{"id":6439,"date":"2015-11-12T06:02:30","date_gmt":"2015-11-12T14:02:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=6439"},"modified":"2015-11-12T06:02:30","modified_gmt":"2015-11-12T14:02:30","slug":"media-technology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/media-technology\/","title":{"rendered":"Media & Technology"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"iPhone<\/a>

iPhone as Dinner Date, Night Market, Hong Kong<\/p><\/div>\n

Media and technology are everywhere. \u00a0As I sit here in Huntington Imaging Center waiting to get X-rays a man walks in and comments, \u201cEveryone is on a device.\u201d \u00a0I stop writing, look around and see the 15 other patients in the room all staring at a screen; most phones, but two working on laptops. \u00a0Me? \u00a0I\u2019m writing this paragraph on my phone. \u00a0What does this mean? \u00a0Is this a positive phenomenon? \u00a0I get home and around the dinner table I remind my children that their phones are to be charging in the kitchen by 10pm and that under no circumstances are they allowed to sleep with their phones. \u00a0\u201cYou must disconnect,\u201d I preach as we pass the salt and pepper around the table. \u00a0What does this mean? \u00a0Is this a positive phenomenon?<\/p>\n

Briggs\u2019, A Social History of The Media<\/i> helps me contextualize the experiences of my afternoon and evening. \u00a0Fighting against the assumptions that media is making everything worse and that media is improving everything (P2), Briggs offers a short history of media that is balanced and fascinating. \u00a0Reading this book put into perspective for me that fear and religion have gone hand-in-hand with media since it\u2019s beginning. \u00a0Even though there is no agreed upon \u201cground zero\u201d of when the phenomenon of \u201cThe Media\u201d actually started, fear and religion have always been partners with it.<\/p>\n

Fear<\/b><\/p>\n

I fear what media is doing to my children and members of my church\u2026and me. \u00a0I love my iPhone and could not be a bivocational pastor without it. \u00a0I believe, like Martin Luther did about the printing press, that my iPhone is, \u201cGod\u2019s highest gift of grace\u201d (P24). \u00a0I have the power to multitask and pastor and teach and write sermons and lesson plans in the palm of my hand. \u00a0Just like the advent of newspapers taking a more important role than pamphlets during the American Revolution (P85), my iPhone is essential to church planting. \u00a0Because of the power of technology and media accessible through my phone, I pioneered a local church here in southern California, and am planting in urban and rural Uganda.<\/p>\n

With this grace comes fear. \u00a0Just like mobs destroying the first printing press station in Russia, the \u201cpriestcraft\u201d of monks, and the subversion of power by the Greeks with their alphabet to the monopoly of power Egyptian priests had through their hieroglyphs, I am afraid my teens don\u2019t need me anymore for knowledge. \u00a0If they don\u2019t need me, then I lose control of them. \u00a0I lose power over them. \u00a0Then I start to feel the same way about the people in the church I pastor. \u00a0They don\u2019t need me to gain Biblical knowledge. \u00a0There are countless amazing sermons and Bible tools at the touch of their fingers. \u00a0I fear I will become irrelevant to my children and my flock. \u00a0Like Postman, I fear my children and my disciples have the potential to \u201camuse themselves (and their spiritual life) to death\u201d (P220).\u00a0 Briggs shows us that society has always changed as a result of media.\u00a0 Parenting and pastoring are two things that must evolve to keep up with new media!<\/p>\n

Religion<\/b><\/p>\n

Media and religion go, and have always gone, together. \u00a0Judaism, Islam, and Christianity have historically been oral cultures with the need of “face-to-face\u201d communication (P7). \u00a0According to Emile Male, Christians could learn everything they needed to learn from going to church and seeing the images and statues located there (P8). \u00a0Media for Ottoman Turks was full of sin (P14). \u00a0Sermons, books, and blogs are each significant parts of our current media frenzy. \u00a0Media has helped and hindered Christianity in America, and Christianity in America has helped grow the media. \u00a0I was especially happy to read about Thomas Malthus and his contributions through media, to not only church as a pastor, but to the field of economics as a bivocational pastor!<\/p>\n

It might seem ironic at first that one of the most recent books we are reading for this class feels so outdated. \u00a0Briggs writes about Afghanistan and Iraq with no mention of ISIS (because it didn\u2019t exist at the writing of this book) or Obama sending more troops to Syria. \u00a0Briggs\u2019 numbers on Facebook uses are well, so 2008! \u00a0Now there are billions of Facebook users and even this cohort relies heavily on Facebook. \u00a0However, upon reflection, this phenomenon is not ironic at all. \u00a0It is simply the nature of media today. \u00a0Media needs to be viewed \u201cas a system, a system of perpetual change, including technological change, in which different elements play greater or smaller roles\u201d (P 5). \u00a0Everything changes. \u00a0Today media is morphing at a increasingly rapid rate. \u00a0This causes fear, and makes me seek Jesus and His freedom more and more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Media and technology are everywhere. \u00a0As I sit here in Huntington Imaging Center waiting to get X-rays a man walks in and comments, \u201cEveryone is on a device.\u201d \u00a0I stop writing, look around and see the 15 other patients in the room all staring at a screen; most phones, but two working on laptops. \u00a0Me? […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":73,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[389,676,75],"class_list":["post-6439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-briggs","tag-dminlgp6","tag-media","cohort-lgp6"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/73"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6439"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6439\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6443,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6439\/revisions\/6443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}