Category: Uncategorized

When I read about Technorati tags, I was excited. In fact, I knew to be excited about it because Kevin messaged me, and first thing I read about them online was David Weinberger’s encomium, and when Kevin and David are excited about something, I know enough to realize that it’s good. And when it involves searching (Kevin’s area) and epistemological taxonomy (David’s area of concentration), somebody who respects those guys as much as I do simply must get excited. So I did.

But I should pause to say that I’m not a natural for “tags.” I’ve hardly ever used deli.cio.us tags. I didn’t begin tagging my pictures for flickr for ages; even now I’m liable to tag pretty cursorily (no, I don’t mean “with a computer pointing device”). I don’t use categories in my own Moveable Type posts, although the Seabury site that used to be (and may someday live again) integrated categories into its architectural rationale. And once I started thinking about tags, I felt chagrined; the folksonomized Web that David envisioned, that Kevin and Stewart and all had begun to implement, presents such a tremendous opportunity — but here I was, too lazy to tag. I had worked on my to care about valid mark-up, and I emphasized this aspect of the Seabury site. But I just wasn’t sure I had the determination to add Technorati tags to my posts. You’re too polite to complain, but I get long-winded — how would I tag my monologues without repeating most of the words? I was going to be a stick between the spokes of the organic semantic Web, when my friends were building and turning the wheels.

So I didn’t blog about tags at all. I thought they were a great idea, but I didn’t have the energy to implement them here, and I didn’t want to be a party pooper. Who knows? Maybe if the haphazard-HTML writer I once was can become a CSS ascetic, even lazy AKMA could become a tags-onomist.

But now Shelley has spoken up and even illustrated her wise words, and I think I have to agree with her (I didn’t implement “nofollow” either, so she’s my official Webby Oracle this week). It’s not so much the vulnerability to spam; it’s not so much the imprecision; it’s not so much the bother tagging; but the cumulative effect of a number of “it’s-not-the”s tarnishes the luster of this really great idea.

Brilliance still peeks out from beneath the tarnish. The idea excited me at first, and it still does in a murky way. I expect that the fantastic organic semantic webbiness of the idea will come to expression in more spam-resistant, more precise, less cumbersome ways, and I expect that I’ll get on board in a while (no doubt before it’s really easy and an obvious thing to do); that far, I share David’s ultimate confidence in a grassroots taxonomic web. For now, though, I remain unconvinced about this step toward the Web of tags.

Don’t let me near your database — okay?

Last fall, the database on the Disseminary site fell to bits when I tried to upgrade the Moveable Type installation without hand-holding; yesterday, the other MySQL database with which I’m closely associated (Seabury’s MT installation, which hosts my New Testament Resources pages and for which Micah and I just did the redesign I’ve been blathering about) opted to rearrange its bits and bytes during a system upgrade.

I thought for a while about switching to BlogSpot or some other remote hosted service, but then I realized that was selfish; just think of the havoc I’d cause when their database melted down, stranding thousands of innocent users . . . .

I appreciate Amy Welborn’s writing, I s’pose, and the Velveteen Rabbi is a colleague-in-ritual for me, but it strikes me as odd — and not, I hope, only from a self-interested point of view — that only Welborn and Evangelical Outpost are selected to represent Christian blogs in the interesting Deep Blogs “Spiritual Blogs” category. Selecting Welborn’s articulate Catholicism and an explicitly “evangelical” oage neglects a pretty broad and significant Christian readership (though it replicates the big-media tendency to recognize Chrtistians only when they’re Roman Catholic or evangelical). Chacun à son goût, of course, and Deep Blogs may simply be uninterested in a technological theologian’s random thoughts; but I could nominate others who would complement the selection at Deep Blogs (I would say they would “flesh out” the list, but I’m in the middle of lecturing through St. Paul this term).

I spent much of today combing through Seabury’s website, trying to make loose ends meet, to replicate arcane (sometimes bizarre) layout, to palliate outdated information and links. When I finally got the new version ready, and ran into vexing permissions problems.

So I can’t say that the new Seabury site is live, now. But it’s lying on the lab table, electrodes attached to its temples, with the Van de Graff generators* and Jacob’s-Ladders making dramatic sparks in the background. If Bruce can sort out the permissions tomorrow, it’ll be the cue for the townspeople to grab their torches because — it’s alive!

* Hat tip to Jane for reminding me what those doohickeys are called. . . . .

Last trip to the library to pick up books to feed Pippa’s literary voracity, I bumped into Matisse : From Color to Architecture, a compendious documentation of Matisee’s work before and during the design and construction of the Dominican chapel at Vence. As an ally of the Dominicans, an enthusiast for Matisse, and (as I just mentioned) a Francophile, I had to take the book out. It looks fascinating — though it triggers my caution that I’m reading out of my field, and I oughtn’t simply accept claims and analyses because they’re printed in an elegant book. . . .

It seems as though France 2 is planning a story on “the global blogging phenomenon,” and I’m on their list of people who might be worth interviewing. They’re particularly interested in my reflections on bloggers’ electronic afterlife, especially the Cyber Crypt that Joi and David foisted on me, and that Jeneane wondered about before me. Between worrying about whether the interview will be in French (“Bien sûr? Pourquoi pas?”) and trying to remember what we were talking about a year and a half ago, I wonder whether this is a tremendous honor for a Francophile such as I, or simply the decline of Western civilization.

And it looks as though I may be going to Freedom-to-Connect, too. That’s got to be the limit; no way can I squeeze in more gigs this spring. Don’t even think of it. Just say “No.”

The group at Boing Boing is right: the sound of the Tasmanian Devil tops my list of “sounds I never want to hear a creature make.”

Just Saturday, I referred Josiah to Paul Graham’s terrific hypothetical speech to a real high-school class. We shared our amazed delight at Graham’s perspective; I particularly relished his account of secondary education:

When I discovered that one of our teachers was herself using Cliff’s Notes, it seemed par for the course. Surely it meant nothing to get a good grade in such a class.

In retrospect this was stupid. It was like someone getting fouled in a soccer game and saying, hey, you fouled me, that’s against the rules, and walking off the field in indignation. Fouls happen. The thing to do when you get fouled is not to lose your cool. Just keep playing.

By putting you in this situation, society has fouled you. Yes, as you suspect, a lot of the stuff you learn in your classes is crap. And yes, as you suspect, the college admissions process is largely a charade. But like many fouls, this one was unintentional. . . .

Why does society foul you? Indifference, mainly. There are simply no outside forces pushing high school to be good. The air traffic control system works because planes would crash otherwise. Businesses have to deliver because otherwise competitors would take their customers. But no planes crash if your school sucks, and it has no competitors. High school isn’t evil; it’s random; but random is pretty bad.

Ouch! Graham inspires me both to speak out in defense of teachers, who work conscientiously to attain goals that their culture and their institutions function to sabotage, and to agree that he pretty much captured my own experience of high school. Mine drifted a little toward the evil — having been beaten and hospitalized sours my nostalgic retrospect — but on the whole, “random” characterizes my experience fairly.

So Si and I were tut-tutting about Graham’s essay, when what do you know, this afternoon he got the fat envelope from one of the colleges to which he applied. Still four to go, still his first choice to go, but for the moment we can rest easy that next year, as long as I can get a good price for my extra kidney, he will move away from home.

That means, by the way, that next year Pippa and Bea and I will be on our own. I sense a situation comedy in the making.

As you may recall, my Mom lives on Nantucket. I’m looking forward to hearing that she’s OK.

[Update: Margaret got through to my mother this morning; she’d been evacuated to the high school, where she spent a sleepless night sitting in the cafeteria (the cots were unusable). She’s okay, but it’s good for her to be back in her own bed.]

I recall today that few struggles challenge one at a deeper level than the problem of figuring out how far to trust somebody. I have known more than one person who treated me wonderfully, but who treated others very inconsiderately. I did not find out until later that my experience was atypical; how then are we to distinguish coercive social engineering from genuine kindness and integrity?

“He was always a perfect gentleman to me and my family, so he must have done the same to you. Since he was always reliable to me, you must be the liar.”

(Reminds me of the Jim Cunningham character in Donnie Darko, which I finally watched last night, clearing two-thirds of the Netflix jam.)

Way back when I posted twice about marriage, I was preparing a general case about the texture of Christian marriage as a particular sacramental institution. I proposed a variety of ways of thinking about Christian marriage, noting that a strictly biblical version of Christian marriage (hence, a version defined by marriage as the New Testament represents it) begins with indissolubility, exclusive duality, constitutive gender complementarity, and the subordination of women to men.* Add to that the long-standing tradition that sexual expression in marriage serves solely procreative ends, and you can get a plausible picture of “traditional Christian marriage.”

Being a vexatiously picky hermeneutical philosopher, I’d be prepared to argue that one can’t simply pick that characterization (or any) up, carve it in stone, and identify it as a changeless divine model for marriage. Let’s ignore my fussiness, though — some with whom I’d be arguing will dismiss my objections out of hand, so we’ll save trouble by affirming what I would myself dispute: that this traditional biblical Christian marriage constitutes a timeless pattern by which [some] Christian marriages orient themselves to God’s will.

Having granted that possibility to those who want to claim it, what are we to say of those who enter into Christian marriage, but who understand that vocation to involve some departure from the “traditional” model I describe above? Perhaps these couples decline to enforce male supremacy in the relationship, or they permit sexual expression apart from procreative intent. Certainly that makes a noteworthy difference from the traditional model — at least, from the most traditional perspective it does. Does a very-conservative marriage that allows both spouses equal authority within the marriage deviate from the “traditional” norm so far that the traditionalist can no longer recognize it as a legitimate marriage? that their reluctance to accord him final authority counts as a sin?

In other words: if you dig in your heels and draw a line in the sand (deliberately, delightedly mixed metaphor) against Change, you can make a pretty resilient case that God permits your kind of marriage, but not others (not the kinds with authority-sharing, remarriage after divorce, recreational marital sex, or more controversially, “open” relationships or same-sex couples). That case is not, I’d insist, airtight — but it’s admirably simple and well-attested.

Once you openly admit some mode of change in your model, though, you enter a different zone of reasoning. Once you adopt (let’s say) shared-authority in marriage as an alternative to traditional biblical Christian marriage, you have opted to permit certain changes and resist others. Then you need to make as strong a case as possible for the particular change that you advocate, and make clear the extent to which the change remains in continuity with the tradition, and you need to differentiate your proposal from “anything goes.”

I see convincing cases to be made for some such changes, and very plausible cases for others. I don’t see how one can inveigh against the possibility (for instance) of same-sex marriages when one allows remarriage after divorce. I don’t see why biblical mandates for gender complementarity can have eternal authority, but biblical mandates for male-dominance (or traditional mandates that sex be oriented solely toward procreation) no longer bind the consciences of Christian spouses.

Let’s step back for a second from an exclusive concentration on marriage. Over the past hundred-fifty years or so, certain portions of the church have adopted particular changes in their doctrine and discipline. Vatican I promulgated the Pope’s explicit claim to ex cathedra infallibility; churches have begun to recognize the marriages of people who have previously been divorced; Roman Catholics have recently accorded dogmatic authority relative to certain claims about the Virgin Mary; many churches now ordain women; some churches recognize same-sex relationships; some churches reject Constantinian baptism (by this rejection, I mean positively the expectation that baptism involve catechesis and a demonstrable commitment to Christian life); and an increasing number of congregations share the sacramental elements with non-baptized congregants. These are all changes from what has long been taught, whether as a making-binding of a traditional point, or the repristination of a quiescent practice, or the reformation of a practice which the church had allegedly misappropriated. These changes look obvious, natural, quite harmonious with the tradition — to their proponents. To their opponents, they endanger the very integrity of the Body of Christ.

Every thoughtful Christian can articulate reasons why these changes shouldn’t simply be equated with one another. “Change” is not automatically good; resistance to change, likewise. Some changes make sharp turns away from the Church’s received wisdom, where others simply make the gospel’s teaching effective in hitherto neglected ways. Of these changes, I’m intrigued to notice that none entails rejecting the conciliar doctrines; one can [not to say that all do] ardently uphold Nicene trinitarian theology, Chalcedonian christology, and countless other marks of orthodoxy, while at the same time adopting and resisting particular points from the list above.

Recently I’ve noticed that some re-asserting voices have begun demurring at the assumption that all “conservative” or all “catholic” observers hold to the same sample of positive and negative changes in the church. I’ve also seen conservative objections to both “open communion” and “open baptism,” which in my own reflections portend a much weightier problem for the church’s relation to its tradition than does the question of who’s in what kind of ecclesiastically-approved marriage-like relationship (I’m not trying to convince others of this, at the moment, just adding my tuppence). This seems good to me — not because I want to fracture the opposition in order to trample them as my side** rolls to victory, but because all of us owe one another a careful account for our theological consciences. Facile binaries between “us” and “them” serve the political purpose of drumming up the fevers of the partisans (especially when we pathologize or anathematize those with whom we disagree), but they rarely clarify the best grounds for advocating one or another theological position, and almost never give somebody a good reason for changing her or his mind.

In the extremely complicated context I’ve stirred up, I can make a case that committed, lifelong, exclusive relationships between people of the same sex makes less of a problem for the church than remarriage, or (to shift out of the sexuality debate) “open communion.” Other people can make strong arguments against those propositions. As I said earlier, I’m prepared to hunker down with hypomonê, respecting those wise souls who disagree with me, not using muscle to settle spiritual dissent.

In the meantime, let’s encourage everyone, on every side, to read and listen more widely, for the more we learn about our teaching and traditions, the more clearly we’ll be able to frame our claims about the truth, and the more we’ll share a repertoire of common premises by which to develop wiser, more edifying disagreements.

Let’s look for profound theologians (regardless of their “side”) who deal with the complexities of these conflicts, which so grieve the people of God — rather than assailing the follies of our least-apt interlocutors.

Let’s work out which claims best bespeak the gospel of holiness and grace. Let’s learn who among us can patiently endure waiting for the Spirit to sort out our confusions, and who knows already what the rest of us ought to recognize if not for our ignorance and willfulness.

And by all means, let’s pray that the truth so win the hearts of us all, that we can lay down insult and accusation in favor of praise and thanksgiving, upholding one another in the vows we have made to God in the church, and showing to all onlookers the kind of shared life that bespeaks the beauty of holiness, the variegated solidarity, and the admirable clarity that point to the One God of heaven and earth.

* The household code in Ephesians stipulates that husbands love their wives, as Christ loved the church; that can be read so as to ground a marital ethic of mutual submission. The prevalent instances of “traditional Christian marriage,” however, have in effect if not also in theory located decisive authority with the husband, the “head” of the wife as Christ is of the church.

** I don’t even want an “opposition” or a “side” — here I’m couching my renunciation in terms that one might anticipate from conventional popular polemics.

DRMA: I Don’t Remember by Peter Gabriel; Thow That Men Do Call It Dotage by Henry VIII/St. George’s Canzona; Pink Turns To Blue by Hüsker Dü; Landslide by Shannon Campbell; Revival by the Allman Brothers Band; Thank You by Led Zeppelin; She Belongs To Me by Bob Dylan; One Beat by Sleater-Kinney; Jammin’ by Bob Marley and the Wailers; Do I? by Decibully; He Brought Us by Delois Barrett Campbell and the Barrett Sisters; (I’m Not Your) Stepping Stone by the Sex Pistols; Something So Right by Annie Lennox; Akimbo by Ani DiFranco; Hard To Explain by Strokes; Rain by the Blake Babies; Cool Dry Place by the Traveling Wilburys; Hypnotized by Fleetwood Mac; If God Will Send His Angels by U2.

After lunch at BlogWalk Chicago, we’ve broken into more small groups. Ours is examining/envisioning the way one might construct the pitch to get an enterprise involved in social software (selling blogging to an organization). Lilia suggests finding out where in the work flow, blogging might help. Maybe R&D research logbooks; maybe shift reports; sales territory reports — replace paper with software. Jim suggests another angle: a workgroup that’s open to trying, to support whatever their work processes are. Then you coach them and also see how blogs help in unanticipated ways. The latter phases of the discussion depart in divergent ways from the initiating topic.

Whoops! Now we’re getting to a favorite topic of mine: ways of coping with resistance to the change that online communication provokes. Shannon thinks it’s a matter of writing style; Lilia points out that some of her colleagues will not read her blog no matter what, even when it would benefit their participation in her work flow. Shannon likes threaded bulletin-board discussions; they make my flesh crawl.

Here are the overviews of group discussions: The first group talked about blogs as money-making entities. The current way that blogs are structured makes monetizing very hard, as compared to movies (in theaters, on cable/ on broadcast TV, on DVD/video, then free on airplanes). It serves mostly as a calling card, by definition an area where money is not being made. Is reasoning about “blogging” itself reasonable?

Three phases of individual blog: 1 ranting-raving, 2 affecting real life (information collection/mentoring), 3 transforming your life (blog as business). Payback from blog is not material capital but social capital. Blogging is s lightweight form of consulting.

Cluetrain side of it: to pitch to a CEO, say that blogging will result in better conversations.

Second group focused on the pilot-project blog. Skipping the “why” question, went directly to the what would it look like? (Phil posted a lot of this to the wiki). The overt purpose is for the pilot to produce the intellectual results that would justify the manager giving the go-ahead. The covert purpose would involve getting people on board emotionally. So the group worked on ways that one might make those responses more likely. We deemed it important to choose participants carefully, whether to stack the deck or to find people for whom blogging would serve an immediately useful purpose. We talked over how long it takes to make a case on behalf of blogging: a day? a week? one shift?

The third group considered the changing state of technology and the work environment that children will be modulating into — an environment wildly different from that for which schools are presently structured. The group discussed learning-how-to-learn, pathfinding without already knowing what the path is. Students need to learn how to develop social networks. The critical piece used to be finding resources; now it’s finding people who’ve already done that research. The conclusions one draws may still be individual, but they need to learn how to conduct shared research. School assignments are artificial; now students can actually write their own textbook. The process itself is as useful as the end product. Skype enables language students to talk with native speakers.

(For the record: the snow outside verges on whiteout conditions. All the snow we haven’t gotten this winter is falling on BlogWalk Chicago.)

When would you (as a manager) fire a blogger?

Now we’re wrapping up. What are the most important things learned today — and what follow-up should we cover? The piloting discussion provided a helpful framework relative to planning a similar enterprise. We made human connections, and we participated in imagining the ways that this technological transformation may affect us. This is a center of what’s happening, but instead we should understand that we’re already changing business-as-usual. Why aren’t we 0wnz0ring the world? Blogs aren’t necessarily appropriate, though, for all corporate purposes. We had a great conversational in-person blog right here today. Stuart is making a strong case for Skype — I may have to give that a try. People express a lot of appreciation for the catalytic effect of blogging and meeting people; everyone in the room is an enthusiastic blogger, but many here say that acquaintance with online personae amplifies their interest in hearing people’s voices, seeing their faces.

Pictures available at flickr.