Chapter 5 covered by Paul Steinbrueck as part of our Group Blogging Project discussing the book Flickering Pixels by Shane Hipps. If you need a quick overview to what Flickering Pixels is about, please go here.
Who is the Antichrist? Barrack Obama? Osama Bin Laden? Harry Potter? Um, he’s not even a real person?
No, the Antichrist is… [roll the creepy music]… Samuel F.B. Morse.
If you slept through history class, Morse is the guy who invented the telegraph. Legend has it this devious device was hand delivered from the bowels of Hades to Morse’s laboratory by none other than the Prince of Darkness himself in exchange for his soul…. Or so one Shane Hipps would have us all believe.
The evil invention of the telegraph has resulted in the end of civilization as we know it and led to the to the eternal demise of more than a billion souls!
The Snowball
Sure, I’m being a bit melodramatic, but in chapter 6 of Flickering Pixels, Hipps makes the case that the telegraph is the snowball that rolled down the snow-covered mountain to become the avalanche of post-modernism and moral relativism.
Prior to the invention of the telegraph, information was always communicated in context for the purpose of increasing understanding and wisdom. But with the invention of the telegraph information was ripped out of its context, and our capacity to understand it was diminished.
Since then we have moved through the eras of radio, broadcast television, cable TV, and Web 1.0 (institutions producing information for the masses). Each advance in technology has enabled more information to be produced by more people and spread faster than ever before. That has brought us to the social media era where anyone can produce an almost unlimited amount of information and disseminate it to billions of people around the world instantly.
Hipps states, “Today we are swallowed by a swarm of unrelated facts accorded equal importance.”
Not only are we left with an overwhelming quantity of information to try to sort through (much of it trivial), but we often know little about its source or the credibility of that source, which makes it difficult to know what to believe.
“I saw it on the Internet, so it must be true.” Right?
How has this Impacted Society?
The modern era was based on the underlying principle that universal truth exists for all people, in all places, for all time. In the modern era information came slowly. People had the time to pick up a piece of information like a piece of fruit – squeeze it, smell it, shake it, and put it back if something didn’t seem right.
But in today’s world people are bludgeoned by an overwhelming barrage of information. We are left to try to process hundreds of bits of information every hour. So for the most part we skim and don’t really evaluate too many things too carefully. And even when we really want to know the truth about something – What really happened on 9/11? Is there extra terrestrial life? Is there really a God? – it seems there are a thousand websites with conflicting conclusions all claiming to be experts.
It’s so much, so confusing, and so frustrating that many people have simply thrown in the towel that any universal truth can really be known.
And so here we are in the post-modern era, where…
a) You have your truth, I have my truth, and God is whoever you want Him to be, if you want Him to exist at all, and
b) We are long on facts but short on understanding and wisdom
IMO, Hipps makes a pretty good case showing the correlation between the advancement of communications technology and most-modernism. Agree? Disagree?
I think other factors have also contributed to the rise of post-modernism, but they are largely technology-related too. Transportation technology has dramatically increased world travel and immigration making it much more likely a person will live and work with people who have completely different worldviews. The busy American lifestyle has caused us to devalue reading books, deep thought, and education, leaving many adults without the background or capacity to evaluate and understand all the information they encounter.
Questions to Ponder
I came away from this chapter with two important questions I want to give more thought to – if I can find the time and capacity to do so 😉 I hope you will as well:
1) How am I responding to people with a post-modern worldview who are skeptical of universal truth and put off by the claim that Christianity is the only real faith?
2) What am I doing with technology to produce not just information but understanding and wisdom? And not just in me but in others?
Susan_Stewart says
Paul asks a question that I came away from this chapter with, "What am I doing with the glut of information? How am I trying to understand it? How am I trying to help others understand?" (O.K. three questions.)
I admit I'm not sure I have any answers, which may be a good thing. If I'm not seeking understanding and wisdom in the glut of information, I can't guide others. Seeking doesn't always mean having answers.
Hipps presents a story of evangelizing in a "Four Spiritual Laws" fashion. In the end, he realizes that he has answers to questions no one is asking. In this age of information overload, too often answers are given to questions not asked. Solutions are given for problems that haven't come up.
Another problem with so much information is the fleeting moments of truth. It is easy to divert the attention of folks. During this week's protest in Iran, one rumor was that a flare up in Israel was going to be staged. The rumor went on to say those currently in power wanted to divert attention away from Iran's problems. Had that happened, it would have worked.
How can people know and understand Absolute Truth when they can't focus on information longer than a two-year-old? How can we help bring their attention back?
It all cycles around to Paul's question, "How can we use technology to produce understanding and wisdom?"
Much for me to ponder.
Adam_S says
I agree with much of what you say, but I think I have different conclusions.
First, I think people can concentrate when they want to. So I don't think the answer is simply blaming people for having a short attention span. Yes many people have a short attention span. But the reason for that is often that there are many good things to pay attention to. If we are not giving good content then people view our content as a waste of time. Second, Absolute truth is another answer to a question that people aren't asking. Is there absolute truth, sure. But if we start with absolute truth as the answer then we have to search for a question. Start with people's questions, the truth that we have will be part of the answer.
Another point that I think that I don't think Hipps has thought about is different types of intelligence and how that affects us. At one point in history the ability to memorize long passages and repeat them back verbatim was considered the ultimate in intelligence. Now that type of intelligence is not valued as highly as a type that takes lots of information and synthesizes it. We have shifted not only in culture and our use of information but the way that we value talents. I am quite happy that I was born when I was. My talents are now valued, but I am not sure that they would have been all that valued in 1342. So part of what we do with the glut of information is help people learn to deal with it, but understand that some people are intrinsically better at dealing with information overload than others.
Susan_Stewart says
Adam wrote: "I am quite happy that I was born when I was. My talents are now valued, but I am not sure that they would have been all that valued in 1342"
Don't you think your talents would have been used differently in 1342? Or, maybe God would have given you different talents?
I'm not sure the gift and talent of writing is as appreciated today as it was 200 years ago. However, I'm still thrilled to have it.
Adam_S says
Sure I would use my talents differently, that is part of my point. The issue is that not only would I be using my talents differently, but others would value my talents differently as well.
Think of it this way. A woman that God gifted to be a prime legal mind, would (under my assumptions) have still had a fine legal mind as she was gifted in 1342, but she would not have received the training or permission to work as a lawyer. Or today there may be a smallish person that is very skilled in mathematics, but was born in the middle of Sudan during a civil war. They were never able to discover the full range of their skills and talents because the situation that they were born into would value physical skills much more than mathematical skills.
And I disagree about value of writing skills. I again think we value different types of writing now than we did 200 years ago, but not writing itself. Writing 200 years ago would have been much more concerned with form (handwriting, niceties of proper letter writing, etc.) but there were far less people employed in writing 200 years ago than there are today.
Paul Steinbrueck says
Adam, great point about different types of intelligence.
I do think people have a much more difficult time trying to concentrate than people used to. I agree that part of it is that there is a lot of interesting stuff to pay attention to, but I also think part of it is that we don't make an effort to separate ourselves from distractions when we need to concentrate. And I think part of it is we have trained our minds to rapidly jump from one task and piece of info to another that our minds are not as well trained to focus on one thing for a long period of time.
Josh Wagner says
In answer to the questions:
1) I try and respond with respect and love, but firm in the Truth. People will respect you if you listen and value their thoughts. They will be more open to listen to what you have to say.
2) I am trying to use technology to ask questions and invite conversation. And hopefully doing that with honesty.
Technology is both a blessing and a curse. Twas always thus, and always thus will be. 😉
dewde says
Good stuff, Paul!
peace|dewde
Paul Steinbrueck says
It kills me that I've been so slammed today I haven't had a chance to collect and post my thoughts on the 2 questions I posed. 🙁
SCBubba says
Good post, Paul.
I think Hipps' take on information vs wisdom is very true. Whether it was heralded by Morse and his little tappity-tap-tap may be up for debate (the telegraph was huge, I admit). It is true that many people thrive in the current information culture, but I think a lot of them are the exception and not the rule.
That is, conventional wisdom is to have tons of facts and propositions but not to really have any depth of understanding. In the US today, I think we highly value the observation and not the understanding. While we don't necessarily value the memorization of long passages or list of facts (except maybe for those in the theatre), we still value the ability to find and state those facts. We have replaced long term organic memory with access to google/twitter/blogs/RSS/etc.
To the questions:
1) I try not to bludgeon them with the Bible like it was a hammer. As with most things, I try to get a relationship going and make sure that the focus is on understanding them as much as it is on getting my point across. Many people today don't believe that you can listen and understand someone without agreeing with them.
2) I try to leverage the technologies available to go deeper and not just wider. It's hard because I am definitely a "chaser of shiny things" when it comes to information. Twitter is especially challenging because of the near endless stream of things to chase. But I've been getting better with using it to start conversations and relationships with people i would not have otherwise had the opportunity to meet. Turning those in to "real world" relationships happens sometimes. Sometimes not.