Digital Civilization

zero-cost distribution has turned sharing into an industry

I raise an apostolic voice of warning about the potentially stifling, suffocating, suppressing, and constraining impact of some kinds of cyberspace interactions and experiences upon our souls. The concerns I raise are not new; they apply equally to other types of media, such as television, movies, and music. But in a cyber world, these challenges are more pervasive and intense. I plead with you to beware of the sense-dulling and spiritually destructive influence of cyberspace technologies that are used to produce high fidelity and that promote degrading and evil purposes.

Brothers and sisters, please understand. I am not suggesting all technology is inherently bad; it is not. Nor am I saying we should not use its many capabilities in appropriate ways to learn, to communicate, to lift and brighten lives, and to build and strengthen the Church; of course we should. But I am raising a warning voice that we should not squander and damage authentic relationships by obsessing over contrived ones.

both individuals and societies needed to learn how to adapt to and manage the sources of over-rapid change.

Possibly the best section in the book is that on education. Here he advanced a powerful critique: ‘what passes for education today, even in our ‘best’ schools and colleges, is a hopeless anachronism.’ He then added: for all this rhetoric about the future, our schools face backwards towards a dying system, rather than forwards to an emerging new society. Their vastenergies are applied to cranking out Industrial Men - people tooled for survival in a system that will be dead before they are. (2) The thesis was then advanced that the prime objective of education should be to ‘increase the individual’s ‘cope-ability’ - the speed and economy with which he can adapt to continual change.’ (3) Central to this was ‘the habit of anticipation’. Assumptions, projections, images of futures would need to become part and parcel of every individual’s school experience.

This is in many ways a wonderful thing. There is strength in weak ties, as the sociologist Mark Granovetter has observed. Our acquaintances—not our friends—are our greatest source of new ideas and information. The Internet lets us exploit the power of these kinds of distant connections with marvellous efficiency. It’s terrific at the diffusion of innovation, interdisciplinary collaboration, seamlessly matching up buyers and sellers, and the logistical functions of the dating world. But weak ties seldom lead to high-risk activism.

The evangelists of social media don’t understand this distinction; they seem to believe that a Facebook friend is the same as a real friend and that signing up for a donor registry in Silicon Valley today is activism in the same sense as sitting at a segregated lunch counter in Greensboro in 1960.

The most awesome 450 page presentation ever." That's how the authors call this slide show—and I agree. It is awesome. But knowing that it was made using only Google Docs and no extra software whatsoever, makes it truly unbelievable.