fishers, surfers and casters

If Jesus were alive today, what would he tweet? Which gods would have the most number of facebook “likes”? Is it O.K. to take your smartphone to the toilet if your Torah or Bible app is open on it? These may seem like frivolous questions, but interactive, mobile social media, dubbed Web 2.0 is increasingly becoming the medium through which people explore spirituality, raising new questions that challenge religious authority and the meaning of religious community.

In this week’s Encounter program, Worship 2.0, Masako Fukui explores how mainly Christian and Jewish faiths are using social media, and discover a future where we’re likely to merge with our mobile communications tools to become religious cyborgs. But what kind of cyborgs still remains a mystery.

The program about social media and religion will air this Saturday, 5 p.m. (AEST) on ABC Radio National or it can be streamed or downloaded.

Please feel free to leave a comment on our comments pages, or on our twitter feed.

In the last podcast of A World of Possibilities, MIT Professor Sherry Turkle, and author of the seminal internet research book, Life on the Screen, talks about her new book, Alone Together. While I thought her first book was a sensitive, honest and honourable exploration in the lives of young people engaged in virtual worlds, it seems that Turkle is getting old and afflicted of with the same cynicism and fear that Carr has, covered up with social science.

The podcast conversation explores two topics: our relationship with robots, and our relationships with each other through machines. And she opened up her future fears.

Fear 1: that our need for connection with people will be replaced with robots. Her problem with this is that our need for connection will not fully be reciprocated, as robots may simulate a need for us, but not really have it (robots will have need for power and maintenance, but not touch, talk, etc). Remember how we feared this twenty years ago with tamagotchis? However, tamagotchis only ever entered our society as a game. While robots may give us the perception of need and communication thereof, there are definite therapeutic benefits in this.

Fear 2: that if robots need less, and do more, then they will replace humans. I agree this is a true fear, but it’s a problem that’s already happening in the world. E.g. Shifting work from Australia to India. To combat this we struggle to improve conditions for workers on a global scale, protect rights and build solid infrastructure that will fairly distribute wealth and health in the face of globalization. While globalization may shift to robotization, this problems remain and so too the fight for solution.

Fear 3: that sharing information on mobile devices gives us only illusion of togetherness, not a reality. She harks back to days where families watched TV together. Here Turkle really exposes her “Good old days” syndrome in that, back in those days, people complained that TV replaced true conversation, playing music as a family, etc. Parents lament they can only get their child to text "I love you" rather than say it. My parents complained kids didn’t talk at all. Her book’s chapter which explores this is titled "Don’t call!" The basic telephone offered the value of voice to conversation, that is now lost to us. Maybe the deeper issue is that telephone demanded time and attention, while kids may have voice but don’t have time commitment. This may be a result of poor parenting in technologised environment. My last post explored how parents are dealing with this. Also, recent news has shown that social media can be a powerful joining and mobilizing force, if used well.

Fear 4: the surge of triviality in social media replaces deep connection of full conversation. She is reiterating all of Carr’s laments here. Her experience of connecting with people she admired on Twitter only to see their banal tweets on not being able to find a good coffee at the airport. Laments the public sphere is being flooded with trivial information. In my eyes she merely shows that she is still stuck in the delineation between public and private. Social media is challenging us to reconsider the balance between public and private in our social connections, by rhizomatising them. It shows that she had an expectation of her meeting with this person through Twitter, but that may have just as well occurred if she happened upon him or her in person at the airport. Her expectations of Twitter are not mine, and so her response to it is different.

The generation gap between digital natives and digital immigrants is becoming more obvious as digital immigrants count their losses in the cultural convergence, and publish them. However I remain convinced that it is a repeat of countless shifts in cultural values and practices. Already the signs are here about emotional, physical and social well-being will be maintained, if not strengthened. Other things, we should just let go.

Remember when you were 16 years old? Now, imagine you are 16 and living in a suburb where your or your friends’ parents think earning between 60 and 90 grand a year is, politely, "living simply". Your high school no longer has funds to teach you anything beyond maths, science and the traditional humanities, so if you want to explore art, design or music then you ask your parents to pay for you to go to a summer camp. The local council doesn’t allow teenagers to hang out in public spaces, for some reason, so you meet friends at home, or get your parents to pay for you to join a tennis club.

Life seems to suck a little, but you have one thing up your sleeve, or, well, in your home. You have access to good technology. your parents know a lot about the latest computer hardware and software, even though you know more, and they can get it cheaper than most people. If your parents have a bit of money, then each family members has the tech they need, and there’s a room in your house with some top play gear. If your parents have a bit more money, then your house will be designed for great play gear to happen.

This is, according to Heather Horst, a researcher at the University of California, pretty much what it’s like for a teenager in Silicon Valley today. In a seminar presented at RMIT on 21 June, she offered us her findings on an in-depth study of families and their homes in the Californian region, where she sought out how both parents and children work out effective family life immersed in new technology. She discovered:

• large tech placed in family spaces, in order to allow parents to monitor children’s use
• new spaces created in new homes for tech: e.g. Rumpus rooms, tech rooms, etc
• others would renovate old family rooms into "media" rooms
• unlike their parents, children don’t consider bedrooms are private spaces, as parents listen in, or they share with siblings. Private spaces for kids more likely in social media sites than in physical spaces

What generated much interest at the seminar was the amount of professional work-life that parents bring back into the home. As work makes its way into family life in Silicon Valley, the boundaries between “homespace” and “workspace” are blurred. Given the amount of time that both parents and children spend on computers and devices, the opportunity to turn the desktop into a family space, like the dining table and lounge room, is optimised.

Horst makes the exciting claim that this reflects images of family life in pre-industrial Europe and its colonies, where trades, crafts and professions were conducted as much at home as in the town centre, where children were involved, and where work and parenting were done more or less simultaneously.

Of course, this pattern is just confined to the Silicon Valley. At home I have a desktop in the study, as well as a laptop. I cannot keep from bringing work home with me, and used to have the laptop in the lounge where I could work, check emails, etc. while hanging out with the kids who are playing on the PS3 and watching TV. Now my daughter is a little older, she needs my laptop to connect with friends, develop her craft on deviantart.com, do research and homework tasks. Our dining table has become a workspace for her, since I’d rather she were online when I’m around than in her bedroom. It means I prefer now not to work in my study on the desktop, but somehow get a few things done at the same table as her. I find that when I do, even though we are paying attention to our own devices, we get to talk a little more and connect than we would if I were in another room. My child’s tech use is influencing my own in the home.

Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows and that article I love to hate, will be in Melbourne as a guest of The Wheeler Centre’s series of free public lectures. I want to go, to see if he can convince me that “the internet’s pervasive influence is fostering ignorance”. First I’ll have to look up “fostering” in the bookie thing, you, that thing where it gives meanings to words and stuff.

The lecture will start at 6.15pm on Thursday 23 September. More info, including location, is all here. If you’d like to go, shoot me a message so I can look out for you. I’m looking forward to it. Carr has some interesting issues to raise. Better yet, the lecture is only for an hour, which is good because lectures are like, soooo long usually.