Don't Eat The FruitDon't Eat The Fruit

Interview with BigBible.org.uk

John Dyer — Wed, 15 May 2013 13:40:12 +0000

Following the interview with DJ Chuang, I wanted to post a text interview I did with BigBible.uk.org, and also point you to their website as a great resource.

Interview with BigBible.uk.org

If you haven't checked out the "BigBible" website, you're definitely missing out. They are doing some great work on how to help Christians think about "bible engagement" in the digital age. I'm hoping to being doctoral work in this area soon, and I really value the research and blogging they are doing. Andrew Byers (a Ph.D. student in New Testament) put together a book review and multipart interview with me, and I'd like to thank him and the site for doing this:

Here's a sampling:

AB: What are some ways that digital technology may be shaping us unhealthily in our media habits?

JD: In the previous century, wonderful advances in transportation and food availability have allowed more mobility and prevented hunger. However, this has also led to the obesity epidemic sweeping over America for people without proper disciple in diet and exercise. I think we might be seeing the same thing with our information diet, in that many people are training themselves to consume lots of small bits of information, but they are failing to exercise their ability to do deep thinking and reading.

AB: What about healthy aspects of digital technology? Are there ways that our use of the Internet and the latest communication devices are strengthening us?

JD: In the Southern part of the United States, we’ve had Christian sub-cultures where people could go about their lives never exposed to the way most of humanity actually lives. I think digital media make it very hard to stay in that kind of cloistered world, and forces Christians of all stripes to enter into a broader society and have some contact with the Other (albeit, often in a disembodied way). Social media can expose areas of real need in the world, and it also allows Christians from around the world to connect on common ministry goals and gifting.

Beautiful Collection of Ancient Bibles on Display in Dallas, TX

John Dyer — Fri, 10 May 2013 15:29:26 +0000

Last night, I had the opportunity to attend the opening of a fantastic new collection of Bibles on display at the Museum of Biblical Art in Dallas, TX. [caption id="attachment_2129" align="aligncenter" width="560"] Charles Ryrie with John Dyer[/caption] Charles Ryrie, a former professor at Dallas Theological Seminary probably best known for the Ryrie Study Bible, has been collecting rare Bibles for around 50 years. To me, he is known as the man whose writings (such as Basic Theology) got me interested in studying the Bible and the theology of the church. Meeting him for the first time was a pleasure, and the exhibit was far more extensive than I imagined. I'm still astounded that all of this is in Dallas. According to the website,

The Collection includes such masterpieces as a page from the Gutenberg Bible (1450’s); the first edition of the King James Bible (1611); the Wycliffe New Testament (1430); Genoa Psalter (1516) with its footnote about Christopher Columbus; Coverdale’s first edition (1535) of the first printed English Bible; early Greek manuscripts of the New Testament; one of the world’s few copies of Tyndale’s Pentateuch (The first five books of the old Testament, called The Torah or Law in Hebrew-1530); and Erasmus’ New Testaments. Additional elements include Eliot’s Indian Bible (1663) in the Algonquin language – the first Bible to be printed in America – as well as a variety of Greek, Hebrew, Latin and other language Bibles.

Here's a few of them: [gallery ids="2130,2131,2132,2133,2135,2136"] Hopefully one day someone will followup with a museum dedicated to the Bible in digital form!

DJ Chuang on Social Media Church

John Dyer — Mon, 06 May 2013 13:56:48 +0000

DJ Chuang is one of those rare individuals who is able to be helpful to the church in many areas. He's a fellow DTS grad who writes and speaks on a variety of topics from issues in the Asian-American church to leadership and ministry through social media. One of his projects is Social Media Church where he as a weekly podcast. This week, we Skyped together and had a great conversation on technology, church, Google Glass, and more.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfdoAi3IAcE

Where Are Rob Bell’s Glasses?

John Dyer — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 16:34:05 +0000

[caption id="attachment_2103" align="aligncenter" width="560"] Bell going "Glasses Off" in 2013[/caption] About a month ago, Rob Bell, former pastor of Mars Hill Church in Grand Rapids, released a book called What We Talk About When We Talk About God. Since then, there have been quite a few reviews offering various critiques and overviews as well as treatises on Bell's significance. This book hasn't generated quite the firestorm his last book did, and while I think that and the content of Bell's message are interesting, I'm even more fascinated by Bell's uncanny ability to use various media to his advantage.

Mastering a New Medium

[caption id="attachment_2102" align="aligncenter" width="560"] Bell with his trademark glasses (pre 2013)[/caption] As just two examples of Bell's use of media, I'd point to his ground breaking Nooma videos and the release strategy of Love Wins. When the first Nooma video was released, there were plenty of other DVDs with Christian material. But most of these videos simply replicated the church-based preaching or speaking of a popular teacher. They might change the setting slightly from a church pulpit to a more interesting stage, but the delivery was essentially the same with a new coat of paint. This was similar to the way reporters treated television when it was first introduced. In their radio days, reporters read well-written scripts to a microphone, so that's what they did in front of a camera. After a while, they figured out that to use TV as TV they would have to figure out a completely new delivery method. Bell seems to have instinctively understood that the new medium of DVDs demanded an entirely new message format. DVDs are capable of transferring 45 minutes of data speech, but they are much better at telling visual narratives. So that's what Bell did. He turned his teaching into a well-produced mini-movie rather than a well-recorded sermon. And people bought them. Lots of them. Many people felt Bell's content was weak or even in doctrinal error. But the masses who bought Nooma weren't buying his message. They swiped their credit cards to get the feeling the DVD gave them, because that's what DVDs do.

Focus on Questions, Not Answers

http://youtu.be/ivwfqBNICf4 When it comes to Bell's books, it's also no surprise that he was capable not only of understanding how to use a new medium (like a DVD), but also how to turn an older form on its head and do something new. With each of his books like Velvet Elvis, Sex God, and Drops Like Stars, he was able to write in a non-traditional prose style that infuriated traditional readers, but appealed to a generation skilled in consuming smaller bits of information like tweets, texts, and facebook updates. Then with Love Wins, Bell also created a brilliant social media campaign. It started with a trailer that didn't tell you the problem it was going to solve (5 steps to a better life) or offer a question it would answer (how does the atonement work?), but instead simply communicated, "This book is about a posture of questioning." He then sent the full book to those likely to support his position, and only part of to those unlikely to support it. These moves captivated both popular and professional bloggers (including me) and catapulted what an already successful author into an even bigger space. The point in both of these cases is that - contrary to popular belief - Bell isn't using the medium to seem cool. Rather he chooses to use them in such a way that the medium itself communicates as powerfully, if not more so, than his actual message. Over breakfast, a very-well known author who publicly praised Love Wins told me, "The problem with Love Wins is that it's not very well written." Whether that's true or not didn't matter. It was the world around the book and way Bell used media that performed the communicative acts on his behalf.

So What about the Glasses?

All of this leads me to think that Bell's decision to take of his glasses has been carefully thought out. It's not designed to update his style, be more cool, or seem more relevant. It's designed to communicate. To have meaning. To "tell a story." But what is the story? Where does it start? And more importantly, where is it going? ... See what I did there?

St. Peter’s Square: 2005 vs. 2013

John Dyer — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 19:29:56 +0000

NBC posted a powerful image of St. Peter's Square showing how different things looked in 2005 when Pope Benedict was chosen from the new world of 2013 with Pope Francis:

My guess is that in 10-20 years when the next Pope is chosen, Google Glass and other similar products will make the screens disappear.

How Google Hacked Our Imaginations with #IfIHadGlass

John Dyer — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 22:42:36 +0000

In just about every James Bond and Batman film, there is a segment where Q (or Morgan Freeman) introduces us to a few new gadgets. At first, the hero looks over the objects quizzically, but then the handler demonstrates how to use them, unlocking their mystery and inviting both the hero and the audience to imagine how the tool might become integral to the story about to unfold.

Google Just Made You Batman

If you’re a tech junkie like me, you might have noticed that Google is attempting to become our own personal Q in its efforts to promote Glass, the futuristic/super-nerdy looking eyewear that present a user with a heads up display and an always-on camera. Just like Q, they first showed us the strange looking device (pictures of impossibly good-looking people wearing the hideously unfashionable glasses), then they demonstrated a few basic uses (queue the demo video with spunky music below), and finally – and most importantly – they created a social media campaign inviting people to use the hashtag #IfIHadGlass and imagine how Google Glass might become integral in the story of their life. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1uyQZNg2vE

The Importance of Imagination for New Technology

Google recognizes that the success of Glass has very little to do with how many features it has, and everything to do with embedding the product in our collective imagination. They know that if you want to get the entire world to buy something that no one is asking for, you can’t start with specs, you have to start with story. Before people buy things, they have to “see themselves” with the product. For example, if you try on a new cardigan and you look ridiculous, you probably won’t buy it. But if the mirror reflects a more awesome you, then you’ll probably bring it home. With technology, we too need to “see ourselves” using the device, and the image we create in our minds needs to show us overcoming some obstacle that would be difficult without the gadget. Without that story in place, we'll never feel compelled to buy.

Creating an Alternate Ending

In his great new book Tell Me a Story, Scott McClellan writes, “A story is progress, action toward an outcome. Characters without a pursuit do not make for a [good] story” (29). The problem for Google is that when we first look at Glass, we’re not quite sure what the “outcome” is or how Glass gets us there. My life seems fine, we say, why would I want to look like a cheesy character from Argo? Google is saying, “Yes, yes. Ask that question. Ask it again and again and again, until you find the answer. Once you do, you’ll love it.” If we try to imagine what it will be like to use Google Glass, and we can't come up with anything, Google looses big time. But if they can coax us to keep imagining and keep trying to tell and hear better #IfIHadGlass stories, then one day the once strange product will become a normal, unquestioned part of our larger cultural myth and we'll consider it as necessary as a microwave or mobile phone.

Reclaiming the Narrative

There is nothing particularly troubling about all this. But as always there is a danger lying around the corner, and that when we spend a lot of time focusing on what the product can do for us, we sometimes allow the product to takes over the story we were originally trying to tell. Instead of using Glass toward some larger pursuit, the acquisition and use of Glass becomes the outcome. We've probably all caught ourselves doing this on occasional. For example, we all bought cameraphones to remember those great moments in life, but then we found out that sometimes the goal of “capturing the moment” gets in the way of the moment itself. Or imagine a pastor who wants to tell people about the surpassing beauty of Jesus, but then becomes enamored with bigger and bigger screens and more and more downloads. The goal of this post is not, of course, to bash on cameraphones, podcasts, or Glass, but to give us the chance to rethink on the place of technology in our lives and in the stories we are trying to tell with our lives. What is the true outcome toward which we are striving? Do our tools help us overcome conflict to get to that goal, or somewhere along the way did acquiring new toys become a chief pursuit?

Awesomely Awkward Technology Poses

John Dyer — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 13:07:13 +0000

Curious Rituals, an new ebook from the Art Center College of Design (by Nicolas Nova, Katherine Miyake, Nancy Kwon, and Walton Chiu) does a fantastic job of illustrating some of the "new" poses we make with modern technology products. They start the book with gestures like swipe and pinch, but then quickly move into the social behaviors we've unconsciously adopted. Download the book (PDF), and see the blog here. Below are a few of my favorites:

Side-Laptop

I've never done this one, but now I must try it.

Nintendo Wisper

If you remember this one, you're awesome.

Baboon's Face

I think we've all done this utterly useless one at Starbucks once.

Share a Bud

The social commentary in Curious Rituals is spot on this one.

Tired Arm

Sometimes you just have to switch ears, but not hands...

Social Media

Sharing funny stuff is the new small talk.

Phone Trace

Pacing around like you just don't care. Download the book (PDF), and see the blog here.

A Technology Consumption Resolution

John Dyer — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 19:50:48 +0000

My Discipline Problem

Even though I regularly write, think, and speak about faith and technology, that doesn’t mean I’m immune to the lure of “technology addiction.” Specifically, one area that I often struggle in properly disciplining is avoiding unnecessary email and social media checks when I’m home with my family. Sometimes when I pull out my phone “just to check the time,” I find myself wanting to check various apps and clear out unread items. That's not to say I'm always on my phone. Judging by other dads around me who are often glued to their glowing rectangles, I think I do a pretty decent job of keeping my phone in my pocket. Yet, the battle seems tougher than it needs to be, and being a rather lazy soul, I wanted to find a way to make things easier on myself.

Old Tech to the Rescue

So for Christmas I asked for something simple: a watch. When I have my phone in my pocket and I my mind wanders to something I could do on the phone, I have to make a choice not to pull it out. Or if I need to check the time, I have to make a choice not to do more. But now that I have the watch, when I got home from work the first thing I do is put my phone on the kitchen counter (turning the ringer on so I can hear it). This way, I'm free to play with my kids and enjoy my family, but I can still keep up with the time if needed. By putting the phone off to the side, it’s a little harder to get to, and therefore less of a “temptation.” Of course, there are time when I do need it, and it would be more convenient to have it readily available. But with a watch on my arm, I have the tool I need is readily available, and the temptation I don’t want is just far enough away to make it unworthy of pursuit.

Thresholds are Your Best Tool

This strategy is very similar to techniques often recommended for diet and exercise. If you want to avoid sweets, you can make it easier on yourself by removing them from your immediate area and thereby "raising the threshold" necessary to consume them. Driving to the gas station is much harder than walking to the fridge, so when temptation strikes, you're more likely to conclude it's too much trouble to get them and then the feeling will pass. Similarly, you can lower a threshold to make a difficult task easier. If you want to exercise in the morning, it’ll be easier if you set out clothes and shoes the night before. When you wake up, there will be less resistance (and fewer excuses) and you’re more likely to do it. With technology, if there’s something you want to avoid you can raise the threshold a bit, intentionally making it just a little harder to consume so that you’ll have to think twice about whether you really need to. I'll let you know how my little watch experiment goes.

Free Download: The Best of The Atlantic’s Technology Writing

John Dyer — Mon, 24 Dec 2012 20:47:05 +0000

Over the last two or three years, some of the best writing on technology to be found on the Internet has come from The Atlantic's technology section. Until the end of the year, they are giving away a 345 page ebook of the best posts of 2012 for free. Here's their blurb:

The Best Writing From The Atlantic’s Technology Channel 2012 is an anthology that showcases the site's kaleidoscopic approach to covering the tech scene. This isn't a book merely about technologies—it’s one about the ideas that animate them, the people who create them, and the users who transform them. You'll find everything from an exclusive account of the technology that powered the Obama campaign, to an investigation into what makes a stock photo; memes to space; drones to abortion; philosophy to animated GIFs.

So go run and grab it now: http://www.theatlantic.com/eBooks#tech (HT: Dave Stearns)

This Christmas “Browser History” is the New “Shaking the Box”

John Dyer — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 21:38:26 +0000

I tried to muster a look of disapproval, but I couldn't help but smile when my 4-year-old picked up a present, sized it up, shook it a few times, and proclaimed, "I fink it's LEGOs!" Like father, like son, another generation is carrying on the tradition of trying to figure out what's inside those beautifully wrapped boxes. But a few days ago, I heard a new take on the old tradition. Standing outside her house as our kids played in the front yard, my neighbor was telling me how difficult it is to keep the legen of Santa Claus alive with her kids. She figured it would be other kids at school that would let the secret slip and ruin it for her kids, but it turned out our old friend and foe technology almost did her in this year. Apparently her son is pretty good with computer and looked at what she called her "Google history" (I'm not sure if she meant her Google searches or something like Chrome's History, but either way the point is the same) and he noticed that he was seeing many of the things he had written down in a letter to Santa. He asked his mom how the computer could know all the things he had told Santa he wanted that year. Evidently, even Santa needs Amazon now and again. Merry Christmas!