I am easily distracted…  I intended to spend my lunch hour working on one of my saved drafts but that will have to wait.

In reading through some blogs over my morning coffee (I’m still trying to figure out why the Reformers didn’t make “coffee prayerfully consumed” or something like that the fourth note of the True Church) I came across a very interesting article that got me thinking about a whole host of things, but for my purposes here the “real-time governing body.”

The article is an essay from the Armed Forces Journal by P.W. Singer titled “The Rise of the Tactical General.”  The essay is about robotic warfare and how modern electronic communications brings the battlefield back to the commanders behind the front line.  It touches on the implications of robotic warfare:

But like any major change in war, the robot revolution is not turning
out to be the frictionless triumph of technology that some would
describe it. Unmanned systems are raising all sorts of questions about
not only what is possible but also what is proper in politics, ethics,
law and other fields.

It touches on leadership development:

Even more, we have to ponder the long-term consequences. What happens
when the young officers now being cut out of the chain, or micromanaged
in the midst of battle, advance up the ranks, but without the
experience of making the tough calls?

And there was a quote that really gave me pause that talked about the units controlling UAV’s (unmanned aerial vehicles) in Iraq from here in the States having a higher incidence of combat stress and post-traumatic stress disorder than some units deployed to Iraq.

If you are interested in either of these issues from a religious context you might want to have a look at the full article.  It is a quick read but might start you thinking.

Now, what got my attention, especially after watching GA webcasts and following tweets for the last couple of weeks, was this paragraph:

The ripple effects of robotics on leadership even affect the strategic
level. Many have discussed the idea of “strategic corporals,” younger
and younger troops who are being given greater and greater power and
responsibility. But the rise of robots has created an opposite
phenomenon — a dirty little secret that people in the service are
somewhat afraid to talk about for risk of their own careers. I call it
the rise of the tactical generals. Our technologies are making it easy,
perhaps too easy, for leaders at the highest level of command not only
to peer into, but even to take control of, the lowest-level operations.
One four-star general, for example, talked about how he once spent a
full two hours watching drone footage of an enemy target. He then
personally decided what size bomb to drop on it. Similarly, a special
operations forces captain talked about how a one-star, watching a raid
on a terrorist hideout via a Predator, radioed in to tell him where to
move not merely his unit in the midst of battle, but where to position
an individual soldier.

OK, follow me here through a hyper-space jump back to the church.  Read this line again from the context of the church institution:

Our technologies are making it easy,
perhaps too easy, for leaders at the highest level of command not only
to peer into, but even to take control of, the lowest-level operations.

Now I know that the Church here on earth is sometimes referred to as the Church Militant.  And one denomination has even organized themselves into an “army.”  But even though some would argue that there are those at the “highest level” who are trying to control the lowest-level operations that is not quite my focus today.  Heaven knows that as a synod moderator I only have the power the body gives me to run the meeting.

Instead I ask what are the ways that simply viewing the operations of the church in real-time help and hurt our connectionalism and polity?

There must be something because both the Presbyterian Church in Ireland and the Church of Scotland turned off their webcast and Twitter updates when they went into judicial session.  (Yes, the primary reason is that judicial proceedings in the UK are not broadcast and the church judicial sessions follow that pattern as well.)

Clearly I am one for real-time observations as I try to catch as many webcasts as my schedule allows, follow the GA’s that have Twitter tweets, have been know to live-blog GA sessions, and have a Google alert for “General Assembly.”  (The Google alert produces mostly political news articles and not Presbyterian ones in case you are wondering.)

What are the benefits of this instantaneous information?  One is that is allows the virtual observers to carry on an educated discussion while the information is still fresh in our minds.  I think that the result is a greater interest in the Assembly and its work.  I also believe that doing it in real time has more people seriously thinking about the issues as they follow the commissioners and in some ways try to think their thoughts.  Getting the information about the Assembly a week or three later would probably result in most reading it and thinking “that is interesting” but not thinking it through as fully and almost certainly not engaging in the online discussion at that time.  And for us bloggers it gives a second set of eyes and helping us get things right when we say one thing on line and someone comes back with “I don’t think so, I understood it this way.”

Another benefit gained from the viewing of the GA is the ability to see the whole meeting.  This allows someone to follow business of interest to them.  Other wise at best they get the news through the filter of another source and at worse may not get any substantial information at all if they are interested in business that would not make it into reporting sources.

So the primary benefit as I think about it is to those outside the body, raising interest and provoking fuller thought about the Assembly business.  And clearly it helps make the process more transparent if anyone can look in on the proceedings.  Let me know if you see other benefits of sharing GA’s over the web.

Is there a downside to the real-time sharing of the Assembly business?

I would argue that if the commissioners to an Assembly are also watching or participating in the real-time virtual discussion it does impinge on a basic premise of Presbyterian polity.  Our governing bodies are deliberative bodies and the members of that body have been chosen by God through the voice of the people to seek together God’s will.  When the body is not in session it seems perfectly appropriate for commissioners to educate themselves on issues from a variety of sources.  But we believe that something special happens when the body gathers as a court of the church and they deliberate together.  It would seem then that, besides the problem of distraction from the discussion, that outside voices would not be appropriate at that time especially if only a few of the commissioners were in on the virtual discussion.  Or from another perspective, the virtual observers are at a disadvantage because they were not able to view the committee meetings for those Assemblies that first break the commissioners up into committees.

And I have not decided if another issue could be a positive as well as a negative, but it is the issue of the “observer effect.”  As a concept in science it considers whether the observation or measurement of something influences that object or field.  In this case, does the observation of a governing body affect the functioning of the body?  Does the fact that you are being webcast as you make a comment at the microphone influence how you make the comment or whether you make the comment?  Does the fact that there are observers and media in the back of the room watching your committee meeting change the dynamic of the functioning of the committee?  As I said, I am a bit undecided on this factor and am still weighing the benefits and drawbacks.

So that is my initial thinking on this.  At the moment I think that the benefits of transparency and real-time interaction outweigh the issues of impairing the functioning of the body.  So as I Twitter this coming week and watch the webcast the next week I’ll keep this in the back of my mind and try to refine my thoughts.  Your mileage may vary.