Hebrew Bible and Christian Scriptures

As I’m reading Sherry McElhannon’s post on McLuhan, I’m sharing her resentment over the author’s assumption that we’re all “technological idiots” for our innate tendency to fixate on how media are used (even while, like Sherry, I’m not completely sure what all McLuhan’s getting at). But I get the “message” part: The effects of media–how they shape our behavior and relationships to one another–are what really count, not how we use them. Still, not even McLuhan could escape being a technological idiot himself, as is demonstrated in this clip from a 1976 episode of the Today Show, where McLuhan waxed philosophic ad nauseum about how appropriately presidential candidates Carter and Ford used the T.V. medium during the debates:

At about 3:20, you can catch McLuhan lamenting the candidates’ poor use of the medium. He says, “I never saw a more atrocious misuse of the T.V. medium. When it broke down, it was the thing rebelling against misuse.” Interestingly, in this entire interview, McLuhan seems to be pointing to the importance of understanding how media are used … and how NOT to use them.

Literally. For those of you wanting to finish “Personal Dynamic Media,” you may get the complete version here: http://www.newmediareader.com/book_samples/nmr-26-kay.pdf. The online version of this article contains the rest of the conclusion, which speculates about the possible downsides of the Dynabook’s general appeal:

The total range of possible users is so great that any attempt to specifically anticipate their needs in the design of the Dynabook would end in a disastrous feature-laden hodgepodge which would not be really suitable for anyone.

While modern-day OS’s may not be exactly “disatrous,” most of them come pre-bloated with features not everyone will use, and most don’t provide intuitive resources for programming custom tools a la the Dynabook (can’t speak to Linux). Kay and Goldberg’s SmallTalk language, however, was meant to combat this problem–it would provide a means by which bootstrapping users could program their own tools:

… [A] great deal of effort has been put into providing both endless possibilities and easy tool-making through the Smalltalk programming language. … The burden of system design and specification is transferred to the user. This approach will only work if we do a very careful and comprehensive job of providing a general medium of communication which will allow ordinary users to casually and easily describe their desires for a specific tool.

Alas, nothing like SmallTalk exists today. Sure, Macintosh users have Automator, an application that lets users of OSX program AppleScript visually, and I suppose if you were really into punishment you’d immerse yourself in MicroSoft’s Visual Basic programming language, but the sad part is that both of these scripting languages–presumably, the only end-user tools for programming the world’s two most ubiquitous desktop operating systems–are merely meant to program event sequences, not design personal “metamedia.”

Interestingly, more opportunities for bootstrapping seem to exist within the world of mobile devices, where the growing popularity of Android, Google’s open-source OS for mobile phones, is giving would-be developers a ray of hope.

For the past year I have been thinking about how to use Second Life to help students have an immersion experience of the pre-exilic Israel and Judah and post-exilic Yehud. The New Media Consortium is doing interesting educational things in Second Life. However, as a far as I can tell no one has used this to improve instruction in biblical studies.
Here is what I am thinking about re-framing Christian Scriptures 1 class next fall. I will have a panel of experts that student groups I am looking for at least one of each of the following: Near Eastern archeologist, gamer, new media expert, Second Life expert, cinematographer and educator. The student groups will work with these guides to build a face-to-face simulation that will be recorded. The panel will view the simulation and provide feedback which will give Second Life developers information for a Second Life build for a subsequent year.
After this step it seems that one could then secure the funding necessary to build a site in Second Life.

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Anthony Grafton uses his reconstruction of the past in order to better understand the current contexts of reading and technology.Anthony Grafton Authors@Google

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Two weeks ago I went to a meeting with campus leaders of the New Media Consortium. It was a delightful meeting, two words that seldom come together. I was interesting to see how they processed in information from the discussion. As Larry Johnson moderated Rachel Smith chronicled the discussion visually. It was a model of meeting that I will continue to contemplate. I wonder how one might bring that home. However, not everyone can listen to a discussion and then turn it into a word picture like Rachel did.
I was also taken with the initiatives of the New Media Consortium.
Convene – people around ideas
Catalyze – dialog and new ideas
Build community – engage people
Contribute – produce things

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