mom’s friend request, St. John of the Cross suggested, “it is great wisdom to know how to be silent and to look at neither the remarks, nor the deeds, nor the lives of others.” There is a real danger of vital messages becoming lost in the ether, but a healthy practice of shutting off the cell phone, fasting from Twitter, and checking email less frequently slowly re-trains us to listen to content for meaning, and not merely for mass.

In the mid-fifties, the Swanson company released a quaint little product – a single serving meal you could heat up in a few minutes, eat by the warm glow of the Zenith, and toss in the trash when you were done. TV dinners fed our growing appetite for the cheap, easy, and tasty – three words that could describe the digital buffet of our times. Creating, communicating, and even consuming are gifts bestowed on clever creatures who often get easily distracted.  The challenge for us is not to deny our appetites, but to champion the cause of the satisfied.

Garrett Brown adds to the noise on Twitter @GarrettBrown2.