future of the book

I can dream a dream - that would be something in hypertext.
Tim did that and look what he got AMOS!

The printed book will be around forever Why?

* Cause novels better suited to text codex?
Not so! novels best read lying down beside the fireplace.

But monographs and commentaries as text and hypertext definitely "in"
Why?

1. Screen printing saves trees

2. no use having all those unread books on your shelf - Instead of standing in the book shop reading the intro or listening to a friend's version, you can read a bit on screen first then make a decision to buy.

3. Can produce own research book in Hypertext, complete with your own pikis.

4. education institutions could produce own research or text books books - that will surely save costs for struggling students

5. From pencil to typing we changed our way of recording -Tim is correct, as students we need to approach reading (books), in other ways too.

6. Another thing (with books) codex text, how often are we seduced by the wisdom of the author. With Hypertext it allows the processes of thought and learnng to be retained, expressed and enjoyed, it allows the reader to question.

Yep hypertext will alter our way of studying the bible.

The dawn

Connecting to the Religion of Broadband with wisdom woman

It is not easy to read an article referring to "biblical rubies" and Proverbs 31 without mentioning "this woman of wisdom."

Te Arikinui Dame TeAtairangikaahu .

He tokomaha nga tamahine i u te pai o ta ratou mahi,
otiia hira ake tau i a ratou katoa. (Whakatauki 31: 29).

Many daughters have done virtuously
but you excell them all. ( Proverbs 31:29 )

Tomorrow morning at 6.00am I will be travelling (with my tribes Te Rarawa and Te Aupouri) down to Turangawaewae to the Maori Queen's tangi.

As I watch the Queen's tangi on televison, read the news and checkout the internet I think of the marvellous way broadband communication has brought her "tangi" into our homes these past few days. Never before have we been inside the royal marae where such awesome "mana" has lain or been layed down.

Yet there is pensive sadness. The Maori tangi that normally takes place behind closed doors has gone public. Private moments (similar to like Bach's private faith), finds very public outlets through the media's appetite for voices, stories and choices.

And the viewer is caught up in the blatant religious imagery (hymns, music, popular rhetoric, clergy presence, carvings, etc....), produced by camera men, the newsreaders, the websites, and newspaper citations from from the internet - all reporting this memorable moment. A reminder of technology and broadbanding at its best. Not so for private grieving.

What profound "korero - talk will she take to her ancestors - now that we have electronic sights that are far beyond our own understanding.

What legacy does she leave?
"The gift of community? She received the Maori people/world as a gift from the Creator and used it to nurture and be nurtured by relationships of trust and caring - she bulit a community holding gently together "religion, media and politics " to live in praise of God "(talk from Maori elder).

Broadbanding can also cultivate affirming communities by creating interrelationships between religion, politics, and media. It is my hope, otherwise like 9/11 we too will be left with the religious smoke around the tangi event and the different interpretations of it.

Watch for swelling pendulum to stop swinging when the new heir is announced. Unless we buy the video the tangi all memories/moments will fade rapidly while broadband offers us sensationalism elswhere.

Farewell Te Atairangikaahu we know when you meet again with your ancestors
"you will speak noble things
and from your lips will come what is right" (Prov 8:6).

Te Atapo - the dawn

Close Listening

Oh wow! what a joy if I could do all my readings this week through close listening instead of beating my eyes up. Imagine wisdom woman in Proverbs 8:1-21. Can almost hear her crying from the gates of the city. You'd get a sense of her boldness when she takes centre stage vying for everyone's attention linking cosmic order and social order. Little bit like that with audio listening - linking my life with the cosmic out there somewhere. Dominating as well as manipulating my space. I was brought up on a diet of close listening. Books too expensive; Holy Bible and a set of encyclopaedia that was it - my imagination was belonged to the speaker not to me.

My dilemma with the audio is I have no control (except on/off button). When I want to re-read, pick up where I left off, speed up or slow down. Linger over a romantic scene or power through the jet ride. I might want to keep rewinding to get the word - that way I might lose the momentum. Oh no I want to be in CONTROL.

Audio listening could be just another way towards domination - of time, imagination, dreams. Reading Lord of the Rings reinofrced the desire that the good would always conquer and the bad would be destroyed. But "reading closely" gave me an insight that there is a little bit of evil within us. Reading stories like this shaped me-part of who I am .I read the Lord of the rings 3 times. The movie? I had already brought the story to life in my imagination.

Now weekly readings - close listening could help- Yep I could be eating my dinner and listening to Heidegger's theory on "being and time" at the same time. I could keep rewinding to get a better understanding. Oops the tape could wear out (before I got the gist), after a dozen rewinds. Books well you can read and read and read...till you get it.

Locating wisdom multi media v network

Difficult to comment on multimedia v network when you just getting used to the network. Yep locating books inside the internet is just a whole lot of photocopying that might be cheaper ///no way ink , paper cost heaps. Nothing is really free.

Gone are the days of tucking yourself up on a cold night reading a good book. Oh no too busy now searching the web for knowledge, knowledge and more knowledge that comes to us via mass media that sets the agenda for us to think politically and yeah culturally.

Much of printing revolution increases resources of previous generation, now digital has begun to connect contemporary resources on huge sacale.

Interesting the network- can be cumbersome (until I get the hang of it), at times me thinks. But ooh is it not soooo exciting - its like learning a whole new language, down side is you can't blame the teacher when you don't get the tools.

I love the networking I really get to know how my colleagues think instead of sitting in the lectures wondering if she/he have a brain or not. You know what I mean you don't need to open your mouth and feel foolish like I often did in Hermeneutics. Instead you can ask questiions and write a less than one page message that is clear and precise for both you and the reciever.

Another thing connecting to the world - and articulating commonalities. Sharing sharing, relationships. You no wat? all my "now" friends have a certain packaging but on the net one's imagination can run free.

What about research? I agree the social and ritual practice of research and interaction will move from the text driven book to the assocative imaginitive nonlinear networks of the multi-media. The non-linear text will allow readers to make choices and to follow varying routes through the material presented. Yet it can be divided into linear and non-linear , but like films there is no navigator in linear. Non- linear offers all the interactivity something I discovered in Tim's work. If you wish to explore how how the move from text to hypertext impacts on biblical commentary check out the Amos commentary It would require considerable alterations in the organization of material. The finished product is similar to the "book" because it still relies on the imagination of the creator.

Most basic and most effective technique in writing well for electronic media is to use fewer words. Kirsten Abbot uses concise and scannable writing while creating a website for her biblical studies project wrestling at the jabbok. Concepts and thought become more complicated as as they encompass more avenues of expression.

Apparently way back in 1965 digital multimedia was used to describe exploding plastic performance that combined live rock music.

I guess multimedia makes for more audio, graphics and video while networking leads more to interacting with colleagues, critics and others so there is a feedback - something that might not always occur with multimedia. Plus one can achieve a great deal interacting with others-by moving to and fro, backwards and forwards.

Another awesome "thing" I have discovered you don't have to work with a theasuarus at your side, you just write it, even if you have to sleep on the idea overnight.

How about the shopping it is like a great big library eh? And you don't have to catch the bus to get there or even pay for professionals' works - it's on the net. I myself have accumulated my own list of writers, scholars because I get to read their work rather than having to purchase a book. Perhaps I will get to building up my own professional identity.

Intellectual property rights can be an issue but there is the upside the published work gets to more people than sitting in the bottom shelf gathering dust.


No doubt like networking there is so much that needs to be discovered and for sure multi-media is more than audio and video, I imagine there are multiple interpretations from a whole lot of different lens and even after all that we still bring our own cultural bias to interpret the text -our own hermeneutic.

I guess with multimedia technology like most technologies we can examine the present and reconstruct the past and but even with the possibilities of multimedia we can still only peer into the future.

But there are questions that weave in and out of my thought patterns. What are people's liturgical expectation in a multi-media world. Does digital communicaton tend to strengthen or weaken people's religious committments ? Can we find a new Wsidom in multi-media technology?

Glimpses of Wisdom

It is wet and misearble outside and here I am inside on a Saturday evening responding to a post on If:book. Such a banquet of posts and and who is this individual living in a world of intellectual abundance? - I see it is john mcclymer -

Oh no! far too long a post for my brain to soak up on a Saturday night particularly when I could be watching James Bond on the tube.

Oh here is a post by ray cha "three glimpses at the future of television Oh I can recall those delicious times when the whole family was crowded around the radio listening to "Diana and the golden apple" Such wonderful images floated around in my wee small brain. Not to forget the bonding between brothers and sisters, mums and dads.

Radio broadcasting began at the turn of the century, perceived as a powerful educational tool. Yet, New Zealand (unlike Southern Korea), its new media is still not triumphant for while the new media of information technology (computer/internet), play a role today, most NZ people live in a world defined by old print, televison radio and film.

NZers still hunger for images, pictures, music and myth. This is evidenced by the vast popularity of programs watched daily on the tube. Whatever the tube tells you , you do...you dress like the tube...you eat like the tube...you raise your children like the tube ...and you even think like the tube.

New Zealanders will take longer to shift from the television boxe to laptops. After all we are community people who enjoy sitting around the big black box watching rugby, racing and Shortland street (No I don't watch it).

Those under the poverty line (and there are many), will yearn for the days when televisons prices come down. They will say..."You can have your affluent families sitting in their privates studies watching DVD on laptops. Yet television manifests as the most subtle of all powers. It introduces distorted images of reality in the minds of people.

In communities, where unemployment is prevalent, powerless people are forced to see technology from a different perpective than in the cities or regions of affluence. We have to place technological eduation in their very midst to give choices and open up life changing possibilities. ooh a good opportunity for the church huh?

Television and movies offer us a creative language that can bridge the gap between the sacred and the secular, the church and the world. To live as Christians/theolgians in our time, requires learning to engage media and culture.

Become aware of the power of the images and finding the tools to explore and critique these images.

Take the movie "Shawshank Redemption" The film featured Andy Dufresne who was given two life sentences in the Shawshank State Prison. If you saw it you will recall the theme of hope:; Hebrew view of creation; redempton of life and other theological inserts.

Perhaps the most powerful image of rebirth and new life in the movie is the scene where having crawled through five hundred yards of sewage Andy stands victorious, stripped bare n the pouring rain, Andy's bare body is symbolic of a stripping away of the old and preparation of the new. In the scene nakedness is a visual metaphor for birht or rebirth - transition from the old to the new, Similarly the apostle Paul uses the metaphor pf childbirth to desribe the hope by which the Spirit is liberating not only humanity, but creation as a whole. For we all know the whole creation groans and sufferes the pains of childbirth together until now...saved(Romans 8:22-23).

Video sharing site mmm...it would be a a place for Christians to set the bible into drama sounds very much like Tim's Amos project. Doing it this way could create a remix of old stories. We could create a spiritual dimension of technology that Kelly calls "regenesis"the urge that human beings have to create creation.

Biblical Creation - The struggle between good and evil. why not? Star Wars had same theme.

For the gospel to be communicated today, we must learn to express its meaning to us in terms of stories, televison and the internet. It must be carried out with wisdom - it requires the exercise of humility, right judgment, justified boldness and caution where there is uncertainty.

It's late

Good night

Te atapo (the dawn).

Using Wisdom Wisely

How can theological education use the new technologies wisely?

On the internet every voice can speak, and, every voice can be heard, so the the new adventurer can tell his or her story creating an imagined world for the listener. The stories can be available to anyone who wants to search it out intentionally or not.

What does this create? Perhaps a world absent of one to one relationships, a world that makes us who we are (warts and all). I think it is this immediate world of reality that the wisdom and knowledge of God can be known to us.

Information technology deals with meaningful human existence - where we create community, and sustain relationships. Therefore it is important we use IT wisely and with wisdom.