hughbiquitous

I’m starting to think that the web rots the mind.

That’s not an absolute statement, mind you. But I think that there’s some truth in the idea that “the medium is the message” and that our interaction with the web has an effect that is independent of the content we encounter there.

For example, television accustoms us to 22-minute conflict resolution and commercials popping up every so many minutes. There are similar issues with the web: as a blogger, I find myself trying to write everything in paragraphs of no more than four or five printed lines because, as a reader of online content, I know how the medium works.

(Indeed, see web design tip #10, “Shorter paragraphs perform better than long ones. Information on your page should be designed for the short attention span of most Internet users. Keep paragraphs and sentences short unless context mandates otherwise…”)

The Need for Examination

Back in August I bookmarked a number of blog entries and articles expressing concerns about our technological saturation and its effects. The points were well taken—we need to examine our habits:

Keith Plummer: “Christians are prone to assess our use of information technologies solely on the basis of what kind of information is being conveyed with little thought given to how uncritical and excessive use of information technologies may have undesirable effects even when we are using them to communicate good things.”

Douglas Groothuis (quoted by Justin Taylor): “Any area of culture that decreases godliness and enhances worldliness must come under the loving discipline of Jesus Christ–for his glory, for our good, and for the good of those we serve. Christians need to withdraw from aspects of our technological culture … in order to gain perspective on ourselves, God, and our culture.”

John Mark Reynolds: “[The New Media] could also develop a nasty laziness in me. If I can write quickly, why refine my ideas? Why not hop from one idea to another without ever revisiting them? Doesn’t the public demand something new? This underestimates the public and threatens to leave me and any other new media writer severely weaker than we need be.”

Jerram Barrs: (sorry, it’s more than five lines…)

A good test of whether television is servant or master is, when your children have watched something, do they then go out and do something related to what they have seen? Is their imagination stimulated? Television is a servant when your children can watch a program then say, “Well that was fascinating. Let’s go and play Robin Hood,” or “Let’s go and do this thing.”

Is television stimulating your children’s interest and imagination, or is it actually having the opposite effect? When you turn it off, do they just lie around on the floor and say, “What am I going to do now?”

So, What Are You Going to Do Now?

When my church’s blog launched in 2004, the ideas I interacted with there stimulated my interest and imagination, and sure enough, I found myself saying, “what am I going to do now?” The answer came when I launched this blog in January 2005. It’s been fun and it’s definitely provoked me to greater and deeper thoughts (and clearer expressions of those thoughts, too). You might even say that blogging has become a discipline.

But there are times when I wonder if blogging has “jumped the shark.” (It should be noted that some say that the phrase, “jumped the shark,” has, itself, jumped the shark. But I digress.)

I think—I hope—the answer is “no,” but that blogs (and bloggers) are maturing. Hopefully the ideas are growing and the thoughts are stewing. Hopefully readers will get more comfortable reading longer paragraphs and writers will reward them with longer paragraphs worth reading.

7. It is a sin to do less than your best. It is wrong to do [merely] well.

“Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might” (Ecclesiastes 9:10 ). But be careful. Sometimes the “best” is a B+ sermon and spending time with your child. In other words, “best” always involves more decisions than the one you are making at the moment. That one means many other things are being left undone. So “best” is always the whole thing, not just the detail of the moment.

Bill Piper, Things I Have Learned (John Piper, ed.)

Multitasking is unrealistic. Reality has a way of bruising those who ignore it.

See also:

• Your Brain on Mulititasking
• The Multi-Tasking Myth
• Human Task Switches Considered Harmful
• Attention Regulation Disorder

…Help me to honour thee by believing before I feel,

   for great is the sin if I make feeling a cause of faith.

…Strengthen me to pray with the conviction

   that whatever I receive is thy gift,

   so that I may pray until prayer be granted;

Teach me to believe that all degrees of mercy arise

   from several degrees of prayer,

   that when faith is begun it is imperfect and must grow,

   as chapped ground opens wider and wider until rain comes.

The Divine Will, from The Valley of Vision: A Collection of Puritan Prayers and Devotions, p. 14 (Arthur Bennett, ed.)

…Subdue in me the love of sin,

Let me know the need of renovation as well as of forgiveness,

   in order to serve and enjoy thee for ever.

I come to thee in the all-prevailing name of Jesus,

   with nothing of my own to plead,

   no works, no worthiness, no promises.

I am often straying,

   often knowingly opposing thy authority,

   often abusing thy goodness;

Much of my guilt arises from my religious privileges,

   my low estimation of them,

   my failure to use them to my advantage,

But I am not careless of thy favour or regardless of thy glory;

Impress me deeply with a sense of thine omnipresence, that thou art about my path, my ways, my lying down, my end.

God The Source Of All Good, from The Valley of Vision: A Collection of Puritan Prayers and Devotions, p. 7 (Arthur Bennett, ed.)