The Church as Filtering Community | Thesis Chapter 6
Chris Ridgeway | 10 Dec 2010 | 12:33I’m posting chapters of my masters thesis. See more here.
For 170 years we have been obsessed with machinery that would gives access, and give it fast, to a Niagara of information. Obviously, the Internet does that and we must give all due praise for its efficiency. But it does not help us, neither does television or any other 19th or 20th century medium (perhaps except the telephone), to solve the problem of what is significant information.
~ Neil Postman
Having to squeeze my thesis into a linear, black & white, double-spaced chunk of paper was ironic, considering I was writing about digital media. Even so, I did my best. I even started this chapter with a YouTube video:
This one (or previous versions of it) has been super popular. No doubt some of the stats are tilted for effect. But it shows how strong the tie between relationship and information is. In fact, this latest version picks up what I’ve asserted for five years now: Facebook will be more important than Google, because it has the power to sort or filter information based on our relationships: which is a natural human function. Think word of mouth.
In this chapter, I envision the church as the natural community that can practice discernment in the filtering of information, and specifically imagine the use of scripture in the community.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Andrew Wetzel, Chris Ridgeway. Chris Ridgeway said: new blog post: The Church as Filtering Community | Thesis Chapter 6 http://goo.gl/fb/s8iZB [...]
Chris,
I’ve stopped in here at your blog/thesis-in-progress and today I just had to say something. I have just tweeted and blogged yesterday and again this morning about the church needing to explore what the “Social Graph” means for us. I’ve tweeted and blogged about it on several occasions, and I get the Twitter equivalent of a blankk stare (ie. Absolutely nothing, can hear a pin drop) Since many of my twitter followers are church communication people, I find this frustrating, to say the least.
I relate to this: “Facebook will be more important than Google, because it has the power to sort or filter information based on our relationships: which is a natural human function”
This is an important insight that is all over what I am trying to express, and you are one of only a few I can find actually thinking about this.
My take: Churches/church orgs need to discover how to begin building their own API-accessible “shared silos” (in contrast to regular “silos” where they keep all their data to themselves). There are so many “theological” social graph relational “hooks” that could be harnessed to help us build something for tyhe church that captures folks as Facebook has with their social graph.
Thanks for your work on this. You do a great job of articulating it. Hope you stop by to “visit me” online (@dlature on Twitter and at my blog/website )
Dale