September 2006

The Pew Internet Project has released its second report on The Future of the Internet.  The report, issued on September 24, 2006 from Pew in Washington, D.C. is a survey of Internet leaders, activists and analysts.  The experts and analysts assess the future of the Internet and make educated predictions.   Although the report was emailed to me several days ago, I am still evaluating all its implications.  A majority of those surveyed agree that by 2020:  

• A low-cost global network will be thriving and creating new opportunities in a "flattening" world.

• Humans will remain in charge of technology, even as more activity is automated and "smart agents" proliferate.  However, a significant 42% of survey respondents were pessimistic about humans' ability to control the technology in the future. This significant majority agreed that dangers and dependencies will grow beyond our ability to stay in charge of technology. This was one of the major surprises in the survey.

• Virtual reality will be compelling enough to enhance worker productivity and also spawn new addiction problems.

• Tech "refuseniks" will emerge as a cultural group characterized by their choice to live off the network. Some will do this as a benign way to limit information overload, while others will commit acts of violence and terror against technology-inspired change.

• People will wittingly and unwittingly disclose more about themselves, gaining some benefits in the process even as they lose some privacy.

• English will be a universal language of global communications, but other languages will not be displaced. Indeed, many felt other languages such as Mandarin, would grow in prominence.

Each of these findings underscore the complexities the Internet presents in a global society.  Cyberspace is a universe of contrasts.  The first finding, for example, is that a low-cost global network will "flatten" the world.  Conceptually, this sounds simple.  The Internet could create a more level playing field, eliminating many differences & boundaries (i.e. - gender, demographic, heirarchical, etc.) 

The counter-argument, however, is equally compelling.  The 'world is flat' concept (from the best-selling book by New York Times, foreign-affairs columnist, Thomas L. Friedman) is hotly debated and constantly argued both in the press and in the research literature.  The counter perspective is that the social inequalities that make up the digital divide may be widening.

Some of the most provocative disputes were about futuristic scenarios and as stated above, it was surprising that a significant majority agreed that dangers and dependencies will grow beyond our ability to "stay in charge of" technology.  More on this in future posts………

 WIRED NextFest         Experience the Future

SEPTEMBER 29 - OCTOBER 1, 2006
JAVITS CENTER /  NEW YORK CITY

WIRED's vision of a new world's fair, WIRED NextFest is a four-day festival of innovative products and technologies that are transforming our world. Patterned on the great World's Fairs of the past, this year's NextFest in New York features more than 130 interactive exhibits from leading scientists and researchers around the world.

Image: technitodo

Within the last two years we've crossed an invisible line in the United States.  According to Nielsen Media Research, there are 2.73 TV sets in the typical home and only 2.55 people.  Thus, there are more tvs than humans!  (Just like in California where there are more licensed realtors than houses sold.)

Nielson, the most sophisticated TV research organization in existence, just released their newest data reflecting the proliferation of television in the US.  You can read their report here.  They note that flat-screen TVs now make it easy to put sets where they've never been before.  With television now on buses, in stores, airports and schools, its ubiquity as an appliance is responsible for as much of its popularity as is its conscious consumption.  

Additional data concludes half of American homes have three or more TVs, and only 19% have just one.  To give you a little perspective, in 1975, 57% of homes had only a single set and only 11% had three or more.

In the average home a television set is turned on for more than a third of the day (the same amount of time recommended for sleep - one third of our lives) — eight hours, 14 minutes, Nielsen reports. That's an hour more than it was a decade ago.  And most of that extra TV viewing is coming outside of prime time, where TVs are on only four minutes more than they were 10 years ago. 

The average American television viewing time continues to increase in spite of growing competition from new media platforms and devices, such as video iPods, cell phones and streaming video.  In total, the average person in America watches 4 ½ hours of television each day.  (Bloggers exempt.)

The questions that arise in analyzing media-related data with implications for the Church include the concepts of postmodernism, decentralization and media-steeped constituencies.  Although the Gospel message does not change, the presentation of the message is influenced by cultural relativism and social trends become significant in their implications in both the lives of leaders/innovators as well as in the lives of those our message hopes to reach.

The omnipresence of broadcast media is really a kind of first wave, creating conditions which will push all social institutions into the next historical era.  And traditional broadcasting will continue to evolve into narrowcasting, and additionally microcasting.  Because the economic and technological conditions of our age have given rise to an increasingly decentralized, media-dominated society, Church must redefine how we can best reach and serve individuals.

Identifying both trends and their ministry implications helps the Church reach, influence and equip people. Analyzing entertainment preferences, family patterns and activity, moral views and behavior and faith practices are all part of reading the culture can empower the Church to have a relevant voice with an alternate message.

   Celebrate the Internet….

Oh, and the World Wide Web, too! 

Today, Friday, September 22, 2006 is One Web Day and will be celebrated around the world in various brick and mortar cities and all across cyberspace.  In celebration of the changes the Internet has fostered in each of our lives, we are each providing 10 ways the Web has changed our world.

For me the list would look something like this: 1) instant news, 2) email, 3) podcasts, 4) blogs, 5) Mapquest, 6) search engines, 7) YouTube, 9) file sharing, 9) iTunes and last but not least 10) Wikipedia so I know a whole bunch of important things like this:

Contrary to some common usage, the Internet and the World Wide Web are not synonymous: the Internet is a collection of interconnected computer networks, linked by copper wires, fiber-optic cables, wireless connections, etc.; the Web is a collection of interconnected documents, linked by hyperlinks and URLs. The World Wide Web is accessible via the Internet, as are many other services including e-mail, file sharing, and others.

Click here for a Wiki list of events around the world to reflect the celebration of One Web Day.   

Scott Bland, another 'Bible on iPod' convert…

"My experience as a busy believer, husband, entrepreneur, and now Dad, was and is a lack of quality time with God.  I knew when I accepted Christ almost six years ago that I’d need to start reading the Bible with some frequency; finding the right time to do that was another thing altogether.  Creativity with mp3 technology became the answer for this believer hands down.

My wife bought me an i-Pod for Christmas three years ago, and God used this gift to answer a need in my life, namely more quality time with Him.  Soon after receiving my i-Pod, I stumbled across the gospel stories narrated by Michael W. Smith.  I immediately purchased them and downloaded all four and began to consume them daily.  My first reaction was a bit of a guilty feeling, thinking I might be cheating by listening to the Bible instead of reading it.  Once my Pastor assured me that this was perfectly acceptable, I was full speed ahead onto true, palpable growth with God.  By the way, it was equally as calming to find out that during the period in which the Old and New Testaments were being written, the culture was an oral one.  This is to say that there were not many copies of the written Word floating around, unlike today, so people depended on a Rabbi’s narration of the scriptures to hear God's words.  The benefit of a technologically-driven age such as ours can still be discovered as I have myself experienced.

God has successfully used my now complete version of the Bible on mp3 to speak all kinds of growth into my life.  I was recently asked if I’d ever heard God speak to me, to which I replied absolutely, on a daily basis.  This is not only true verbally, but spiritually as well.  As I listen to His spoken Word, God reveals plans he has for me, as well as corrections and counsel, and wisdom for others He’s put intentionally in my path.

My current lifestyle is an extremely busy one, likely just like yours.  The requirements on my 24-hour day seem to increase by the moment.  At any given time, I’m trying to juggle which responsibilities are most important at that time, and which I am going to have to intentionally neglect due to a lack of enough hours in my day.  My relationship with God is by far the most important thing to me, so finding time to fit the scriptures in  must be important as well.  It takes some creativity, a little discipline, and a desire to be closer with the One whom created us all, but in return comes a contentment with pure joy that nothing else has come close to duplicating."

 
The iPod is about to evolve again.   iWear from Icuity is a 4-oz "videoshade" that produces a high-resolution picture on a virtual 44-inch screen.  So why listen to the Bible when you may be able to watch it on your own private self-contained screen?   

The answer involves the user's multi-tasking ability.  Using an audio only iPod without the distraction of video is often to the advantace of the listener.   The hands-free / eyes-free multi-tasking it facilitatues provides one of its primary values.  Nevertheless, no doubt there will be times when iWear is preferable.  It currently retails for about $300.

The Pew / Internet & American Life Project, a highly respected research organization located in Washington, D.C., produces data analyzing online trends.  Pew research covers diverse topics including Internet penetration, broadband adoption, blogging and a variety of other online pursuits.  Pew findings are designed to give us a better understanding of online activities (who is using the Internet, how often and for what).  Often quoted by media institutions such as the New York Times, ABC tv, etc., Pew is an authoritive source on the evolution of the Internet.

Lee Rainie, the founding Director of the Pew / Internet & American Life Project, is considered an authoritive voice in Internet research.  Recently, I asked Lee to summarize his observations about the impact of online technology on the practice of religion in the United States.   He made these comments:

"We haven’t done a lot of work on this, but the research we have done suggests that the heaviest users of new technology for spiritual purposes are people who already have a rich spiritual life and strong connections to churches.  So far, we don’t pick up a lot of evidence for some of the most interesting hypotheses about the possible impact of these technologies heading into the future: that they might increase the tendency of Americans to “privatize” their religious and spiritual activities; that they might encourage yet more “de-churching” of people of faith; that they might encourage people to develop ersatz spiritual lives, picking spiritual practices and beliefs as if from a menu of options. Those are all very important notions that are worth monitoring.

In addition, there are really interesting institutional and organizational issues worth probing in how churches are using new technologies to build congregations, evangelize, create new programs (especially for teens and young adults). Yet, our work suggests that most of those who use the internet for religious and spiritual purposes do so in the context of their already rich connections to their faiths and their churches. They are deepening their relationships with others and with their favorite institutions, rather than moving away from churches or cobbling together their own spiritual practices. They are somewhat "practical" in their use of the internet and email. They are likely to use these tools to plan meetings, do research for church school lesson plans, and stay in touch with fellow practitioners. Yes, there are people who do research about other faiths and there are certainly people who use the internet to seek and provide spiritual counseling, request prayers, and try to answer prayer requests."

Prior to launching the Pew Internet Project, Rainie was managing editor of U.S. News & World Report. He is a graduate of Harvard College and has a master’s degree in political science from Long Island University.  His support of the 'Interviewing the Experts' series is greatly appreciated.

Proof that a rigorous scientist can also be a serious believer in a transcendent Creator can be found the book The Language of God. The longtime head of the Human Genome Project and a former atheist, Francis S. Collins makes a strong case for how evolution could be orchestrated by God in this provocatively issued challenge. An awe-inspiring tour of the complexities of genetics and DNA, The Language of God provides a thought provoking reminder to constantly be recalibrating our "scientific" worldview with the proof of faith. He notes that the experience of sequencing the human genome, and uncovering this most remarkable of all texts [the language of life], was both a stunning scientific achievement and an occasion of worship. The book aims to dispel the notion that science and faith are mutuallly exclusive pursuits, by arguing that belief in God can be an entirely rational choice, and that the principles of faith are, in fact, complementary with the principles of science. Summarization: love and logic keep us clear.

A new study by The Barna Group (Ventura, California) shows that despite strong levels of spiritual activity during the teen years, most twentysomethings disengage from active participation in the Christian faith during their young adult years. The report, issued September 11, 2006, concludes twentysomethings continue to be the most spiritually independent and faith resistant age group in America.

Barna concludes church attendance is particularly irrelevant to this age group. Most of the “spiritual” activity of young adults, such as it is, takes place outside of a traditional church congregation. Rather than attending weekly church services, twentysomethings were more likely to attend special worship events not sponsored by a local church, to participate in a spiritually oriented small group at work, to have a conversation with someone else who holds them accountable for living faith principles, and to attend a house church not associated with a conventional church.

Interestingly, there was one area in which the spiritual activities of twentysomethings outpaced their predecessors: visiting faith-related websites.

The highly respected Barna Group has been conducting and analyzing primary research to understand cultural trends related to values, beliefs, attitudes and behaviors since 1984. Discovering that twentysomethings explore faith-related websites while shunning traditional church attendance is an indicator of the impact the internet may have on the evolution of the 21st century church. This trend may motivate churches to provide more online presence, access and interactivity.

Could the process of recording our lives empower us to change the way we live for the better? Is it possible that technology will provide us with a more vivid and concise way of gaining insight into our missteps be they social, professional, financial, emotional or spiritual? And furthermore, could it help us to view the sweeping repetitions that erode the best parts of our lives in patterned ways. Would we stop being inclined to err if we could more accurately see how we end up so often doing the very things we hope to avoid?

Software currently being developed at Microsoft in San Francisco will allow the documentation of an individual’s lifetime’s worth of experiences creating a digital “memory” so that anything that has happened in a person’s life could be archived in a retrievable database. Thus, it will be possible to view our lives from a vantage point never before seen. In the same way archeologists study sedimentary deposits in soil and can determine what transpired, so too, we will be able to see the layers of our lives in real time available for retrieval, review and possible realignment. Currently, the digital archiving process is a manual one. However, it is expected that in as few as 15 years it will be common to carry nearly all our “memories” around with us in a single device that will automatically record the sound and video of our daily activities, creating an inventory of the conversations we have, the faces we see and the articles we read, etc.

According to Popular Science magazine, that data would be tied to communications that are already tracked electronically, like our e-mail and event calendars, as well as TV shows, movies, podcasts and other media we take in. The end result: on-demand total recall.

The project, spearheaded by the respected Gordon Bell, is known as MyLifeBits. Microsoft’s Media Presence Research Group is experimenting with Bell by having him scan his old photographs, research documents and notes. Next, he began recording his meetings and phone calls and cataloguing his new photos and the movies he saw. Every e-mail exchange he had was digitally archived, and he started using the company’s prototype SenseCam, which he wears around his neck, to automatically snap photos throughout the day. Bell now documents about one gigabyte of information every month, all of which is stored in a searchable database on his PC.

The biggest challenge to the success of MyLifeBits is developing the software required to search your memory database effectively. So far, MyLifeBits pulls together more than 20 data types to link various memories to one another. Using a full-text search, Bell tracks down what he’s looking for in no more than 30 seconds. Soon, when searching through meeting notes, for instance, photos of people attending those meetings and their contact information will appear side by side. The effort could be pushed along by Columbia University researchers who are using statistical-analysis programs to automatically sort hours of recorded audio by time and location (office, café, etc.).

Next, they’ll tackle speaker recognition, which would allow for categorizing and searching conversation by who’s talking. Meanwhile, miniaturization and the falling cost of image sensors and data storage will soon allow for unobtrusive recording, as well as on-person storage, of several terabytes—which means a vast upgrade in personal processing power. “Having a surrogate memory creates a freeing and secure feeling,” Bell says of his self-experiment. “It’s similar to having an assistant with perfect memory." To view an abstract of the MyLifeBits project click here: MyLifeBits: Fulfilling the Memex Vision Or you can review these del.icio.us MyLifeBits tags. Another article: IEEE Spectrum