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The future according to Microsoft

By Rosie Perera | March 3, 2009 at 11:06 pm

A friend of mine collected several videos by Microsoft envisioning the future of technology.

http://yapdates.blogspot.com/2009/03/future-according-to-microsoft.html

There are some cool ideas there. I was intrigued to see that in Microsoft’s view of the future, people will still walk into a bank brank and interact with a human being when getting a loan. Handshakes are not a thing of the past, according to this vision.

But I do have concerns about the amount of visual stimulation in such a world, and the emphasis on touch only as a way of manipulating information and images, rather than a way of sensing textures and temperatures. It looks like a world where being in control is the number one priority.

While I’m sure there are wonderful benefits to being able to cure diseases and identify plants instantaneously with technology (as one of the segments in the first video showed), gone is the hallowed sense of time, and the loving interaction with the created world. Everything is mediated through a gadget. When the stethoscope was first invented, people shuddered at the thought that doctors would no longer be listening directly to patients’ chests and diagnosing by physical touch, but there would be this new-fangled technology intervening between them. That is much less personal care. We’ve come far beyond that now, and it looks like it’s only going to get better/worse in the future. There are always trade-offs for improved living conditions.

There’s no doubt that some of this vision of Microsoft’s will become a reality. But will we Christians be at the forefront of making sure the new technology is as human-friendly as possible, or will we take a back seat and let it be “done unto us” and then only have the option of avoidance vs. wholehearted adoption of the new technology?

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Doing technology is Kingdom work!

By Rosie Perera | December 29, 2008 at 1:00 pm

I came upon a recent wall post on the “Christians in Technology” Facebook group: “For ‘Caesar’ I do server maintenance. For God, I am a Sunday School teacher.” I couldn’t let that go by without a comment.

I believe that whatever we do in the world we do for God. Kingdom work is more than just “Christian ministry.” Doing God’s work with our technology skills means more than just using them for the church or missions, or to make money to send to church/missions, or as a platform for evangelism to our co-workers.

“For whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” (1 Cor 10:31). We serve the Lord when we serve people, and we serve people when we help them solve their problems with our technology know-how. We aren’t working just for Caesar, but for customers, users, individuals, newbies with computer phobias, bosses and teammates with families they need to feed. Think of them whenever you work.

We are made in the image of a Creator God, which means when we use our inventiveness to create technology, we are imaging God. When God saw what he had made, he called it good. We are of course fallen creatures, and not all that we make with our technology is put to good purposes. But an awful lot of it is, and should be recognized as such. It’s OK to look back, on our Sabbath day, at what we have made during the week and offer it up to God as a good and pleasing gift to him. He did, after all, give us the creation mandate, to take care of this earth, which involves creating tools and techniques with which to manage it and develop its fruitfulness. The root word of ‘culture’ and ‘culivate’ is the same. When we create human culture (including technology) we are cultivating the earth. Notice that while the Bible begins in a garden, it ends in a city, the New Jerusalem. In the final consummation of the Kingdom, all the nations of the earth will bring their gifts, their glory, honor, wealth, yes I believe even their technology, to the New Jerusalem. (Rev. 21).

Finally, we are using our God-given gifts when we create and use our technology. According to the Old Testament, humankind is “ordained to work, keeping always in mind the sanctity of the Sabbath.” (Samuel Florman, The Existential Pleasures of Engineering, 112) The engineer, like Bezalel, is “filled…with the spirit of God, with skill, ability and knowledge in all kinds of crafts.” (Ex. 31:3, NIV)

I used to feel a conflict between what I did for my work (software engineering, which I was good at and had fun doing) and the “higher calling” of doing work for God’s Kingdom. But I no longer believe in a two-tiered system of God’s work and worldly work. All work is Kingdom work, when done in the spirit of cultivating God’s creation to be pleasing to him and to be of service to the people he created and loves.

To paraphrase Eric Liddell in The Chariots of Fire: “When I program, I feel God’s pleasure.”

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The End of the Internet

By Rosie Perera | November 15, 2008 at 1:58 pm

These are some of my favorite “end of the internet” pages:

http://www.weirdity.com/internet/eoti.html
http://mdesmond.com/end-of-the-internet
http://www.endoftheinternet.com
http://shibumi.org/eoti.htm
http://home.earthlink.net/~thesandpit/misc/the_end.htm
http://webnme.com/endoftheinternet.html

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Serendipty

By Rosie Perera | November 15, 2008 at 1:21 pm

My cousin, who is a librarian, recently sent me this quote from Annie Proulx: “I mourn the loss of the old card catalogs, not because I’m a luddite, but because the oaken trays of yesteryear offered the researcher an element of random utility and felicitous surprise through encounters with adjacent cards, information by chance that is different in kind from the computer’s ramified but rigid order.”

While I do think the loss of the tactile dimension of the old wooden drawers in dusty libraries is profound, I disagree that serendipity is gone with computers. Hyperlinks on the Internet can easily mimic with lightning speed what discoveries from adjacent cards used to provide. Want to see other books by the same author? Click on the author’s name in an Amazon.com description of a book. Many online library catalogs have a browse search mode where you can look at adjacent titles. A daily visit to Google Books shows some new random titles each day. Websites that are part of a “webring” link to others on similar subjects and you can discover all kinds of stuff you might never have known about. I don’t think I have any shortage of “felicitous surprise” when surfing the Web. As evidence of that, here are the interesting websites I’ve stumbled upon in the past month (I keep track of any cool new finds in my web “travelogue” file):

November 14, 2008
Quantcast – “The World’s Only Open Internet Ratings Service”; “Quantcast is a new media measurement service that enables advertisers to view audience reports for millions of sites and services to build their brands with confidence.”

November 13, 2008
Tribe – free, member-created groups for every interest – discussions, photos, listings and more; tribes; pretty useless – too many tribes, too much garbage, not enough refinement in the top-level browsing feature
DotSUB – Any video any language; translations of videos

November 11, 2008
Roaring Twenties database

October 22, 2008
Google Guide – tutorial for Google, not affiliated with Google

October 17, 2008
WADP (World Association for the Development of Philately) Numbering System – database of all authentic postage stamps issued by Universal Postal Union (UPU) member countries and territories on or after January 1, 2002.

No, I don’t think we are lacking in delightful discoveries from random walks through the Web as a replacement for library catalogues. If anything, the opposite is the case. It is too easy to discover all kinds of random curiosities and fill our attention with stuff we don’t really need to know about. At least with the physical library catalogue, you could stop when you’d had enough, and you weren’t overloaded with all the lingering evidence of your meanderings. There would have been no temptation to revisit your trails through the “History” in your browser or to mark websites in your “Favorites” for further exploration some rainy day when you felt like wasting more time. In the olden days, you could write down only so much interesting trivia on a pad of paper you had with you, and that was the end of it.

Annie Proulx has it wrong. We have no shortage of serendipity and “felicitous surprise” in the computer information age — we are drowning in it. Far from directing our attention only to rigidly ordered information, the Internet opens up never-ending branches towards new nodes to explore. And we never get to the end of it.

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Think Critically, Act Ethically

By Rosie Perera | November 15, 2008 at 12:33 am

Last week (November 3-7) was National Media Education Week in Canada. The Media Awareness Network, who organized it, posted this video to help publicize it:

Here are some excerpts from their website:

Media education is the process through which individuals become media literate – able to critically understand the nature, techniques and impacts of media messages and productions.

In the digital age, the principles of media education are the same as they’ve always been, but the existence of cyberspace is adding new and challenging questions. How, for instance, does technology affect how we relate to others? Is new technology enriching or undermining culture, learning and a sense of community? What roles do ownership, control and access play? What are the challenges in regulating a global, borderless medium like the Internet?

Interesting things to think about.

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Discipline for the Technologist

By Rosie Perera | August 24, 2008 at 2:34 am

I am not sure whether there is an accepted generic term for those of us who have vocations in technology: programmers, web designers, games developers, software test engineers, database administrators, network administrators, IT managers, and computer geeks of all kinds. I will use the term technologists.

Co-blogger Wan Phek How and I (both technologists ourselves), along with members of the Technology and Theology Group at Regent College, have been in conversation trying to come up with a set of disciplines to help people develop the sort of relationship with technology that maintains a healthy spiritual life.

My friend David Taylor, author of the blog Diary of an Arts Pastor, has recently posted a portion of a talk he gave in which he shared five thoughts on discipline for the artist. But I realized they can apply equally well, with a bit of tweaking, to the technologist. Here they are with my tweaks (brackets and ellipses to show my minor changes, italics for major new additions). You can read the original text here.

—FIVE THOUGHTS ABOUT DISCIPLINE —

1) The disciplines of a disciple of Jesus entail the reconstruction of our whole self. No part is left off. Every faculty of our person has been damaged—head, heart, hand—every faculty requires the re-habituation of its appetites away from sin toward Christ’s good order.

[So many of us] reduce our Christian faith to a set of activities that only addresses parts of our person. For instance, we feed our [minds] with great head knowledge but leave [ourselves] emotionally debilitated. We…study and pray, but neglect…the disciplines of feasting and silence.

The result of our compartmentalized discipleship? We end up as programmers who write world-class software but are immature and egotistical (I know; I worked for a company that seemed to attract such people, and I was one of them!), or web designers who are experts at their craft but who are addicted to the Internet, spend their entire lives online, and have no in-person interpersonal skills.

It’s important for us to remember that a dysfunction in one part of our person will negatively affect the whole. What we need is a model, both comprehensive and sensible, for disciplined life that brings about the God-superintended restoration of our whole person.

2) The disciplines are God’s instruments of grace. They are our way of reverently cooperating with the initiating and sustaining work of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Dallas Willard:

“No one ever says, ‘If you want to be a great athlete, go vault eighteen feet, run the mile under four minutes’, or ‘If you want to be a great musician, play the Beethoven violin concerto’. Instead we advise the young artist or athlete to enter a certain kind of overall life, one involving deep associations with qualified people as well as rigorously scheduled time, diet, and activity for the mind and body.”

The disciplines are what strengthen our muscles so that we can become the kinds of persons who do the good “naturally.”

3) Learning a new way of being a human being is hard work. All kinds of forces, inside us and outside, fight against this renovating work. My craving for approval, for example, may lead me to avoid conflict at all costs, including the cost of truly being known. I have to choose—every day—to adopt the kind of habits that will enable me to become a different kind of person, the kind God exultantly imagined before the foundations of the world.

But while plenty hard at first, the way of Jesus eventually becomes easy. “My yoke is easy and my burden is light,” he once said, and he wasn’t speaking theoretically. He was speaking plainly.

…

4) The consequence of living an undisciplined life, or as Eugene Peterson puts it, an “unscripted life,” is that we become governed by our inordinate appetites. They sabotage our best efforts to grow up. We find [ourselves] using TV, internet, food, books, or busyness to medicate the pain of a deep loneliness and sense of failure.

What the disciplines do is re-orient, day by day, baby step by unexciting baby step, our appetites away from destructive habits towards the narrow way of Christ that leads to life.

5) The disciplines are best practiced in a community of friends. What kind? You only need three. You need 3 friends who are doggedly constant in their love for you; the kind who will walk with you everywhere, loving you no matter what and who are not afraid to tell you when you’re full of crap—a crappy attitude, crappy behavior, or crappy technology.

[Apologies to David for taking liberties with his writing.]

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A Prayer before Logging onto the Internet

By Rosie Perera | July 21, 2008 at 11:33 pm

Saint Isidore of Seville (c. 560 – 636) is the patron saint of computer technicians and Internet users. He was the Archbishop of Seville for more than three decades. A great scholar, he was the first Christian writer to compile a summa, or encyclopedia, of universal knowledge. It was cross-indexed, so it could be considered one of the first relational databases.

Saint Isidore

This prayer invoking St. Isidore is from Catholic Online:

Almighty and eternal God, who created us in Thy image and bade us to seek after all that is good, true and beautiful, especially in the divine person of Thy only-begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, grant we beseech Thee that, through the intercession of Saint Isidore, bishop and doctor, during our journeys through the internet we will direct our hands and eyes only to that which is pleasing to Thee and treat with charity and patience all those souls whom we encounter.
Through Christ our Lord.
Amen.

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Good Technology, Bad Technology: How do we tell the difference?

By Wan Phek How | July 16, 2008 at 3:48 pm

Always on, always available, always connected—these are the buzzwords regularly touted by successful technology companies. Popular websites like Facebook and YouTube, powered by simple Web 2.0 tools, enable a broad range of users to author and share personalized web content. To improve efficiency and productivity, businesses demand technology that is standardized, modular, and easy to maintain.

Are these criteria—uninterrupted availability, personalization, standardization, modularity, ease of maintenance—sufficient to determine whether or not a particular technology is ultimately good? We can argue that it is necessary that the power grid, the phone network, and the Internet are always on, available and connected. But it may not be so wonderful for a person to be always in contact and reachable. Simply put, an “always-contactable” person is an “always-interruptible” person. A cell phone is great when you are lost, stranded, or in an emergency—help is just a call away. But it’s an utter nuisance when you are sharing an intimate moment and the client, telemarketer, or, worse still, a computer calls. These interruptions of down-time, away from the workplace, used to happen to a small group of professionals in the event of emergency. Nowadays, face-to-face conversations, a quiet stroll in the park, a sustained period of reading or listening to music, and a restful day in the sun are all fair game for electronic interruptions.

The success of Web 2.0 technologies is related to its ease of use, ability to connect to a global community, and its lack of censorship. Blogs and YouTube videos are important tools for democracy. In Malaysia, where the mass media backs the ruling party, the opposition gained five of thirteen states in the 2008 general election, aided in no small part to thousands of bloggers and the effective use of YouTube. In 2007, when the video of a Polish immigrant being tasered by RCMP officers at Vancouver International Airport was posted on YouTube, the ensuing public outcry sparked eight separate investigations and a public inquiry.

For all the good it has done, Web 2.0 technology does have its downside. For better or worse, it is changing the way we relate. What does friendship mean when we spend more and more time swapping videos, email, and text messages with friends? Electronic communications potentially shield us from the emotional nuances of face-to-face interactions. Email firings and divorce by text messaging spare the sender from engaging with the receipient’s negative feelings. The flip side is we do not participate in the happy emotions of friends who receive good news or a humourous video.

In the business world, it is no longer just about being big. Increasingly, it is about being fast. Standardized technology and streamlined processes promote efficiency and speed. Fast business is run by high performance professionals who can multi-task in a competitive environment. This fast pace of life, however, is detrimental to the overall health of workers. Sustained stress with no respite eventually leads to fatigue and burnout. The high-speed, multitasking lifestyle of the work week should be balanced by inefficient rest during the weekend. The problem arises when we continue to run at a fast pace through the weekend, routinely checking and responding to work email along with personal email. Perhaps, technology that is good should turn off when we want it to.

A mobile phone company in the Middle East has a service which automatically reminds Muslims of the five daily prayer times. There may be a market for cell phones with two numbers, one for work and the other for personal use, with the ability to turn either one on or off independently. This suggestion modifies the technology mantra of “always on, always available, always connected” with “only when we choose.”

While technology allows us to extend our human ability to do more, faster, its unintended consequences are at best ambivalent. We need wisdom to use technology without its biting us back. The overuse of technology may be harmful to our physical, emotional, and spiritual health. Over dependence on convenient electronic communications may weaken the social fabric of the communities where we work, live, and play.

As such, we need to recognize that the common criteria used to evaluate technology come from the world of business and work. Is this technology profitable for business? What technology will increase the production of mass manufactured goods? Will this technology speed up the delivery of services? These are not necessarily wrong criteria—but they are limited criteria. As we grow increasingly sophisticated in our use of technology, we need to ask, “Is this particular use of technology good for me? Is it good for us?”

Here are some additional criteria for evaluating technology. Does this technology help me rest well and restore my energy? Does it help to build deep bonds, strong relationships, and promote intimacy? Does this technology, by its scale, reach and control structure, give me power or leaves us powerless? Whether technology is good or bad depends on our exercising judgment, discernment, and wisdom in our choice of technology. With 99% uptime readily available, technology in and of itself has matured. Our next challenge is to grow increasingly mature in how we use technology for our good.

This article was first published electronically by the Work Research Foundation on 9 May, 2008 at http://wrf.ca/comment/article.cfm?ID=550

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Internet Addiction

By Rosie Perera | May 8, 2008 at 4:47 pm

I couldn’t help chuckling at the irony of this, the left sidebar on the home page of the Center for Internet Addiction Recovery (snippet shown at left here).

So you’ve got an Internet addiction? No worries! Spend time on our website, reading our blog, shopping online in our bookstore, chatting in our addiction support group. Join our mailing list, and email this page to a friend, so you won’t be all alone in your addiction!

While this is amusing, Internet addiction (a.k.a. addictive technology disorder, technology obsessive compulsive disorder, etc.) is serious business, and very hard to overcome. There is some debate whether it is really a diagnosable condition, or whether it is just another way (like too much TV) that people have of avoiding relationships or numbing pain. But then again, alcohol and drug addictions often serve that purpose too.

Unlike with substance abuse or gambling/pornography addictions, complete abstinence from computer or Internet use is not realistic in this day and age. Most people who struggle with this problem need to use computers for their work or school. And while it is still possible to pay bills, buy plane tickets, and get driving directions the old fashioned way, Internet access is becoming increasingly essential for all but the homeless.

So Internet addiction, if it can really be called an “addiction,” is more akin to eating disorders, where you need to learn how to manage the amount you consume, what you consume, in what contexts, and learn to be healthy about it.

Here are a few suggestions to help control Internet addiction: