Here's where I stand on all of this. I don't like putting myself out here that much. Seriously, I don't. It's the same reason I feel awkward making chess videos for chessvideos.tv in spite of the overwhelmingly positive feedback I've received. It just doesn't suit me to be the center of attention. I know that sounds odd for somebody in my position--about to graduate from seminary and get ordained--but here's the distinction I want to make: when I'm leading in worship or in any church setting it is not my show but God's. It can certainly be that way on the internet as well, but it's harder--there's more in the way. The information overload--see the NPR article--means that you are reading this as a tidbit of info on your way to something else. You might already be gone. There's no time, no silence, no meditation.
All of that is a problem. Clay Shirky's conception of "publish, then filter" is simply not how I blog. It will never be. I can't just post for the sake of posting. I'm not a linker--I'm a thinker. That is how I function. I'm a bit of a Luddite in this way, and frankly, I'm unapologetic for it. Wendell Berry offers better words than I can to this in his essay on "Feminism, Body and the Machine." He writes,
A computer, I am told, offers a kind of help that you can't get from other humans; a computer will help you to write faster, easier and more. For a while, it seemed to me that every university professor I met told me this. Do I, then, want to write faster, easier and more? No. My standards are not speed, ease and quantity. I have already left behind too much evidence that, writing with a pencil, I have written too fast, too easily and too much. I would like to be a better writer, and for that I need help from other humans, not a machine.
No comments:
Post a Comment