Posts
2/05/2011 05:39:00 PM
David Michels
It wasn't so long ago I using telnet on dialup to access the library catalogue. Can you remember back pre-internet? We phoned people, even wrote letters...on paper...with stamps! No email. No Youtube. Not even google. This week Egypt went back to the pre-Internet days when the government pulled the plug of internet and cell networks to quell protests. In Canada we have the CRTC decision which might mean the end of unlimited internet downloads. Just when iTunes and Netflix started having more to watch than cable. Coincidence?
Life is become entangled with the internet these days. I've been thinking of the churches that have enthusiastically adopted technology. New forms of church have been created that exist because of the internet. What would happen if the internet went away?
It would hard to go back, but as the people of Egypt quickly discovered there are other ways to spread the message. And churches have been very adept at using media to communicate long before the internet. Back in the 1940s Billy Graham's radio program "Hour of Decision", in the 1950s he moved to television and film. Film has long been important to communicate faith. In Mediating Religion there is an interesting essay that described the Roman Catholic church's congress on film in 1928, and notes the first papal encyclical Vigilanti Cura on cinema and social communication was issued in 1936! Though email is supplanting it, many churches still have the phone prayer chain to spread announcements to their members faster than any shampoo commercial! It never ceased to amaze me how fast news spread in my country pastorates; we'd have a church meeting in one village, and before I arrived in the next village everyone seemed to know what happened at the meeting. Beat that twitter!
I wouldn't want to give up the internet; but the world wouldn't end either.
Enjoy this Today show clip from 1994: "What is the internet anyway?"
Life is become entangled with the internet these days. I've been thinking of the churches that have enthusiastically adopted technology. New forms of church have been created that exist because of the internet. What would happen if the internet went away?
It would hard to go back, but as the people of Egypt quickly discovered there are other ways to spread the message. And churches have been very adept at using media to communicate long before the internet. Back in the 1940s Billy Graham's radio program "Hour of Decision", in the 1950s he moved to television and film. Film has long been important to communicate faith. In Mediating Religion there is an interesting essay that described the Roman Catholic church's congress on film in 1928, and notes the first papal encyclical Vigilanti Cura on cinema and social communication was issued in 1936! Though email is supplanting it, many churches still have the phone prayer chain to spread announcements to their members faster than any shampoo commercial! It never ceased to amaze me how fast news spread in my country pastorates; we'd have a church meeting in one village, and before I arrived in the next village everyone seemed to know what happened at the meeting. Beat that twitter!
I wouldn't want to give up the internet; but the world wouldn't end either.
Enjoy this Today show clip from 1994: "What is the internet anyway?"
