The future according to 1962

More data for my theory: predictions of the future tell more about the present.

This weekend, scanned pages of Modern Mechanix offered us images of 2008 from the vantage of 1968. Some predictions are on the mark, some are off. More than anything, it’s particularly cringe-worthy to read that we will today use only plastic disposable plates and flatware. While it’s a “wife-saving” way to cut down on dishes, the world of 1968 cared not where all that petroleum came from and what landfill the plastic was going to.

Again, Bostworld offers us a set of pictures and captions of the year 1975 from the vantage of 1962 (or go direct to the Flickr set). You’ll see some familiar things: computers in libraries and schools, compact stereo sets and microwave-able bacon. However, it also imagined that we would still be plagued by door-to-door salesmen and that women’s jobs are limited to homemaking, teaching and typing.

Of course, the hardest thing to predict about the future is social and societal change. So, we import our own attitudes about the present near-directly. Although the Jetsons showed the oft-promised flying car, no one imagined that women would learn to drive them in the 21st century. While we can now have instant translation of the Pravda, no one in 1962, 1968 or 1975 was ready to predict that the Soviet Union would collapse and that the Pravda would become a tabloid.

To paraphrase Cory Doctorow: if you want to know about the future of technology don’t read Jules Verne; if you want to know about Victorian attitudes toward technology, read Jules Verne.

See my previous post on the Monsanto House of the Future for more.

Christians closing the digital divide in Minneapolis

The Minnesota Daily reports that the Digital Inclusion Fund has offered $200,000 in grants to offer “new users of technology who historically might not have had access, such as immigrants and low-income families.” One of the grants, in the amount of $30,000, has gone to the (Roman Catholic) Church of St. Philip. This parish has started the Patchwork Quilt Digital Divide Initiative, that supports the World Community Grid, FightAIDS@home, and works locally with the poor to offer access to computers and the internet.

Access to the internet has become less a luxury and more of a utility. The telephone also made this transition. Once a curiosity for the well-off home, the telephone has become such a standard utility that receiving emergency 911 services depends on it. Not having a telephone number shuts one off from finding employment and housing and from participating in society at large.

The internet has not yet made this leap from technology to utility, but it’s getting closer. The digital divide comes from the high cost of entry. A new telephone can cost as little as $10 and basic access is about $30 per month. Even used computers cost far more than $10 and basic dial-up Internet access starts at $10 per month in addition to the cost of the phone line. Plenty of people are left out of this equation.

Many children do not attend schools that have computers or can teach computer literacy. Many schools do not provide access to the internet.  Presently the United States is a country that depends on computers as much as we depend on cars and we soon will depend on the internet as a utility like telephones, electricity and water.

Neglecting the social and economic issues around technology is a moral failure. This makes the Church of St. Philip’s efforts all the more refreshing.

Holy Bible: Wiki Standard Version. 2.0. Beta.

Via ThinkChristian, Iyov reports on YouVersion, a Bible commentary done wiki-style. I posted earlier on what a wiki catechism might be like, so this is a good opportunity to expand this theme.

Like Wikipedia, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Part of the experiment of Wikipedia is to see what happens when people dump their knowledge into an empty wiki without restriction. Largely a social experiment, the purpose is not to replace the  trusted and reviewed editors of actual encyclopedias.

Rather, a new technology has enabled a new kind of collaboration. Wikipedia and Barcamp are two concepts that just couldn’t exist prior to these technologies. Some friends of mine did a similar experiment with a board game. They sent a simple board game and some playing pieces to their friends and asked their friends to write the rules themselves. Once they send the rules back, then ask, “what kind of games did they come up with?”

Similarly, rather than having a Bible commentary written by trained, trusted, vetted and reviewed theologians, what happens when people (not even just Christians or Jews) write their own commentary? What is the result? By what fruits will it be known?

Like the Talmud, rather than editing out minority opinions, they are retained as part of the text. In the margins, yes, but still better than burned and forgotten.

I looked up John 1:1, just to taste the fruit of the wiki commentary. So far I see some attacks on Jehovah’s Witnesses, who have a minority interpretation of this verse. Some exegete the doctrine of the Trinity. Another posts a video based on the verse, used at a Christmas service. One person simply remarks, “I love this verse.” Just about none of these would be found in a traditional commentary. In fact, I’d argue that they don’t belong in a traditional commentary. That’s why they are here.

Happy Birthday, Donald Knuth!

I read from Good Math, Bad Math that today is Donald Knuth’s 70th birthday! In his paean to Knuth’s unquestionable genius, “If you don’t know who Knuth is, then you’re not a programmer. If you’re a programmer and you don’t know who Knuth is, well… I have no idea what rock you’ve been hiding under, but you should probably be fired.”

The blog Recursivity is carrying a great roundup of Knuth-birthday material.

Indeed, he is to Computer Science as Leonard Euler is to Mathematics. I’ve never completed it, but I’ve read a good deal of the Art of Computer Programming and it’s there that I first grokked subroutine linkage. He understands that programming is more art than science and that it’s more elegant and fine art than coarse craft.

Most know that he is a devout Lutheran who plays the organ. Some of his books have dealt with Biblical themes and his Things a Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About shouldn’t be missed. Scott Aaronson has some great commentary on how Knuth, an artist and scientist, looks at God and religious topics.

He is a personal inspiration to me, not just for elegant ideas and programs, but for the integration of his faith into his vocation as professor.

Bible etched on pinhead-sized silicon chip

Like the nanotech Advent calendar, scientists at the Israel Institute of Technology have inscribed the entire text of the Hebrew Bible (including vowel points) onto a 0.5 square millimeter silicon wafer. Professor Uri Sivan conceived of the project to get each of the 300,000 words down.

This beats the previous size records: “It may be noted here that the smallest known copy of the Bible known so far measured 1.1 x 1.3 x 0.4 inches and weighed 0.4 ounces. According to Guinness Word Record, the earlier Bible comprised 1,514 pages. That invaluable text is believed to have originated in Australia.”

Links:

1. Bible put on a pinhead-size chip
2. World’s smallest Bible
3. Israeli scientists etch out Bible on pinhead size chip
4. Scientists create nano-Bible
5. Bible etched onto area the size of a pinhead
6. Bible on chip smaller than pinhead

ANSI Art and Illuminated Bibles

The History of ASCII (ANSI) Art page shows the history of using writing as a visual medium. Rather than communicating just the words, the medium itself brings an artistic message. The writer follows through the history of Egyptian hieroglyphics, Christian illuminated manuscripts, children’s drawings, Radio teletype (RTTY) art and finally the ANSI art of the early 1990s BBS scene.

The site is just about exhaustive. I’ve never considered that Christians had a contribution to ANSI art, but it’s worth reflection. Of course, Anglican priest George Herbert made his contribution to written art in his 1633 poem, The Altar. While the content of the poem itself is worth comment, the fact that the shape of the words is a picture of an altar reflects the content in the form, the message in the medium and puts a good Reformation era milestone on the contribution towards ANSI art.

A few other items this past week on written art:

Today bOINGbOING points us to an illuminated Cockney Bible, which can be yours (via Amazon) for only £50.

Jason Scott’s interview with John Sheetz, recently mentioned on his blog, ASCII. He gives an account of his life as a Radio Teletype operator and the art that he created and shared.

Atypical technology employed in churches

The Evansville Courier Press, in a Nov. 30 article, “Digital Age doxology: Pastor knows gadgets, chapter and verse,” reports on uses that churches have for digital technology. I particularly enjoyed this one

The Turning Pointe United Methodist Church on Evansville’s West Side (www.theturningpointe.com) recently tested a new idea called TXT BAC CHRCH. The Rev. Steve Walker invited worshippers to send text messages with questions about his sermon. After the sermon, staffers displayed the handful of responses on a large screen, and Walker answered them.

Usually when the idea of church technology comes up, the discussion goes two ways. In my experience the reactions are:

1. How people do or don’t want Microsoft PowerPoint displays in worship.
2. Finding a way to save money on postage by emailing the parish newsletter.

The article reports on Pastor Dan Hendricks who has a “road warrior” type setup, carrying around laptops and such. He uses arrangements like Pastors Christopher Esget and Bob Hyatt, who both employ Backpack for organizing ministerial minutiae.

It’s never just technology: note on the emerging church

Technology changes us. It doesn’t just speed up or make better what we already are. It doesn’t just change viewpoints and relationships. It changes us, as individuals and as communities. The excellent short video The Web is Us/ing Us from earlier this year gives a quick introduction to this.

For Marshall McLuhan, the technology of the alphabet transformed us: by putting letters and words in a line, order was created where it did not exist before. Similarly, the technology of the printing press created individuals who commonly and privately read the same book, the same newspaper. The public was created where it did not exist before.

The television, radio and the Internet created the mass of mass communication where only the public existed before. The Internet does this in a de-centralized way whereas TV and radio required centralized broadcasters, so the effect is not entirely the same. Again, McLuhan’s short The Medium is the Massage can give a great overview of these ideas without getting to the complexities of Understanding Media.

A recent Think Christian comment posited, “The 21st century is no different—only that we have more gadgets.” The discussion was on the so-called emerging church and the odd questions of what it actually is or is not. The commenter asserts that the 21st century emerging church comes forth from the protestant churches just like the protestant churches “emerged” from the 16th Roman church. The only difference, he suggests, is that we have iPods now.

Many have pointed out that the formal cause of the 16th century Reformation was sola scriptura: by Scripture alone do we know what is necessary for salvation. Entailed in this is its material cause: that we are justified by grace through faith. However, the formal cause of sola scriptura cannot come about without the technological (efficient) cause of the printing press. A public must exist which has access to the printed Scriptures in large numbers.

The technological cause here today is very different from the printing press. The Internet changes us in a very different way than widespread printing did. The emerging church, by extension, will not just be a  Reformation plus iPods.

How is the Internet changing us? History will tell, but the concept of Ubuntu sets us on the right track. The material and formal causes that follow from this technological cause will be very different from the Reformation.

To say that it’s “just technology” is what McLuhan calls somnambulism. Wake up and realize that we are changing and moving even now. When we are transformed so is our church: that’s what is emerging.

The FAQ, the Catechism and the Wiki

The Frequently Asked Questions file (FAQ) is as much an Internet institution as Catechisms are to the Christian churches. They are enough of institutions and similar enough in format to merit comparison.

The Internet is a disorienting place when you come to it the first time, especially if that first time was in 1993. Networked computing was largely foreign to me and anything larger than a local dial-up BBS was a greater scale than I could comprehend. When I first arrived, I sought out Zen and the Art of the Internet, the Jargon File and gopher://wiretap.spies.com with the hope that I could find signposts along the way, pointing out just how a global network of Sun 3s was different from the 286 on my desk.

Usenet was much more of an institution at the time and one of the side-effects of the Usenet medium was the expiration of articles. Today’s web forums tend to archive rather than expire their conversations, so you can later search and mine them for details. If someone had a 2002 conversation about a computer bug that you’re having now, you can find it through search. Not so with Usenet, once that 1992 conversation is gone, it’s not coming back. This leads to lots of repeated conversations.

For regulars, the repeated conversation got tiresome enough that the FAQ file was born. A list of the most repeated questions and the general, common-knowledge answer. Fewer repeated conversations about the basic topics and the conversation could go deeper and into new areas.

This phenomenon is quite similar to the Christian tradition of the catechism. Other religions have catechisms as well, but they are nowhere near as fecund as within Christianity.

The Catechism mostly takes off during the Reformation. They depended on the printing press and the interest in conversation-style learning recovered from an interest in the Classics. They cover the basics of Christian faith, the most frequently asked theological questions. A particularly famous catechism, the Westminster Shorter Catechism, begins like this

Q. What is the chief end of man?

A. Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.

The text begins with a basic question, “What is the purpose of life?” It then covers theological principles: the Creation, the Fall, Sin and Redemption, Jesus Christ and his Church. Generally, each question has a succinct, common-knowledge theological maxim that is easily remembered. Most catechisms also cite their sources, most often Bible references but also including other authoritative Christian writers.

In this way, the FAQ and the Catechism offer common purpose: record not just of common knowledge, but record of the settled questions. Once a question is settled, what’s the sense in covering it again? To paraphrase a maxim of mathematics: A trivial proof is one that has already been proven. A proof, once demonstrated and proven, has little worth in being re-proven. For math, for FAQs and for theology, we aways hope to move deeper in intellectual contemplation of our subject.The other similarity lies in the centralization required to produce FAQs and Catechisms. The printing press required that a single publisher produce a catechism, much in the way that FAQs have single editors, maintainers or moderators. In order to have your question included or your answer contributed, one must pass it through some gatekeeper.

The inevitable result is schism. When one publisher doesn’t like the theology of a catechism, they publish their own, with different questions and answers. The result was piles of catechisms across the Reformation landscape: the Roman, Lutheran, Genvean, Westminster, Anglican (and more) catechisms all produced in a few short decades of each other.

This practice, though, is not reserved to Christians. The newsgroup comp.sys.apple2 suffered a FAQ schism in the 1990s, with two independent versions of the FAQ being maintained by different writers. Try searching Google Groups for “Nathan and the FAQ dilemma” and 1997. I suspect that the sometimes parallel Big 7 and alt.* hierarchies also contributed to this, but I don’t have any concrete examples.

Since 2001, Wiki technology has started to make the FAQ obsolete. The problem is no longer resolving old questions made obscure in expired discussions. The problem has become finding the answer amidst the quarter-million Google results when I search for “10.5.1 update problem.” Making a searchable Wiki on a topic can solve this.

One side effect is the de-centralizing effect of the Wiki. Most Internet folk are aware of Wikipedia, which bills itself as the encyclopedia that “anyone can edit.” (Recent scandal notwithstanding.) Unlike having a FAQ editor or a Catechism publisher, the Wiki does not require an authoritative gatekeeper.

Can the Catechism be similarly decentralized? What would we come up with if we had one that was a Wiki that anyone could edit? What would its theology look like? What would the first question and starting point be?

I don’t expect that this Catechism would ever become an official doctrinal statement for a church, but it doesn’t have to. Whether the result is orthodox or heretical, that isn’t the point, the experiment is enough; it’s more proof-of-concept rather than final product.

There are any number of Christian blogs and Christian culture-followers like GodTube. I haven’t yet seen someone turn this kind of Christian institution loose on a de-centralized and democratic medium like the Wiki. Anyone want to register wikicatechism.org?

The Monsanto House of the Future: 1960s vision

From Boing Boing:

The Monsanto House is one of my favorite lost Disneyland attractions, the epitome of goofy, futuristic industrial optimism. The fridge even had a compartment for “irradiated food!” The plastic materials were so hardy that they reportedly stayed fresh and clean looking for decades, despite the trammelling of millions of feet, and the legend has it that the wrecker’s ball just bounced off of it, necessitating deconstruction by force majeure (e.g., a blow-torch and chainsaws).

Noticing the disparities in technology is just laughable and fun. Seeing a hideaway “cold zone” for irradiated food with no provision for TV, cell phones or home computers just doesn’t fit with the real home of 2007. More than anything, the Monsanto House of the Future video completely misses that any social change will happen in the forty intervening years.

The Lady of the House wants nothing more than the kitchen with the perfect amenities and plastic housewares: tough, beautiful and easy-to-clean. The various men in the film are the career holders: breadwinners in the home and the architects, builders and designers. The son wants military toys and the daughter seems to need nothing in her room but a mirror and brush.

This thoroughly-1960s vision is also shown in The Jetsons: career-man George and housewife Jane (who can’t even drive (fly?) a car!) form an opposite-sex nuclear family cared for by a robot with a slight southern mammy lilt.

To think that everything about technology can change except us is a vision right from the 1960s. Our technology and media work over us completely and change who we are. The house of the future can only have the family of the future living in it. In the age after the split atom, the nuclear family does not stand. Marshall McLuhan would have a fit if he were to visit this display!

View it on YouTube: Part 1, Part 2.