Another extraordinary snippet from the WSJ interview with Eric Schmidt concerns the future of what Google wants to be able to do:

“We’re trying to figure out what the future of search is… We’re still happy to be in search, believe me. But… I actually think most people don’t want Google to answer their questions, they want Google to tell them what they should be doing next.”

If that sounds sort of…creepy…then his elaboration hardly makes things better:

“Because of the info Google has collected about you, we know roughly who you are, roughly what you care about, roughly who your friends are. Google also knows, to within a foot, where you are.” Mr. Schmidt leaves it to a listener to imagine the possibilities: If you need milk and there’s a place nearby to get milk, Google will remind you to get milk. It will tell you a store ahead has a collection of horse-racing posters, that a 19th-century murder you’ve been reading about took place on the next block.

“A generation of powerful handheld devices is just around the corner that will be adept at surprising you with information that you didn’t know you wanted to know.”

There are many things I don’t know. But I do know that I don’t want Google harvesting information about my every move in order to tell me things it thinks I might want to know. Why? Well, partly because of the way we know this will be paid for:

“The only way the problem [of insufficient revenue] is going to be solved is by increasing monetization, and the only way I know of to increase monetization is through targeted ads. That’s our business.”

“The power of individual targeting—the technology will be so good it will be very hard for people to watch or consume something that has not in some sense been tailored for them.”

In other words, this represents the final victory of consumer capitalism: at every turn we are fed information about what we should do – for which read ‘what we should buy’ – while data from our every act is harvested to more accurately target us for further marketing.

Our addiction to shiny new devices and technologies has to be fed somehow, and the big brands know this. They know that we will lap up ‘free technology’  – without quite realising that our free will will have been vanquished as we pay for it in advertising.

Now more than ever we need to tread carefully and this wisely about the places we want to allow big technology companies to have free access.

In a fascinating interview in the Wall Street Journal, Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt has admitted that young people will have to change their identities in the future to protect themselves from all the embarrassing photos and information that will be available about them from their ‘misspent youths.’

‘Every young person one day will be entitled automatically to change his or her name on reaching adulthood.’

I think this is more interesting than he might have meant it to be, and touches on issues of identity, conversion and ‘rebirth’ into adulthood. Many societies still have initiation rituals which mark a move away from childhood and into full adult membership of a community. They become a new person. The old has gone, the new has come.

With this move, however, the community needs to present a sort of amnesia – the child that you were is ‘forgotten’. In the digital age, this is becoming more and more impossible:

“I don’t believe society understands what happens when everything is available, knowable and recorded by everyone all the time.”

To ‘available, knowable and recorded’ I’d add ‘remembered.’ And this could be a problem. Why? Because it will never allow people to move on from the idiocy of their youth, and let’s face it, most of us were idiots at least some of the time.

But perhaps there’s a deeper problem here. The reason why people may be forced into taking new identities is because society, while never being able to allow us to forget, has it self forgotten that we were all young once. In other words, we have become unforgiving. An interviewer who looks up a prospective candidate’s Facebook profile and decides that their drunken photos and stupid utterances exclude them from consideration has forgotten that they probably did the very same things. It’s just that they were unrecorded.

The move into adulthood then may involve a ritual of rebirth, of digital deletion or reassessment, even a conscious attempt to turn over a new leaf and become ‘someone else’, but this must be paralleled with a decision by all of us that we will also be forgiving.

This appears to me to be the dual-role of baptism. The person who disappears under the water leaves behind their old self, and rises a new being. But the community that watches them disappear, and then reappear, has a responsibility to forgive – and this means ‘pretending to forget too.’ When Jesus says ‘you will no longer be called Simon’ he becomes Simon/Peter – a dual identity, with his Simon-self ‘forgotten.’

We might all need these digital baptisms from time to time. Periods when we need to delete, and then pretend that things are forgotten. The infamous university photo of Tony Blair (back row, third from right) is a good case in point. It’s embarrassing, but it’s surely crass to use it to judge him now?

Apple, the series of events I’ve been organising with some others, is back for another three dates. The idea behind Apple is simple: to get theology to engage with technology and social process. We’ve covered diverse ground such as social networks, the Large Hadron Collider, grey ecology, Heidegger and gadgetry.

With this new series – more details to follow on the Apple blog – we’re going to be expanding a little and look at the wider idea of technologies as organisational tools. To kick this off, on 15th Sept I’m going to be debating institutional Christianity with Jonny Baker and Ian Mobsby (and others – tbc). This has sprung out of the big discussion that kicked off when I posited the question: ‘has what has emerged retreated?’ My concern is that the emerging church has slightly run for cover under the wing of the institutions recently – which have started offering new ways into ordination etc.

Jonny responded with a critique of the TAZ concept I put forward in Other, so I’ve asked him to come and discuss these issues with myself and Ian Mobsby – who’s ordained and leads the Moot emerging community, as well as advocating a New Monastic approach.

Given the recent scandals which have surrounded the Catholic church, and the continuing debates about schism in the Anglican communion, I think this is a very important debate which demands careful thought. Are institutions actually giving cover to practices which would be more immediately dealt with and condemned in the context of local community, or are they repositories of knowledge, protecting our faith from dilution? Moreover, is it possible to be both ‘at the centre and the edge?’

This should be a fascinating evening, with the usual good beer and food that our venue, The Betsey Trotwood, provide. Do your best to make it if you can!

Details:

7:30pm, 15th Sept

The Betsey Trotwood, 56 Farringdon Road

Interesting piece in The Independent about the battle over the right to remain anonymous online – especially as waged in World of Warcraft recently. That’s not a world I have ever ventured into, but many many have, and, as Rhodri Marsden sets out:

Female players were particularly concerned, very aware that revealing their gender could invite unwanted attention from the kind of men who spend long hours sitting indoors seeking the Reins Of The Bronze Drake within the Caverns of Time. Some respondents during the ensuing 2,000-page discussion on this topic dared to suggest that privacy wasn’t really an issue, but they were forced to eat their words when a Blizzard employee, after revealing his real name in defence of the system, suddenly found his phone number, address, details of his parents, siblings and spouse, and even pictures of his childhood home posted online by Warcrafters trying to make a point.

He goes on to quote comic artist John Gabriel’s ‘Greater Internet F****** Theory‘, which runs that Normal Person + Web Anonymity + Audience = …. well, let’s say ‘idiot’, to keep it for a family audience.

This highlights again the paradox of online presences: we have the potential to be more ‘ourselves’ because we don’t have the pressure of others watching us, but we are also able to be incredibly stupid and cruel for the same reason.

Interestingly, this paradox is nothing new. The screened off confessional has always been a place both where people can unload and be honest about what they have done, but also open up some of their darker desires, and we can see this duality in the way it has functioned as a place in cinema and literature.

Indeed, one could argue that the robes of the priest, which are meant to anonymise them, also bring the twin dangers of increased honesty and increased indiscretion, and that Gabriel’s theory works for any ‘masked performers’ whether ministers, comics, puppeteers or musicians.

Once again, we have to evolve to live with it. Rather than turning off the web, or demanding everyone is unmasked, we need to learn new social skills of how to deal with anonymous commenters, online flaming and general idiocy.

Was great to have Si Johnston here before he left for his big trip across to Mongolia by motorbike. Many of you may remember him from brilliant stuff he did with church.co.uk and The Truth Isn’t Sexy last time he lived in London. It’s a massive trip he’s doing – some 14000 miles to the furthest point, then something around the same back – and I’ll be thinking of Si often, praying he stays safe and finds something good out on the road. He’s blogging his way too where possible, so do visit awayfromhere.org and follow how he’s getting on.

Really looking forward to him getting back and spending some time settled in London. Be good to have him around! Yes, that is a copy of ‘Other‘ you can see strapped to the bike. And no I didn’t force it on him, he asked for it! It’s going to be the best travelled copy I think…

Take care Si.

An excellent article in the New York Times the other day – ‘Hooked on Gadgets and Paying a Mental Price‘ – which explores the mental and relational cost of screen-addiction, plotting the story of one family who are all, in their own way, too hooked on gadgets:

Mr. Campbell continues to struggle with the effects of  data-deluge. Even after he unplugs, he craves the stimulation he gets from his electronic gadgets. He forgets things like dinner plans, and he has trouble focusing on his family.

His wife, Brenda, complains, “It seems like he can no longer be fully in the moment.”

Scientists say juggling e-mail, phone calls and other incoming information can change how people think and behave. They say our ability to focus is being undermined by bursts of information.

All of this is, inevitably, changing the way our bodies work. We are in co-evolution with our tools, and always have been.

Computer users at work change windows or check e-mail or other programs nearly 37 times an hour. The nonstop interactivity is one of the most significant shifts ever in the human environment, said Adam Gazzaley, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Francisco.

“We are exposing our brains to an environment and asking them to do things we weren’t necessarily evolved to do,” he said. “We know already there are consequences.”

It is the consequences of our deeper interaction with digital technology that continues to fascinate me. If technology is affecting the way we relate to one another, it must also be affecting the way we relate theologically, and also how we perceive ourselves as persons.

It is these themes that I pick up in ‘Other’ – and here’s an excerpt, which I hope will give a little flavour of the book – available on a nice discount at the moment here.

Despite our now inextricable reliance on digital telecommunications, combustion engines and synthetic chemistry, we are not, at our core, automata. Perhaps this is what our Sabbath should be: a day to turn off.

Writing on the limitations of technology, Ivan Illich, the radical Marxist critic of technology and education, noted that ‘only within limits can machines take the place of slaves; beyond these limits they lead to a new type of serfdom.’ Commenting on this, Aaron Falbel writes that

‘Genuinely human acts have more and more been replaced by the operation of machines, institutions and systems. Everything from procuring the food we eat to dealing with the excrement we leave behind, from birthing to dying, from healing to moving – has been designed, rationalised, engineered…’

I think these are powerful words for us to reflect on and respond to as we head further into universal wireless access and always-on connectivity. We need to be better aware of our co-evolution with our devices. We make them, but they are also remaking us – and in the worse cases this can lead to a chronic shallowing of the Self.

I have often been to Church gatherings where, in a room full of people, there is virtually nobody there. There are people in the room, but with their Macs open or their gazes focused on Blackberrys and iPhones, they are mentally elsewhere. It appears to be a kind of defence mechanism: if I were to commit to being fully present in this space I would have to be responsible for it, and deal with what is being said. But if I remove my attention a little…

It is no different to the sorts of workplaces many of us inhabit, modern offices so brilliantly satirised in Joshua Ferris’ novel And Then We Came to the End, ‘a story about sitting all morning next to someone you deliberately cross the road to avoid at lunchtime.’

Indeed, it is in these spaces, fictional or real, that I have most understood Illich’s words about ‘a new type of serfdom’. We are not surfing the net; it is ‘serfing’ us. Emails are delivered immediately, and must be dealt with now; news can be accessed in real time, and must be kept abreast of; the hundreds in my social networks can be told what I am doing now, and now, and now, and need to be told now… lest I get left behind. The result? We have no time for the other, not while we must quickly chomp down our chicken and salsa wrap. The project of building and maintaining our myriad digital fantasy selves simply leaves no time for it.

For those interested in pursuing this discussion around technology and our humanity, tonight’s Apple event is a must. 7:30pm at The Betsey Trotwood. Manjit Kumar talking about ‘The Quantum Cathedral’ and how the world’s largest machine  – the Large Hadron Collidor – may begin to affect our understanding of what is real.

See you there – remember, free beer and a book to win for those in the know!

The iPad goes on sale in the UK tomorrow, and there will doubtless be countless smug faces like the one above, leaving Apple stores with new devices that will enhance their lives and make everything go so smoothly and swimmingly.

So spare a thought for the exhausted workers who make these devices for us in conditions so bad that there have been a number of suicides at the Foxconn factory producing them.

Talking and music are banned during shifts, which last at least 10 hours. Workers must perform a certain number of repetitive operations per shift, under the eye of allegedly harsh military-style supervisors.

“Foxconn’s management is totally inhuman,” one worker told the Reuters news agency. Another said: “They don’t treat workers as humans.”

As I noted in the previous post, “the more machine-like we make ourselves, the more like machines we will treat one another, and the more of us will end up consigned to skips and rubbish dumps as broken people.”

Apple’s taxonomy has been based on the compounding of ‘i’ with it’s devices: iMac, iPod, iPhone… It’s mission is to fuse the self with its technologies, but appears to have ignored the tragic by-product of that fusion: machines that make the Western self more productive are produced by Eastern selves that are treated as machines, and cheap ones at that. I mean, what machine could you build that would run for 30p per hour?

This is the shadow that haunts every cheap device you buy, the footprint that follows us as we make calls and update our statuses. It is time we paid fair wages to people who make our lives better. In current form, this is slavery by a different name: virtual reality.

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A very interesting post popped up on the theology site ‘An Und Fur Sich’ yesterday, which was a quick critique posted by Brad Johnson, after his investigation into the movement prompted by ‘a mixture of morbid and genuine curiosity.’ His single perspective was to read Pete Rollins’ books, and his comments spring basically out of that, but the most interesting aspect was his opening remark that:

The Emergent Church is a marketing phenomenon – a means of remaining “hip” and “edgy,” – and thus essentially another form of evangelistic seeker-sensitivity.

Johnson goes on to say:

For [the Emerging Church] it is well and good to question and/or doubt the faith, because these questions and doubts can be shown ultimately to affirm Christianity. [...] This, it seems to me, is the strongest form of marketability: when even the aversion to marketability (e.g., self-deprecation) is itself a strongly ironic form of pure marketability.

A couple of things I’d like to point out in response to this. Firstly, Johnson titled his post ‘Giving the Emergent Church its Due,’ but I think given the limited scope of his reading and research, he has not done anything like this.

Secondly though, I think he is a) complete right and b) completely wrong.

He is completely right in that much of what carries the label ‘emerging church’ is a straightforward marketing ploy by churches who are simply keen to attract younger members without actually changing the core of their beliefs or practices.

However, he is also completely wrong, in that the manifestations of ‘emerging church’ that have become the popular face of the movement are, I believe a distorted simulacrum of the much more radical theological model that Pete (and others) have been writing about.

This presents a problem: if the practice is never going to live up to the theory, which is at fault?

Finally, I think Johnson, though right to identify the marketing phenomenon, doesn’t do enough to argue that this is a particularly ‘emerging church’ problem. Personally, I think we are so heavily steeped in consumer capitalism that any attempt at change or re-formation is going to be afflicted by a marketing mindset (check this site out, for an example of the double-bind). Which is why my thinking for a possible next book is veering towards a synthesis of the twin failures of Communism and Christianity. It’s only out of the ashes of both that I think we might see a genuinely different movement.

Really pleased to announce that we’ve sorted out three new dates for Apple events over the next couple of months.

The idea behind Apple is to get people thinking more reflectively about technology – whether that be digital culture or tool-use. Humans are tool-makers, and the technologies we use form us, just as we form them. As technology becomes more embedded in the functioning of our relationships, it’s hugely important that we think carefully about the effect it may be having on who we are.

The first Apple in this series will see Pete Rollins doing his only London date for some time speaking around the title ‘Despite Appearances, Some Things Are Real‘ and questioning whether our online personae are actually more ‘real’ than we are.

Details: 12th May, 7:30pm, free, at The Betsey Trotwood pub, 56 Farringdon Road Clerkenwell, London. Map here. Do spread the word.

The other two dates (same time and venue)

9th June – Manjit Kumar from Wired Magazine will be speaking on quantum mechanics, multiverses and the nature of reality.

7th July – Anthony Paul Smith from Nottingham University will be speaking on ‘Is the City a Machine for the Making of Gods?’

Spread the word, and look forward to seeing you there. Just exploring the possibility of Greenbelt coming on board and recording these too, so I’ll post if we have audio etc.