theo|digital

A text, then, is a communicative act with matter (propositional content) and energy (illocutionary force). … It is important to acknowledge that authors may intend to communicate complex, multilayered intentions.

There is an instructive dialogue in the opening pages of The Hobbit. The scene is Gandalf’s first visit to Bilbo Baggins:

“Good morning!” said Bilbo, and he meant it…

“What do you mean?” he [Gandalf] said. “Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on?”

“All of them at once, ” said Bilbo. And a very fine morning for a pipe of tabacco out of doors, into the bargain.”

A bit later Biblo uses the same locutionary act [Chris:  words] with a very different illocutionary intent [Chris:  purpose]:

“Good morning! We don’t want any adventures here, thank you!”

“What a lot of things you do use Good morning for!” said Gandalf. “Now you means that you want to get rid of me, and that it won’t be good till I move off.”

I love it.  From Vanhoozer’s First Theology: God, Scripture and Hermeneutics, 178

Made it to Wrigley twice before heading out here to Colorado. Here’s some pics from 5 May with seminary friends Andrew, Kelsey, and Angie.

I like how I got Sean Marshall’s entire windup.

Wrigley Giants @ Cubs May 2009

Out here in Colorado I’m so isolated from the Cubs! Haven’t seen one game since arriving. Just watching the numbers get worse…

Cheesy, but I think this is hilarious/great.

This is pretty non-sequitur, especially since I’m not posting at my usual 3-post-a-week rate right now… but it proves that I’m a left-over nerd that I still find xkcd funny.  I was clicking “Random” and laughed pretty hard at this one, because it’s so true for me.

Well, it’s Saturday morning 6 June.  You know what that means?

Official release day for the Palm Pre!

And since it also happens to be my second true day off since arriving in Estes Park for the summer, I’m off on an adventure to try to snag one.  I called two Sprint stores last night—Boulder and Longmont—which are my closest two stores at just about 50 miles away, whichever I choose.

Both stores said they are opening two hours earlier than their web-posted hours (8am instead of 10am), and both expect lines. Neither could/would tell me how many phones they expect to have in inventory or estimate if/when they’d sell out. Oh well, since I’ve never done anything like this before (chase an electronic product like a school girl), I figure their’s a first time for everything. Worst thing that happens? I don’t get one today.

This is one of those things where asking people to pray for you is really shady.

I could pee in my pants I’m so excited. This developer demonstration of Google Wave starts to make reality exactly the trends I have been predicting for filtering communities. This Google team notes that e-mail was invented forever ago–long before we had the Web, and is modeled on the metaphor of Postal Mail. I’ve been mentioning this for a while, now–that e-mail isn’t a native technology for a digital environment because it doesn’t think like a digital environment. We know from Pew Internet that among internet communications tools, today’s junior high kids use e-mail dead last, typically for communicating with teachers or older users–not friends.

This Google development team seeks to answer the question: what if we invented e-mail today?

Google Wave is what they’ve come up with so far. It’s exactly on the trajectory I think we’ve been doing (though we’ll see if they take it… notice many similarities to Facebook, which I still think is better positioned than Google to reinvent e-mail, etc).

This presentation is over an hour and half, but a few minutes of watching is prolly worth it.

Google Wave is getting plenty of attention, like this critic comparing it to a spork, but I think he like others is missing it. E-mail and IM and social networks are not irreducibly helpful tools combined, like the brew-and-grind. They are bring back together what naturally will be.

ps – other techy news:  Microsoft Bing.  Uses some Kayak looking tools with search.  Won’t amount to much.  Wikipedia vs. Scientology.  An interesting test case in filtering community ethics.