Digital Diploma

Noble's article argues about a new era in which higher education implements new technology with little regard for pedagogical and economic costs.

The article is a warning to students about the dangers of online education.The warnings are not new.

A warning echoes TS Eliots poems "Choruses from the Rock" which goes something like this

...where is the life we have lost in living?
...Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
Brings us farther from God and nearer to Dust.

My concern is line 2/3 of this poem written in 1934 before the internet, or CD's or mass production of TV or DVD's, cell phones, computers or websites.

The endless cycle of idea and action,
endless invention, endless experiment

TS Eliot was concerned amount the overabundance of information in 1934,
With the oversaturation of information available to us, have we lost knowledge and more importantly, have we lost true wisdom?

Does the poem echo what Noble is claiming?
More so have we lost integrity in our fear of getting left behind by the pressures of progress, consumerism, economics?

At the heart of some of most vivid debates within higher education is the question of knowing; what constitutes knowledge? Who is the knower? What do we mean by knowledge? These questions are raised in multiple ways by professors, students, lecturer. But these inquiries extend beyond the academic walls, they are at the heart of popular culture.

Which is? ....Commercialism of higher education, consumerism, computer based education.

Nobles concerns are real when he says quality education could become the exclusive preserve of the privileged but there are many advantages;

* digital education provides a time and place, self paced environment for learning
* fosters crtiical thinking
* opportunity to work globally and collaboratively
* less paper - better ecologically
* opportunities for those living in rural areas


The process of integrating digital technologies into higher education raises foundation questions because there are myriad ways in which we are facing new choices/ new possibilities.

We have to keep asking the hard questions.
* What is the social infrastructure that makes it possible to use species technologies?
* What kind of investment does it require of us both financially as well as socially?
* Can instructional technology be exploited?
* Does it develop student's individual skills/talents?
* What long time effect will this way of education have on the global environment?

Computers exist in high numbers (esp Western world) at the expense of high consumption of natural resources elsewhere, not to mention significant amount so of cheap labor in other parts of the globe.

Global cooperations exert their power to control the media and create the psychological and physical needs that satisfy the requirements of their own growth. Not only the affluent but the poorest people of the world are being usesd as pawns in the hands of the powerful capitalist technology.

Our task as religious educators in this new education milieu is to become explorers and revelers of religious imaginations, The world of digital media is not an alien world. And we should enter the word with integrity and boldness.

The web site for Noble's article sorry but link not working .

Te atapo - the dawn

The text - divinely inspired?

27th September blog

Returning to my recent blog “hype(ertext) of biblical authority.” I will return to the hype of authority.

I am fascinated and with the young reader's take on the psalms in particular Psalm 23. Brought up on the psalms I often changed the lyrics to suit my age/situation/need at the time. I love this image of psalm 23 young reader can add to Holder's HIP HOP interpretation.

Does the image jeopardize a sense of divine authority? No for the kitten some sense of authority is lurking - fear, confidence, arrogance?

Unlike the Scripture the psalms became a tool on which the psalms spoke for us rather than to us. This gave us a deeper understanding of the meaning of life in God's world and the psalms still speak to me out of the depths of my experiences.

So Psalms are not just words to God also words about God and it teaches us about God; and in a way who God is.

So, when we read the psalms seriously and ask God to speak to our hearts through its inspired teachings, we begin to realize that God does indeed speak with divine authority through God's word, the Bible.


When we speak of the deconstruction of psalms and its ability to perhaps jeopardize divine authority I want to ask if there is such a thing as supreme authority?

Let me ask this another way. Is there such as thing as a supreme authority that governs Church life and Christian action and if so, what is it?

Mmm...believing scripture is authoritative for the church is not a point for which I wish or feel I have to argue. I simply observe that it is true and has always been so. There are of course those who wish to abandon the notion of Scriptural authority at the theoretical level and probably plenty Christians for who scripture does not function authoritatively in any very indefinable way. The deconstruction of meaning might be highly threatening to the church as a community whose identity is rooted in a reading of an authoritative text.

The authorty of the Bible whatever we may think of it will convince no-one who does not grant it such authority.

Now many Biblical texts are ambiguous and capable of more than one iterpretation and no interpreter is infallible. But I don't think for one moment the Bible is impaired by this. So why not embrace the Hip Hop version of psalm 23.

Reading the Bible as Scripture then, is never a mere matter of handling texts and the relationship between texts. It is above all a matter of being in the presence and open to the handling of the One who in some sense is the final author of its message because "He" is the one whose story it tells and it is as we know him.

And as we dwell in God's presence and have God dwells in us then what we see and hear what he is saying and showing us through it. At this point hermeneutics fall short.

Reading Laurie's argument on "why the web will win the culture war"...made me sit up whe he mentioned "surfing mimics a postmodern deconstructuralism perspective by undermining the authority of texts"

Immediately this got me to re-reading the young reader's post Friday 08/09 where she agress the authorty of the text lies with the surfer.

Derrida deconstruction strategies have a way of undercutting the "master text," which reflects Laurie's exposition of his basic technical tools. One way or another Derrida's oeuvre is an exploration of the nature of writing in the broadest sense as difference. To that extent writing always includes pictographic, ideographic, and phonetic elements.

Hypertext has a ring of similarity when you note what Derrida says "writing this way is not always pure and as such challenges the notion of identity and ultimately the notion of the original. It is neither entirely present nor absent but is the trace resuting from its own measure in the drive toward transparency."

Is this not what we tend to do with hypertext structure of text.
First search for the written text by another and adopt a kind of secondary role before the primcay of the text.
Seconed, turn the primacy text into a source of new inspiration and creativity like conneting frames, hyperlinks, with a web of of associations and connections. Now the reader no longer simply interprets but becomes a writer in his/her own right.

Keith Carley in his response to Psalm 8 de-constructed and wrote this psalm

O God of depths and heights of infinite expanse and every place
Your glory is seen in all things
In gentle persistent growth unnoticed by humankind
In diversity prodigious that takes place in my soil,
Your glory is displayed to those with eyes to see.
How foolish humans are to assume your ways are as conflicted as their own.
To think you deal with enemies as they do
Your love surrounds those who appose you
For your justice always come with mercy
And new beginnings

When I look at the sky, how wonderful the whole creation is
you care for sparrows, feed lions
And still have time to care for human beings!
The warring of those who think themselves superior
Makes a place of horror
Their weapons seem to threaten all life
In greed they force growth or poison it
destroying forests, I can never re-place in their life times,
Must I die that they might learn the outcome of their foolish foolishness
What arrogance they think you have put them in charge
Yet they depend on their fellow creatures
For clothing, labour, food, for air and water
When they pollute in ways thou now percieve only dimly
You never willed them to be conquerers
Rather partners in the unfolding of your beauty
They have not learned the lessons of exodus and exile
And taught so well by their monarchs
That subjection brings resitance,
Which you bless with liberation.
yet still you care for them
O God of depths and heights of infinite expanse and every place
May your glory be seen by all things.

Point of departure - inspiration must surely be the views of the last generation of evangelicals. It is they who keep the issue alive.

Te atapo - the dawn

hype (ertext) of biblical authority

You have to ask don't you "how can a text written over two thousand years ago still have authority over the lives and actions of people today?" Unless of course the text transcends history.

So if its ways and views are timeless, applicable to all occasions then it must not in any way be limited or even conditioned by its own historical society, its own cultural period or its own individual context. It is truly and radically a-historical.

Anyway lets get over the hype of authority I want to do is go back to my hypertext effort. As Elaine says "the interpretation of the biblical story in today's world for today's people does require a "spiders genius" - the ability to spin and weave even from the broken web of the story as as we have received it from our ancestors.

Then lets hope I can spin and weave the" portraits of wisdom' on my web. At present moment I feel like I am in a virtual web- not spinning and weaving but wrapped up like a fly choking, Last night I manged to do a LINK yes but when I went in today - it just did not work! ooh...

I guess there is wisdom that can emerge from patient and heartfelt endurance in the face of so much suffering .

I will continue...

Te atapo

Hypertext and Publication in Biblical Studies

Check the changes Tim is referring to
* past to present
* oral to written to electronic
* scroll to codex
* text to hypertext

Avi Santos in Media Commons talks about changes, in the current scholarly publishing culture. Changes that work in dialogue with other readers and possible peer reviews.

By generating this kind of discussion, feedback is potentially great and productive discussion has enormous implications for the future.

And back to Tim's article a really huge change yes the " text to hypertext revolution" take the electronic hypertext medium cheap; when reading u can explore some paths and ignore others; available;and has potential for all levels of reader/creator.

no y - You don't have to be highly computer savvy to enjoy putting your own hypertext together or even to read your colleagues work.

No what? I look forwrd to showing you my completed "biblical passage" in hypertext. Unlike an assignment - don't get to see your collagues efforts.

Won't check out disadvantages just yet, will soon come across them when creating hypertext.
Te atapo

Digital texts and the New Testament

I thought I needed a dictionary handy to understand this article but not! I am becoming computer word savvy even though I still have trouble finding "my bstheo711 documents" folder.

I think it deliberately tries to hide from me when blogging is on the agenda.


You know this guy Parker I can relate to him I know how he feels when he says,
What am I really looking at when I gaze at the screen,
I certainly have no idea."
Certainly if is pretending to look something like a page of text,
but it equally certainly is not a page of text, it is an image of some kind on a screen,

Parker is aware of the changes in publishing, even though it is at the experimental stage. The digital texts still mirror printed "books but, with continued creativity these codices will fade.

And he says, too many computer scholars are copyist.
So it is illuminating to realise under the guise of reconstructing original texts we are really reconstructing new ones.

What I noticed in my own preaparation for creating a hypertext for wisdom literature, I was thinking how much clearer the understanding of wisdom (Biblical) would have been for me in digital form.

For example in many articles written about wisdom
Wisdom is a personified figure, mythical, hypostatsis multifacted, elusive, immanent, creative order, substantial, corporeal, tangible figure.

What does any of this mean for the new reader.

But with "text" to 'hyypertext" well watch the space when I complete or "chissel" away at my hypertext. When the reader tackles the genre of the text (using a mapping system), with an easy click s/he will know that "she - wisdom" is not a mythical figure but a literary device.

We'll see.
Yes watch the space!
Te atapo

Biblical text - printed and digital,

Every text we know is understood in light of many texts that the reader has already encountered.

The text is something the readers create but it is something that also creates readers. The challenge here is the reader's interaction with the computer that is different than it is with a printed book.

On a computer the Bible becomes fluid. The digital Bible appears in multiple text files which can be easily added to, deleted, inserted or modified to suit the reader's preference.

The technology of the written text demands skills of reading and writing, In the modern world we take these skills for granted but actually reading and writing are neither natural or normal. No matter how transparent or effortless the skills seem there is nothing automatic about learning them. Ask someone who cannot read or write.

And for some of us that is where we are - learning the demands of the skills for digital technology.

Now writing is a technology that has its greatest value in the absence of the writer. And yes, once the text leaves the writer's hand the author no longer has control over it or any effect on how the reader will understand the text's meaning.

This is I'm thinking same for digital writing/reading.

Consider development from written (manuscripts), to digital or electronic and what the development means to future biblical scholarship.

The handwritten manuscripts were frequently altered by the scribes who copied them and the

Canon was an attempt to guard against such alterations. Once a book was canonized it was recognized as authority and deliberate modifications were not permitted. The development of legal and ethical structures regarding copyright and plagiarism provided further secular security for the printed texts.

Now in the "electronic culture" the digitizing of text makes it possible for nearly anyone to prepare, copy, or modify texts, skills that were formerly the property of few. Anyone with a computer can physically rewrite the digital text in any way. Take a passage from the digital bible -cut and paste into word and bingo! You can alter the text.

So the stability of the texts is threatened by deleting, pasting, inserting and inserting. As the World Wide Web increasingly replaces traditional hard copy sources for texts such as the Bible the original text begins to lose all value.

Perhaps the text will be transformed once again into something nonalphabetic, whether sounds or graphic icons,

The hermeneutical text

Hermeneutics how does it go? checking my last year's lecture notes,

pre- modern hermeneutics is based on trust;
modern hermenetics is guided by doubt and;
post modern hermenutics is dominated by suspicion.

A typical question that a person operating with a hermeneutic of suspcion must ask is,

" is there some way to rescue this text from its oppressive perspective and use so that it can liberate the very people that it was written to oppress or the people who have been oppressed by later interpretations."

In a roundabout way using a hypertext resource can resue the text for its oppressive perspective but I don't think that is quite what Fiorenza means oh well...

What I actually want is to explore whether "scholarly writing" using hypertex, blogging, electronic reference, etc.. has implications for hermeneutics.

With the information of technologies already available I can sit in my back yard with cell phone and moniter the video images from my DVD and with a laptop computer to ensure my blogging, assignments , emails and journaling are all kept up to scratch.

This kind of distancing power has shifted me back to future of the book post. As a reader of if:book this post will enagage with Ani Santos's project in progress Media Commons.

Santos argues for "writing in a mediated environment" in which folks like you and me (us), who can lead the way particularly in publishing Biblical articles. One way is the hypertext resource that we are in process of setting up.

I myself felt the gradual shift from thinking an "electronic press" to thinking about "electronic scholarly publishing".

As Polanyi pointed out, "we indwell our technologies, we extend our bodily presence to interact with each other." and so it is with blogging.

Blogging allow us to have a converstion, dialogue and share our thoughts, a way to research, get other's views. It employs a kind of peer to peer discussion on subject, topic at hand.

A chance to be professional, personal, and a way to research. Reading If Book discussions gives the chance to link into what others have to say about future of the book.

A future that could have blog entries bound together in "codex " form. Now that could be interesting - all those different voices contributing to one topic. Watch the space huh?

Take "Ruth" each one of us contributing our own hermenuetic towards the topic.

From such a cross-cultural class, we could use so many different lens,

* post-colonial,

* feminist,

* cultural,

* immigration,

* suspicion,

* otherness etc...

It is a complex proecess but it is time for a new a new way of doing book.

Te atapo - the dawn

Barth and hypertext

Ooops this post should come after "behind the text and in the text" my postings are in confused state- bear with me,

I finished the last post "behind the text and in the text by writing that "electronic hypertext has the capacity to confront authors with the ability to bring the text to life..." so let me continue...

Let's face it, the intellectual approach to past Biblical texts is inadequate for the digital culture we are in. And like it or not new information technologies are beginning to transform the way we do Bible.

So decided to cite Kirsten Abbot and offers her ways of bringing the text to life... in her article "Wrestling texts"

using hypertextual media these include;

* using a different kind of writing

* non sequential writings branches out and allows choices to the readers

* the writing structure needs to be easily navigable

* Writing on the screen needs to be concise and scannable

* Use of text bites and bullet points, rather than traditional academci style of building an argument.

* glossaries and explanations for beginners and technical discussions for more advanced students

* include sound and images etc...

* shows how to succesfully navigate complexities of genre, texts, and contexts.

doing electronic hypertext allows and requires alterations in organizing material, writing style, quality/quantity and accessibility of supporting material.

Not too overwhelming I hope, after all these changes show some features with major ideas in literary theory such as reader response, theory, post structuralism and deconstruction.


Before I post, I want to quickly touch on Karl Barth not for the reason he is probably the greatest theologian, well, at least the greatest Protestant theologian of the 20th century,), but because, I want to show briefly how his thinking in the 20th century continually seeks to be understood in the 21st century digital culture.

For Barth,

human language is the vehicle that God chose to be the unique
witness to God's revelation,"

"in the Bible we meet with human words written in human
speech and in these words God unveils Godself by veiling Godself i
n human language, therefore the Bible is a genuine witness."

Barth also says scripture takes primacy because rather than we reading it , it reads us...

If this is true then it means we are not involved, so this kind of "scripture reading" means the reader is forever standing on the outside.

But using electronic hypertext means we (author/reader) can become fully involved to interpret the text.

However, in both the Barth and hypertext cases the interpretation shows it is is on-going and taht it can detach itself from its authors making itself new realtionships.

In a way this tells us why the Bible is constantly exposed to the life of the Church as it continually seeks to be understood afresh and hence exposed and interpreted.

What electronic hypertext offers is a quantum leap into a strange new world within the Bible.

What hermenutics will it use?
Hermeneutic of trust? faith? suspicion? prophecy?

"Behind the text" and "In the Text"

One of first questions for hermeneutics is,

What actions are performed in the making and the use of text?

Actions acquire meaning from their functional relationship to other actions. In order to grasp the meaning of a text, therefore we need to go outside the text as well as inside it.

To understand the text, Schleiermacher says "

"the interpreter must put her/himself

both objectively and subjectively

in the position of the author."

Schleiermacher was referring to author in a printed mediated world - no different for the interpreter in a electronic/digital one.

Speaking on the author the more we know about him/her, the better equipped we are for interpretation . Therefore we must proceed methodically employing all tools of historical research as we reconstruct the life -world behind the text.

After preparing my hypertext proposal I have come to know a "few things" - hyperlinks if done well can direct the reader to what is meaningful rather than being confronted with a whole lot of different approaches.

The illustrations and referencing in an encylcopeadia, footnotes in an article are not that different from electronic hypertext. I agree with Bulkeley

"each reader comes to the commentary witrh different prior knowledge and experience, therefore each needs a different set of information in which Hypertext links allows."

Interpretation though like artistic creating (done with Hypertext), is a form of human action and is thus subject to the same vicissitudes and open to the same possibilites in all human actions

We recognize that that we do not come to these biblical texts "fresh" and that we are not the first ones to read these texts and struggle with their relationship to faith and practice and that we are part of a global community of believers who over time have returned again and again to these text for stability and challenge and encouragement.

Electronic hypertext has the capacity to confront authors with the ability to bring the text to life thereby extending their readers to create an awareness of their own hermeneutical processes.

Te atapo - the dawn

letting go

Hi everyone,

Did you all have an awesome assignment, blogging free break?
I have just t returned from the country, retreating with glow worms at Findlay Park near Lake Karapiro, Cambridge. Witnessing the glow worms I could feel the pull that a sacred place, a place of origins, has on its own creatures. As they glowed in their home (cave), I felt the need to visit my own hometown, near the valley of my childhood.

The nest day I traveled up to the Far North - Herekin0 - a place truly lost in time. No computers, no emails, , television (no sky), and no mobile network -yes I did get withdrawal symptoms.

But I got to read The Good, the Bold, and the Beautiful, by Dan Clanton. The story is very richly interpreted. It is the story of Susanna and the Elders from the Apocypha. The narrative touches on attempted rape, female sexuality, abuse of power, punishment for the wicked, and voyeurism, to name but a few themes.

I got to play outdoors and developed my own organic relationships with nature - cows, chickens and even the unloved possums.

Also went fishing and watched the kahawai and mullet in motion, Indeed fish in motion and by extension the birds and all animals are nature's work of art.

I picked watercress from flowing creeks and oranges from fruit laden trees. Eating dinner from the porch at nights I looked up at the skies speckled with zillion stars. and understood the psalmist speaking of God's glory in creation.

Now, I am back to blogging, laptops, emailing and a part of a world frantically pushing at technology, continually being fascinated by the wonders of human ingenuity that overcome frustrations of distance and time.

But I ponder still for we are part of a world whose technolgoies continue to threaten the very basis of life, leading to scarce and poisoned water, infertile soil and polluted air. How have we arrived at this critical state?

Ooh my family will love the Bible in Hypertext - instead of Codex - tell you why next blog

Te Atapo - the dawn