you are not a gadget part 2

Another book I'm reminded of as I'm reading Lanier's manifesto is Vincent J. Miller's Consuming Religion. Assistant Professor of Theology at Georgetown University, Miller observes that when his students need answers to a question, they invariably "google" it as do my students, and if you are a teacher, yours too I'm guessing. They are almost immediately granted random access to the little piece of data that answers the question. The information provided, though, is divorced from any of its rich historical context, instead offering "sound byte" answers in effect. The medium provides the glut of information without filtering the important from the unimportant, the true from the false. That type of sifting requires an informed reader or interpreter.   

Shane Hipps has explored similar ideas in his book The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture. Hipps says that the hidden message given by the ease which we can access contextless information is that the historical context of information is irrelevant, that, in fact, "truth is entirely idiosyncratic".

Digitally stored "information is alienated experience," says Lanier. Yes, it objectively exists, but it is only de-alienated (contextualized?) if it is experienced: "If the bits [of information] can potentially mean something to someone, they can only do so if they are experienced. When that happens, a commonality of culture is enacted between the storer and the retriever of the bits. Experience is the only process that can de-alienate information" (p. 29).

And yet the information itself, even if it's experienced, comes to us in an "alienated" form...without context.

you are not a gadget

Some of my favorite lines in A Tale of Two Cities are not the famous opening or closing lines...rather the first lines in Chapter 3: 

A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it!

I thought of that passage recently as I was reading Jaron Lanier's You Are Not a Gadget. His book, though certainly a polemic against the mediocre mob mentality Web 2.0 fosters, is also a celebration of the mystery embodied in consciousness, in personhood. His insider perspective (as a Silicon Valley "techie" from the early days of the internet) is definitely provocative. He writes about the design decisions that have become "locked in" -- that have fundamentally changed culture. He says, "the deep meaning of personhood is being reduced by illusions of bits." He lists suggestions to promote intentional individual creativity, "to be a person instead of a source of fragments to be exploited by others." He says:

• don't post anonymously unless you really might be in danger
• create a website that expresses something about who you are that won't fit into the template available to you on a social networking site
• post a video once in a while that took you one hundred times more time to create than it takes to view
• write a blog post that took weeks of reflection before you heard the inner voice that needed to come out

As long as you are not defined by software, you are helping to broaden the identity of the ideas that will get locked in for future generations. In most arenas of human expression, it's fine for a person to love the medium they are given to work in. Love paint if you are a painter; love a clarinet if you are a musician. Love the English language...Love of these things is a love of mystery. But in the case of digital creative materials...it's a good idea to be skeptical.  (pgs. 21-22)

He tells you why in the rest of the book.  Whether you blog or tweet or text, you should read it, even if just for the unique perspective he offers. And while you're at it, pick up A Tale of Two Cities too. 

Flash Forward

Anyone else notice the many quantum physics references in the new ABC series, "Flash Forward"? Everything from photons that know you're watching and so change their behavior to Schroedinger's Cat. And there's the whole premise of fate and causality...whether knowing the future makes it happen or is it just one of many possible futures that a person can change (quantum state of uncertainty--all possible futures happen--the cat is both dead and alive at the same time). Then there is the episode titled The Black Swan ...

Noticing Beauty

Several months ago the Washington Post's Gene Weingarten asked Joshua Bell, one of the nation's great violinists, to conduct an experiment. Would Bell be recognized or even noticed playing his music on his Stradivarious in a D.C. Metro stop during rush hour? (Thanks to Lydia for showing me this amazing video).


Beauty out of context. Though just days before tickets to his concert were going for $100.00, only a very few stopped to hear a master play on a master instrument. Would I have been one of them? I think I might have been one of the crowd tuning out. I've been thinking lately about Sabbath rest and wondering if, for us in this age of information overload, the rest should be from...information. From blogs and e-mails and newsgroups and facebook and google and ipods and reality shows. Maybe then we could again hear and see and smell and touch and taste, tune in to the real show, to the sacred in any context.

Hipps' Website

I forgot to post this link to Shane Hipps' website, where he promotes his book using "soundbytes" of contextless information that scroll over a flat screen. Your choices to read about the book, author, reviews are on a remote. Cool intentional irony.

Medium is Message

Shane Hipps, author of The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture: How Media Shapes Faith, the Gospel, and Church, maintains that not only is the message profoundly affected by the medium, but also the recipient of that message. Like Marshall McLuhan, one of the first voices to equate medium and message, Hipps notes the power of media inherent in its form, irrespective of the content. In the first section of his book, he provides a way to perceive the actual effects of technological mediums through insightful analysis of past Western engagement with the media of its time. Then he unpacks the possibility of intentionally, rather than blindly, utilizing technological medium for the purposes of the kingdom of God in community, leadership and worship. He offers a descriptive and a prescriptive, context and counsel, for operating as the body of Christ in our media drenched culture. Definitely recommended.