Category: Web/Tech

The Volcanic Ash Cloud

As ash from the Icelandic volcano continues to blow across the UK, I am only too aware of ministry consequences from it. Tomorrow I take a funeral, and the next of kin will not be able to be present. Please pray for this family.

I also know of people returning from a mission trip in the Far East, who will be at least six days late back. They were delayed in Russia, but somehow are getting a flight to France. Then they need to travel across France and queue for a ferry.

In all this, it is interesting to see how the Internet in general and social media in particular are helping people. Rory Cellan-Jones posted an informative blog about this on the BBC website.

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Emails In Envelopes

Is this an early April Fool’s joke? Note it was published yesterday, not today, but it sounds like an April Fool to me.

It reminds me of a true story from some years ago. At one of my churches, I persuaded the Church Council to put the church office on the Internet. This was dial-up days, by the way, with fears of large phone bills for connecting.

One day, a few weeks after the deed had been done, one of my colleagues said, “Dave, I have a question for you.”

“Yes?”

“Those emails. They come in envelopes. How do they do that?”

I paused for thought. What was he on about? Then I thought I realised.

“You mean the envelope icon next to the message?”

“No,” he said, “the emails come in actual envelopes. How does that happen?”

At which point I realised. The church administrator printed off all his emails and put them in envelopes for him.

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The Domain Renewal Group Scam

I received a letter today which I am reporting to the Mailing Preference Service.It came from a company called the Domain Renewal Group. They have cheekily looked up who owns the domain for this website and written to me, expecting me to renew my domain with them. While they do talk about transferring it to them and thus stay just the right side of honesty, it is a cynical letter designed to get me to pay them, and take out ownership of other similar domains such as bigcircumstance.net and bigcircumstance.org.

Fortunately I am savvy enough to realise this is a scam and they won’t get away with it with me. However other people might be frightened into giving them money, thinking that otherwise they will lose their domains, when all they need to do is renew their registration with the company they have used up until now (in my case, WordPress). And why I should transfer to them when they cost twice the price of WordPress and I rely on the WordPress software – well, you tell me.

The company appears to be based in the USA but it came with a reply paid envelope that had a London address on it, and hence I am within my rights to report them to the MPS. I strongly suggest that anybody else in the UK who gets these letters and who is registered with the MPS also reports them. By not checking the MPS list of people who have opted out from direct mail they are breaking British law. Let’s put pressure on these cynical and unscrupulous companies.

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Internet Nominated For Nobel Peace Prize

The Nobel Committee must be having a laugh, right? Nominating the Internet for the Nobel Peace Prize – they must have gone soft in the head this last year or two. Last year Barack Obama only had to breathe and suddenly he was a Nobel Laureate, at best on grounds of aspiration, certainly not on what he had achieved after a matter of months in the Oval Office.

Yes, there are plenty of good things on the Internet, and yes, a certain proportion of it is about ‘dialogue, debate and consensus’, but then there are the flame wars, the pornography, the terrorism and government monitoring, to say nothing of the dross, the mundane, the trivial and the narcissistic.

In any case, there is much more to peace than ‘dialogue, debate and consensus’. In Judaeo-Christian terms peace involves harmony, justice, healing and reconciliation just for starters.

And who would receive the award? Tim Berners-Lee, maybe? I can’t help thinking of the story that Rod Beckstrom and Ori Brafman tell in ‘The Starfish and the Spider‘ about being quizzed by French officials years ago with a persistent question: “Who is the President of the Internet?” Despite their frequent attempts to explain its decentralised nature, their inquisitors needed an answer. Only when one of them said he was the President of the Internet were they satisfied.

So, come on Nobel Committee – tell us you just wanted to give us all a giggle.

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Is Internet Access A Human Right?

Various websites are reporting a study for the BBC in which 79% of respondents (27,000 people around the world) say that Internet access is a fundamental human right. The BBC report itself is here, and the full report in PDF is here. Tech sites such as PC Pro report it, too.

Much as I love techie stuff, I think we have to be careful about our language. I find it interesting that the lively comments on the PC Pro report are not all fawning agreement. The idea of net access as a fundamental right is described as ‘hogwash’ by one commenter and ‘a privilege’ by another.

The point in the report is one about communication. Here is one extract from the BBC news report:

“The right to communicate cannot be ignored,” Dr Hamadoun Toure, secretary-general of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), told BBC News.

“The internet is the most powerful potential source of enlightenment ever created.”

He said that governments must “regard the internet as basic infrastructure – just like roads, waste and water”.

“We have entered the knowledge society and everyone must have access to participate.”

We need to communicate. The Internet is now fundamental to that. Ergo, internet access is a fundamental human right.

‘Rights language’ is all around us. Have you noticed how politicians, when they describe some improvement in welfare or health provision, say it is what people deserve? Gordon Brown certainly does. It’s on a par with the execrable ‘Because I’m worth it’ adverts.

Am I alone in being bothered by the use of ‘human rights’ language? By the looks of those PC Pro comments, I’m not. Just to raise a doubt about human rights language today is to risk being labelled as an oppressor, but from a Christian perspective it needs challenging. In fact, I would argue such terms are used recklessly and thoughtlessly by Christians.

Why? Because – as the late Lesslie Newbigin argued – the language of human rights is secular. It arises in a post-Enlightenment society where faith in God had been relegated to the private sphere. In the public, ‘secular’ discourse, humankind was the highest rank of creature and virtually deified. Rights language is about what belongs to deities, Newbigin said. Therefore, to speak of human rights is to talk in idolatrous terms.

To many ears, this will be shocking. How else do we protect some basics of human existence? But would it not be better from a Christian perspective to speak of human dignity (because we are made in the image of God) and human need? Welfare and health provision – to return to the example of politicians – are issues of dignity and need. The ability to communicate – as Dr Touré indicates – is pretty basic to human life. Whether we all need to communicate in every which way is debatable, of course, but the fundamental need is there. If society becomes so dependent upon information via the Internet, then Christians may perceive that the gap between the information-rich and the information-poor could be a moral issue.

However, we probably need to qualify the link between the Internet and information. Firstly, it isn’t entirely the case – surely we’re not going to dignify everything from Facebook status updates to pornography with the label of ‘information’. Secondly, ‘information’ is an insufficient category for Christians. What we value is ‘wisdom’, which is more than a pile of facts: it is what moral choices we are going to make and live with those facts, in the light of God. And that is even more basic to human flourishing than information.

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How To Celebrate Your Birthday

Tomorrow, I shall do something I never achieved when batting at cricket. I shall reach a half century. After receiving an email from the Causes application on Facebook, I wondered about asking my friends to donate to a good cause. To cut a long story short, I couldn’t find any of the officially supported causes that would be just right.

However, here is a fantastic story of a man (admittedly with more abilities and connections than me) who was inspired to do something amazing for others through social media when he reached forty. Read the story of Danny Brown and be inspired. There is no hint this guy is a Christian, but there is so much we could learn from him.

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World Wide Open: A Social Network For Christian Mission?

Through reading an article on social media and the Gospel in the latest edition of the Evangelical Alliance‘s magazine ‘IDEA’, I came across World Wide Open. It’s a social network that aims to connect and empower Christians across the world in order to share expertise and thus further mission. I wondered whether anyone who reads this blog has come across it. What are your experiences?

I thought I would at least register, because some things can only be experienced from inside. The introductory videos are impressive in laying out the vision. However, beyond that, my first impression is that registration and getting going are hard work. You need to supply a lot of information, type in lots of text and click several text boxes to create the kind of profile that might lead to fruitful contact with others in the future. I’m not sure how it could be simplified, but if it could, I think that would be helpful.

Other tools could do with a different approach. There is an opportunity to blog at the site, but only by creating blog posts there. I noticed no facility to import posts from an existing blog. I would think many likely contributors already have their own blogs, and would not want to create another one. Another worthy Christian social network, Missional Tribe, and my reaction was, I don’t want to go to the effort of duplicating my posts.

The IDEA magazine article tells one or two wonderful stories of worthwhile links being created between different agencies. I hope that will come to fruition at  WWO. It says (as seems to be the fashion for a ‘Web 2.0‘ site) that it is in ‘beta‘, and that seems to be accurate to me. It isn’t quite the finished article yet, but I hope it soon will be, and become a helpful tool for the mission of God.

UPDATE, Tuesday 2nd March, 11:15 am: World Wide Open is beginning to kick into action. This morning I received an email from them with my ‘customised updates’. Based on the interests I selected when I signed up, it offers to put me in touch with other registered users. This can be on the basis of leveraging their experience, resources they have uploaded, opportunities to put faith into action, groups I might like to join and people with whom I might like to connect. Naturally, only a minority of them will prove directly relevant, but it is a start and a sign of how the site works.

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PrayNow

Right, I’m back to topical blogging. If you’ve followed my Twitter feed, you’ll know where I’ve been – Disneyland Paris. With Debbie and the children, of course. It was an advance present for a rather big birthday I have looming in the next fortnight. Too big, in fact, for my liking.

I’ll blog a bit about the experience soon, but in the meantime let me just put a marker down for something I came back to discover when I was wading through my Facebook feed. The remarkable Sir Peter of Phillips has blogged today about an excellent new initiative set up by the Methodist Church, called PrayNow. Send a text saying PRAYNOW to 82088 (at your network’s standard message rate) and you will receive free weekly texts with personal and topical prayer requests. (To stop, send STOP PRAYNOW to 82088.) Small church groups have been doing things like this for ages, and it’s good to see it taken up on a national scale. And having been somewhat wary in recent weeks about some official Methodist attitudes to social tools, it’s only right I praise what looks like a positive initiative.

Do read Pete’s article for links to other Christian-flavoured social tools, especially ones that help people interact with the Bible.

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Methodists And Social Media: Constructive Ways Forward

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I’m just using this post to draw together different initiatives in the wake of Monday’s Methodist Council decision. There is a discussion happening on my post yesterday about areas where we might draw discussions together. Matt Wardman has suggested the Methodist Recorder’s website, I have suggested using one of the existing Facebook groups for Methodists.

But meanwhile, Dave Warnock has set something up. Hats off and show your receding hairline (if you’re a man) to him! In Opening Consultation: Social Media Guidelines he tells us he has set up a Google document. If you give Dave your email address he will authorise you to edit it. Between us he hopes we can come up with a set of values for social media that authentically reflects Methodist spirituality.

And I also wanted to draw attention to something on David Hallam’s blog. In his brief post yesterday he helpfully draws our attention to an article on the Social Media Examiner about IBM’s attitude to employees’ use of social media. Essentially, it’s one full of permission and blessing, albeit backed up by guidelines. I’ve only had time for a quick skim, but at first glance it looks like a creative approach from an industry that has to understand social media. As indeed must we.

How thankful I am that people are thinking of these initiatives in order to take us beyond debate to action.

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More On Methodists And Social Media

The debate I mentioned on Tuesday continues. To mention some:

Richard Hall interviewed Toby Scott on Wednesday. Fat Prophet sees the document as similar to standard policies issued by ‘secular’ employers. Pete Phillips was consulted (as Secretary of the Faith and Order Committee) but isn’t happy. Like Pete, Matt Wardman contrasts the lengthy Methodist document with the much briefer Civil Service guidelines, which concentrate on principles and permission rather than details. Steve Jones, observing from South Africa, knows that such guidelines are normal in industry but wonders how we distinguish between legitimate debate and bringing the church into disrepute.

Other figures with something to say haven’t done so on their blogs, but in comments on other people’s posts. For example, Dave Warnock and Dave Perry. Both are members of the Methodist Council and may have therefore felt it tactful not to post before the meeting next Monday.

It seems to have escalated today. David Hallam, who got the debate going with a controversial post, has written about it passionately again today. In it, we learn more of why David is so upset:

I know of two cases already where blogging Methodists have face harassment and bullying by certain senior church officials (I stress certain, many senior Connexional officials would be shocked if they knew the full story). In the case that I know best extensive efforts were made to resolve the issue by the blogger concerned but to no avail. The Matthew 18 procedure was exhausted.

If true, this is worrying. I do know of one person who felt they were being implicitly criticised in the paper, but I don’t know anything that would fit the ‘harassment and bullying’ description David talks about. I’m still not sure I like some of David’s language – he compares the Methodist Church to Iran and China towards the end of the post – but if he has come across cases of bullying, it is little surprise he is angry.

So where are we up to, before Methodist Council discusses this issue?

Firstly, there remains disagreement on the transparency issue. Broadly speaking, those who are favourable towards the policy see the naming of the bloggers who were consulted as a red herring, while those who have reservations see it as important. In my limited surfing, I have only seen some Methodist bloggers say they weren’t consulted. I have not yet seen anyone say they were. Please let me know if I am mistaken.

Secondly, the debate so far illustrates the problems we have with confidentiality, privacy and Internet openness. In today’s piece, David Hallam fears that Dave Warnock is alluding to a potential retreat from publishing papers online as a result. I hadn’t read Dave that way, and I don’t see him as ‘authoritarian’ as David describes him – that’s not the Dave I know at all. But perhaps we need to distinguish between confidentiality and privacy, if that doesn’t sound too strange. What I mean is this: as a minister, I am committed to confidentiality apart from in exceptional circumstances (for example, if someone made an allegation about child abuse). However, even if the discussion papers for Methodist Council were once private, it must have been the Council that agreed to them being publicly available ahead of time on the web. Once you’ve done that on the Internet, the genie is out of the bottle, and any retreat – if that is indeed contemplated – will look very bad indeed.

Thirdly, we have an issue about acceptable behaviour in meetings. Can you text, tweet or surf during a council, committee or conference? I am no multi-tasker and I would find that difficult. However, I have to accept that others can – unlike me – multi-task. Everyone will agree it is important to give attention to the business being discussed, but we have to face up to personality differences – and to the fact that not everyone can find every minute of every business meeting riveting. And yes, as a young minister I’m afraid it was my practice to take a good book to District Synod!

Finally, in the long run, this may prove to be a storm in a green Methodist tea cup, or it may involve serious issues of principle and practice. My prayer is that we can all ‘speak the truth in love’ as we work through it. One commenter on Richard’s original post is worried about the tone he has seen on Methodist blogs, so it’s incumbent upon us to consider carefully how we conduct ourselves. If we turn this debate into a flame war, there could be every reason or occasion for the church authorities to consider strong guidelines. We need an authentic Christian witness in blogging that carries passion without flaming and love without wimping out. Surely we can do that?

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