{"id":525,"date":"2009-11-11T18:26:00","date_gmt":"2009-11-12T02:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.gajunkie.com\/?p=525"},"modified":"2009-11-11T18:26:00","modified_gmt":"2009-11-12T02:26:00","slug":"thoughts-on-twitter-and-its-theological-and-ecclesiastical-implications","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.gajunkie.com\/?p=525","title":{"rendered":"Thoughts On Twitter And Its Theological And Ecclesiastical Implications"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cI have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter.\u201d
Blaise Pascal, (1623-1662) Lettres provinciales
<\/strong><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

OK, I’ll admit it, I am addicted to Twitter. (http:\/\/twitter.com<\/a>)  That does not mean that I like it, only that I see its usefulness.<\/p>\n

I started out thinking of it like this cartoon from last Sunday (http:\/\/bit.ly\/4stuAs<\/a>) and to some degree still do.<\/p>\n

(Other humorous references to Twitter include God tweeting creation http:\/\/bit.ly\/N2Hvp<\/a> and the twitter\/knitting ban http:\/\/bit.ly\/21Vrqq<\/a>)<\/p>\n

I became addicted during the massive Station Fire and then was monitoring Twitter for the Sheep Fire. For up-to-date info it is great.<\/p>\n

Another example is the coverage of the ordination examination for Lisa Larges at the San Francisco Presbytery #sfpby meeting last night.<\/p>\n

Twitter provides a medium for distributed and mass reporting of developing news in real time as well as receiving it on mobile devices.<\/p>\n

And that, for my purposes, is the real value of Twitter – that information and links about developing situations can be quickly distributed.<\/p>\n

Professionally it is great for rapid notification about earthquakes. Now with three major earthquake sequences my feed has been very active.<\/p>\n

What probably bugs me the most about Twitter is that the information then gets redistributed, or Re-Tweeted (RT) as they say in the medium.<\/p>\n

RT’s serve a purpose because each RT spreads the important or interesting information to a new group of followers.<\/p>\n

But when I am filtering a topic and a particularly popular post is RT’ed by a lot of people all the RT’s can quickly overwhelm the screen.<\/p>\n

You end up with only a little signal in all the noise.  (My view of it.)<\/p>\n

I have found it both impressive and frustrating the amount of information you can place in a carefully crafted 140 character message.<\/p>\n

It is long enough to convey significant information, particularly if you include a link, but short enough to inhibit nuanced discussion.<\/p>\n

More than once I have been frustrated that my Twitter comments have been misinterpreted because of the limits on fully developing an idea.<\/p>\n

Sometimes 140 characters is just not enough- The ability to Tweet the essence of the Athanasian Creed being an exception http:\/\/bit.ly\/YHibv<\/a><\/p>\n

However, I can appreciate the value of widely broadcasting your ideas and the potential for immediate feedback.<\/p>\n

In general, for serious theological discussions, I have trouble finding usefulness in exchanging information in 140 character packets.<\/p>\n

But in the case of Twitter the medium has become the message, as Marshall McLuhan would say. It is the democratization of info distribution.<\/p>\n

Anyone with an Internet connection can send news to anyone else in the world-no corporate news filter, only the 140 character limit.<\/p>\n

(BTW-In case you missed it in the midst of the other two big anniversaries, the Internet also just turned 40 http:\/\/bit.ly\/4aZunE<\/a>)<\/p>\n

So, in a connectional church, does this mass interconnectedness of individuals change the hierarchical connections of our institution?<\/p>\n

We are carrying to the logical conclusion the shift we have seen in the PC(USA) for the last several decades-we find identity around ideas.<\/p>\n

In the “modern era” we have organized and advocated around affinity groups, but not strictly governed around them.<\/p>\n

The 17th synod proposal would change that.  http:\/\/bit.ly\/ccHf1<\/a><\/p>\n

(And of course the caveats: previous splits created such affinity governing bodies http:\/\/bit.ly\/2zRIDI<\/a>;<\/p>\n

The PC(USA) already has language non-geographic presbyteries, a form of affinity group;<\/p>\n

And some may argue that certain geographic presbyteries have a strong affinity nature to them already.)<\/p>\n

It strikes me that the increase in affinity groups was helped by many technological advances in communications and travel, not just Twitter.<\/p>\n

But in this shift we are not becoming congregational in nature, although demographers say the church in general is becoming individualistic.<\/p>\n

Consider the PC(USA) list of Advocacy Groups http:\/\/bit.ly\/2exeSq<\/a> – Is that the direction governance in the PC(USA) is headed?<\/p>\n

Churches in the mainline seem to have these groups – I’m not aware of other branches having this many groups.<\/p>\n

(For differences in technology use by ethnic churches consider this article http:\/\/bit.ly\/2O01Rl<\/a> on web sites.)<\/p>\n

Now I don’t attribute all this to Twitter, but it is the latest in the technologies that allow us to organize well on this granular scale.<\/p>\n

I don’t know what this means for the future – friends tell me twitter is here to stay but they said that about usenet. http:\/\/bit.ly\/3aixMt<\/a><\/p>\n

But the trend of technology has been to empower the individual (blogs, self-publishing) and to facilitate social networking.<\/p>\n

I can only believe that the trend to communicate, coordinate, and organize outside of our current connectional structure will continue.<\/p>\n

So maybe the question is not “Are we connectional?” but “In what ways are we being connectional?” and how that impacts our governance.<\/p>\n

Oh ya, in case you are interested I do tweet occasionally as ga_junkie. http:\/\/twitter.com\/ga_junkie<\/a><\/p>\n

And if you did not figure it out, each of the lines in this post is 140 characters or less and therefore can be tweeted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter.\u201dBlaise Pascal, (1623-1662) Lettres provinciales OK, I’ll admit it, I am addicted to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[86,96],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-church-virtual","category-technology"],"yoast_head":"\nThoughts On Twitter And Its Theological And Ecclesiastical Implications - The GA Junkie<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blog.gajunkie.com\/?p=525\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Thoughts On Twitter And Its Theological And Ecclesiastical Implications - 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