Comments on: Four Questions for Technology from the Biblical Story

By: The New Possibilities in Book Publishing and the Implications of New Media – Justin Taylor

Sat, 06 Mar 2010 18:02:21 +0000

[...] with any new technology, as John Dyer has helpfully laid out, you can ask the following questions (with mobile phones given as [...]

By: John Dyer

John Dyer — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 02:00:47 +0000

Drew, always good to hear from you! I’d love to talk sometime soon and hear more about the Center for Church Communication.

By: Drew Goodmanson

Drew Goodmanson — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 21:49:32 +0000

Creation-Fall-Redemption-Restoration, Goheen, McLuhan….this conversation is a foretaste of heaven for us church/tech/media geeks.

By: John Dyer

John Dyer — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 12:27:16 +0000

I like the general purpose nature of Goheen’s approach. I was trying to figure out a way to include the Postman-like unintended consequences while also distinguishing it from tech usage that is outright sin. Thanks for giving me something else to think on.

By: Matt

Matt — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 09:50:23 +0000

The questions next to your 4 R's are reminiscent of the approach by Michael Goheen that I comment on at http://mcclarke.blogspot.com/2009/09/michael-goheen-spoke-on-hope-103.html.

By: Facebook Isn’t the Problem…But Maybe Your Marriage Is

Facebook Isn’t the Problem…But Maybe Your Marriage Is — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 23:05:17 +0000

[...] Four Laws of Media, or the tetrad of media effects. John does this in his most recent post, Four Questions for Technology from the Biblical Story. In fact, John goes a step further and comes up with his own “tetrad of technology in the [...]

By: Sean Patterson

Sean Patterson — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 21:37:05 +0000

Woot! I love BlogEngine.Net, though I still need to tweak out my theme a bit. I know who to talk to now if I need some help figuring out my custom widget or something. 8^D

But back on topic, thanks for your feedback. It gives me some more meat to chew on, and I’m reading over the entire post again for some new insights. Keep up the great stuff. Just put more in your code blog. 8^D

By: John Dyer

John Dyer — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:35:43 +0000

Sean,
Great question. Certainly a site like that would have display a lot of the creativity that God has given us (Reflection). On the Redemptive side of things, you’re right to point out that different people might perceive things differently and its effectiveness would be hard to pull off. I can’t really think of any Rebellious things that you could do with a site like that beyond what you mentioned with spam. Then on the Restoration side, the unintended consequences that make us long for Jesus’ return could be that using websites and twitter for prayer could make prayer time more distracting and less focused.

From a purely practical standpoint, it seems like prayer management is sort of like task management in that different people find different organization schemes more or less helpful. So if you see a niche our there that isn’t covered, it might be helpful to build it.

PS. It’s fun to see you’re using BlogEngine.NET. I am a member of that open source team :)

By: Sean Patterson

Sean Patterson — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:13:10 +0000

Excellent stuff! Lots to chew on here.

As a fellow programmer, how do you see applications that your write (or potentially new ones bubbling up in your head) apply to this model?

For instance, after your recent post about the “prayer pager” and a family emergency we had last week, I started pondering applying this concept to a “prayer twitter network” type thing. I’ve seen a few things out there that seem to be the same, but I think the implementation is a little off. Say you have a prayer request and submit it to a page. Then as folks opt to pray for this, you get a tweet indicating they are praying for you.

Part of me thinks this is a great idea to help put a “tangibleness” to a literally global array of folks praying for you. Part of me thinks this could be just a cheesy abuse (yet again) of the twitter front that would result in a bunch of spam.

Thoughts?

By: John Dyer

John Dyer — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 14:07:13 +0000

Paul, yes I think some of McLuhan’s tetrad can be used to help flesh out the Redemptive tetrad.

With the redemptive tetrad, I’ve tried to separate intentionally bad uses of technology (Rebellion) from unintentional bad outcomes (Restoration). We Christians are great at identifying the bad uses, but we’re not so good at identifying these unintentional side effects that technology often brings.

Since McLuhan’s tetrad is not designed to offer moral judgments on technological change, it can be helpful in teasing out and thinking through some of these side effects. Hope that helps!