Douglas Rushkoff, Prophet of Our Era

This one’s been killing me for a few days.

I love me some Douglas Rushkoff. From this documentary to this media primer, and from this comic to this economics text, Rushkoff’s stuff influences my thinking about our culture and the church’s relationship to it as much as anything I read or watch or listen to. It never fails.

Rushkoff addressed the SXSW interactive festival a couple of weeks ago. The above video contains clips from that talk. Watch the thing. Here are some money quotes, though:

“We are attempting to operate our society on obsolete code.”

“If you are not a programmer, you are one of the programmed. It’s that simple.”

“And now we get the computer. Do we get a nation of programmers? No, we get a nation of bloggers. We write in the box that Google gives us.”

“Text gave us Judaism. The printing press gave us protestantism. What does this one [the computer] give us?”

For churches, what does this one give us? That seems to have been the question driving Theology After Google, and it’s the itch I’m scratching while reading What Would Google Do?

As for an answer? I can’t say for certain, but I’m a bit worried.

The early evidence suggests that this one gives churches Facebook pages, populated by comments like, “What should we use this Facebook page for?” This one gives churches online giving. This one gives churches websites that are either miserable because they don’t understand the web and so function as online marquees or stellar because they do understand the web and so can manipulate traffic through Search Engine Optimization.

Program or be programmed: that’s Rushkoff’s maxim. How do churches program? Somebody please tell me. I don’t have any positive answers or illustrations or examples.

Maybe start with the negative questions first: how do churches avoid being programmed by the technology? How do churches learn the biases of the media the culture is using? How do churches help people (inside the church and out) understand those biases as well?

I’ve toyed with the idea of a media literacy unit for the church youth. Rushkoff makes that notion suddenly feel urgent.

Tony Jones on Theology after Google

Tony Jones has a quick nod to Tripp Fuller and Philip Clayton for their work on Theology after Google, even as he acknowledges some of the events frustrations:

. . . because of that quality, the participants walked away somewhat disappointed. That’s because this was a demanding group, and because events, by their nature are bound to disappoint. Someone’s constituency is always underrepresented; someone else’s ego not sufficiently stroked; and someone else is convinced they could have given a superior presentation (which surely they could have).

Tony’s right about this. It’s one of the liabilities of “progressive-ism” and its attendant diversity that several agendas are operating at once.

Conservative evangelical Christianity in the United States has done its work largely by flattening out the message and limiting the participants (and therefore the views).

That’s bad theology and bad church practice.

But it works better to create a movement.

Theology after Google in the LA Times

The LA Times’ Mitchell Landsberg was at last week’s Theology after Google and filed this story in today’s paper.

Here’s the money quote:

At least half the audience multi-tasked on laptops, iPhones and BlackBerrys while listening to speakers. And many contributed comments in the form of Twitter “tweets” that were constantly scrolling up a screen behind the podium. In addition to those in attendance in Claremont, organizers said about 1,300 people watched a streaming video feed of the conference from around the world.

Oh, and this:

The consensus [of the conference]: It’s a whole new world out there. Churches will ignore it at their peril.

Theology after Google

“Theology after Google” was billed as a conversation about leveraging new technologies and networks for transformative ministry, and that’s what it delivered. I have to say the first few hours were disorienting and, frankly, a little chaotic. To some, the chaos betrayed a lack of discipline. But I was having fun. I’ve never been enough of a cool kid to see a TED Talk or participate in a Twitter backchannel, but Theology after Google encouraged (nay, implored!) us to do those things, and it was thoroughly engaging.

Notably, a conversation with Jeff Jarvis via Skype on conference’s second morning left me fascinated. Five minutes into it, I leaned over to my friend and said, “Okay, this event just paid for itself.” I’ve been reading Jarvis for nearly five years, and this was close enough to being a face-to-face conversation that it gave me shivers.

Also, a seminary classmate who now teaches at the University of California Riverside and contributes to Religion Dispatches brought us all to our senses late in the afternoon of the second day. Dr. Jonathan Walton warned us about neglecting face-to-face relationships in our enthusiasm over virtual ones. His wife, he said, has no problem slamming shut his laptop and instructing him to “Tell your 800 Facebook friends that you need to talk to your one wife.” Listening to his talk gave me a surge of pride, as I repeated to anyone who would listen: “I played flag football with that guy!”

I had plenty of critiques of things that were said, and I’m not ready to give Google and Facebook a churchy hi-five quite yet. But neither are lots of people who participated in this event. It’s a conversation–one that I’m happy to be part of.