Misinformation

Today's edition of The Tennessean carried a story about a German broadcaster, RTL, and its posting of a fake video of Michael Jackson emerging from the coroner's van. RTL was interested in how quickly misinformation and conspiracy theories spread. RTL posted the video for only one day on YouTube. It went viral and received 880,000 hits. Now it has been picked up by other sites around the world.

Misinformation is nothing new. Both the Axis and Allied powers made extensive use of misinformation during WWII. Some have concluded that the success of the D-Day invasion stemmed in large part from the successful attempt to misinform the Nazis about the location of the invasion so that they moved troops away from Normandy to meet the challenge which never materialized. More recently, Nimmo and Combs have suggested in The New Propaganda that misinformation abounds in political discussion.

What surprises most about the RTL experience is the speed with which one can obtain a large audience. While I was in graduate school, several churches began a "Clean Up TV" campaign. The campaign gained forced by using misinformation that CBS would begin airing adult content movies on network television, albeit after the 10 o'clock news. Of course, CBS had no intention of airing such movies, but the organizers of the campaign succeeded in getting churches to send signed petitions to CBS. The campaign took about two months to complete its work and did not reach even half of those reached in the RTL hoax.

Today, both political parties and special interest groups air commercials and produce sound bites full of misinformation. Fortunately, some groups have taken it upon themselves to check for misinformation in political news, speeches and campaigns. Politifact won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for its work in fact-checking politicians (http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/), and the Annenberg Public Policy Center hasw produced Fact Check (http://www.factcheck.org/) to work on the same problem. I would certainly recommend that anyone interested in the health care debate invesitigate these websites before listening to talk radio. :) Perhaps if all us did our fact checks, we would be less likely to believe the thriller about Michael Jackson.

Journalism again

About two weeks ago, I heard an interview with Alex Jones, the director of Harvard's Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111985662). Jones lamented the takeover of the news by public relations functions. While he did not go into detail, one could easily argue that he had two different ideas in mind. First, much of what gets into newspapers and on television news has it origins in public relations offices inside organizations. My university has a communications office, and part of their responsibility is to prepare press releases for news outlets so that our school gets the same amount of coverage as other schools in the area. Obviously, when our pr office writes a story, they spin it to put our school in the best light, as does every pr office in every instiution/business/sports team/etc. They then shop the story around hoping to get favorable coverage on the 6 o'clock news or somewhere close to the front page of the newspaper. The reporter covering the story will make some changes as will the editor for the news outlet, but, given the financial situations faced by news outlets, much of the story will mimic the copy provide by my school. A short Google search uncovers the appearance of firms which will help get press releases to journalists and/or gives advice on how to use the Internet and Twitter to get coverage for one's organization.

Second, news outlets themselves often rely on the techniques of public relations to generate the content of their stories. An article in the European Journal of Communication (2005) documents how in Slovenia reporters use all of the PR techniques to construct their stories: "These include using the representatives of an organization as the main source, partiality and a one-sided (favourable) evaluation of the characteristics/activities of the subject discussed; none of which are in the interest of the audience, but in the interest of the powerful elite that the news covers." (http://ejc.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/20/2/155). As anyone familiar with the news in the US, the former Soviet state of Slovenia has a lot of catching up to do to rival the coverage of the democratic press. Several studies, beginning in the mid-90s in an issue of Mother Jones, document the fact that US network news agencies overrely on a very few "experts" in covering stories and tend to repeat the official line of the major players. In part, this follows from slashing the budgets and staffs of news rooms, prohibiting long investigations and long stories. The need to produce an abundance of news, especially problematic for the 24-hour cable news networks, creates a situation where often news outlets must rely the public relations officers or public relations techniques to provide sufficient content.

If most of what we get from the news is the official version from officially sanctioned voices, how are we to decide what really is fact and what is spin?

Afghan news coverage

A few days ago, I heard a story on the news coverage in Afghanistan. Despite the fact that the Afghan war is now our longest-running conflict and that Afghanistan has become a much more dangerous place in the past three months, news coverage remains almost non-existent, accounting for only about 2 percent of the total news. One has a much better chance hearing about Michael Jackson's death than about events in Kabul. The biggest culprit is that news organizations are losing so much money that they can no longer afford to have a bureau on site as they once did. Typically, most news outlets either send someone for a few days to shoot some video and interview key players or they rely entirely on services like the AP or on blogs by local journalists. Given those realities, reporters cannot possibly understand the backstories which result from the 100 or so different factions which exist in Afghanistan and which provide tangled nuances to anything statements made or policies drafted. A Google search reveals a fair amount of cutting and pasting as the same stories get repeated on different news sites. We have come to believe that somehow the new media (internet, blogs, Twitter) will fill in the gaps for those who really want to know, but the brief search did not turn up a significant new media presence on this issue. Are we thus resigned to letting wars become the province of specialists? Does the American public (or any other public) no longer have the right to get information from relatively non-partisan sources as it seeks to undertand, argue, and ultimately vote on representatives who advocate particular policies? The state of newpapers and television news operations raises significant questions about our ability to be an educated electorate.

For some related material see a great, short lecture by Alisa Miller, head of Public Radio International, on TED. http://blog.ted.com/2008/05/alisa_miller.php Miller demonstrates the unbelievable distortion in Americans' views of world news based on the kind of coverage of the world we get. If democracy's survival depends on an educated electorate, we might have cause for worry.

Lab-Rat-Ness of College

My response is to the first article. I feel like I am often being experimented on. The author says “When faced with a plethora of information, many people try to multitask, but scientific research suggests that this does not help. René Marois, a neuroscientist and director of the Human Information Processing Laboratory at Vanderbilt University, measured how much efficiency is lost when two tasks are carried out at the same time. The first task involved pressing the correct button in response to one of eight sounds, while the second asked subjects to say the correct vowel after seeing one of eight images. When given the tasks one at a time, the participants’ performance for each task was not significantly different. However, when asked to perform the two tasks simultaneously, the subjects significantly slowed in their performance of the second one.” My instant thought went to—“How does this apply to me?” Well, let me tell ya… Three English response essays on top of a communication blog response on top of a Calculus 2 Exam on top of a Biology Test on top of a communication article response on top of a mid-term paper due on top of a Bible mapping project on top of a meeting with the vice president on top of an SGA meeting with the president on top of thirty thank you letters to write on top of getting the information for those letters on top of a meeting with student accounts on top of sending my sister off to VA on top of arguing with financial aid on top of scheduling a car repair on top of doing my Calculus homework on top of work on top of Lab on top of Math lab on top of on top of on top of you name it. So it is scientifically proven that doing two things at a time makes you less efficient than doing one thing at a time—then I must be scientifically distracted so as to be worthless. Sometimes, like now, I am amazed at just how much each one of us really does in a day—every single moment is indescribably complex. I think that I am just a lab rat in the experiment of college that is trying to prove the hypothesis that I can do more and more and more things and still remain good at each of them. To be honest I think that that idea correlates fairly close to this experiment found in the first article—but I do believe that the variables differ greatly, and that it would be hard to find a set control and system of measuring my performance—thus we may have to leave my experience out of the science journals for now.

The world's a bunch of talentless hacks... Apparently...

Is the world really lacking in talent? Is that what we want to chock it all up to? We're all just getting too lazy or too unimaginative? I believe we're accelerating too fast for our own good. With all the information out there now, it's tough just to stay up to date on current events. Maybe it's not the lack of talent that's plaguing the world, rather the lack of such specialized and highly skilled talent. As our world progresses into the future we consequently have more to learn and more skills to attain. We're just expected to keep up with the exponential increase in information.

So how does this affect our communication? When it takes fifteen minutes to recoup from a text message, it's no wonder teachers hate cell phones in class. We can't multitask very well and that affects our grades when 90% of us text every few minutes in class. Imagine if we could eliminate all distractions in class and effectively take notes and pay attention - tests would be an easy review rather than the most loathed experience of all education. Our lack of talent problem would most likely be solved. If we could do the same for work, we'd save billions, literally.

"One estimate for the financial cost to the American economy of such lost productivity puts the figure at as much as $650 billion per year. "
~Daniel Tammet

So why is it that we let these distractions keep going without check? Maybe it's because we'd lose the human side of life if we bound ourselves to such a strict bureaucratic approach. Maybe it's because we just don't want to believe the facts. Until the problem is solved, assuming it gets solved, we'll just keep on lacking for talent and losing billions of dollars.

4 get it

If I wrote a 2151 word essay on how there is too much information in the world, I would follow that up with a 30,000 word essay on how writers kill trees. 

We live in a world where the word “information” is associated with identity theft. We live in a society where emails offer larger “lifestyles” in order to compensate for our low self-esteem.  We live in insanity when Barnes and Nobles are considered our libraries and our libraries are considered porn shops. And when we ask ourselves “Is there an information overload?” I say to everyone, “No ladies and gentlemen, just an idiot overload.”

No matter how much information is out there, certain people hit a limit on how much they are willing to maintain, but that might not be a bad thing. Meet Jill Price. She at the age of 42 she cannot forget a single day since the age of 14. She has been diagnosed with hyperthymestic syndrome. Simply understood, it means you have an extensive memory of every day of your life. It may seem like this may be a good thing, but in reality she has trouble coping with the syndrome. Imagine reliving your husband’s death over and over again in your mind.

Humans are designed to forget. If we did not forget, we could never forgive entirely, or move on towards other endeavors. So no matter how much information there are in the universe, Wikipedia stands no chance in overwhelming the forgetful mind, and we as functional humans should be thankful.

             http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Story?id=4813052&page=1

 

How much is TMI?

Daniel Tammet essentially asks us the question in his article, "Can learning too much, too fast be harmful to human beings?" He uses examples of corporate efficiency, neuroscience and the technologically strange to make his case. And to some extent, I believe his point is valid- that we, as limited human beings, can be overexposed and overwhelmed by the vastness of our own Information Age.

However, I think the answer to the question he raises is most likely obvious to anyone that has spent any deal of time surfing Wikipedia as I sometimes find myself doing. I simply do not retain even a fraction of the information I am exposed to, but I remain a functional person. I am swayed further, though, by the research of a German scientist named Gerd Gigerenzer who has made a name for himself by proving just how simply our minds actually work, even in the presence of an overwhelming amount of information. His research as the Director of the Max Planck Institute of Human Development has shown that most human thought processes follow simple rules, called heuristics, even when challenged to solve complicated tasks.

Consider how baseball players catch a ball. It may seem that they would have to solve complex differential equations in their heads to predict the trajectory of the ball. In fact, players use a simple heuristic. ... The heuristic is to adjust the running speed so that the angle of gaze remains constant —that is, the angle between the eye and the ball. The player can ignore all the information necessary to compute the trajectory ... and just focus on one piece of information, the angle of gaze."

 

I believe that even though we are now exposed to the largest tsunami and resulting flood of information humanity has ever seen, we human beings will continue to follow very simple, but effective rules as our astrolabe. What simple rules do you navigate by? http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/gigerenzer03/gigerenzer_index.html 

I also strongly recommend Gerd's book Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious to those further interested. 

FYI: Y have too much I

Here we are, the information age!! Has the amount of information today produced too much mental-pollution just as the industrial age produced too much pollution-spewing machinery? Has the amount of information today really "detract[ed]" from our quality of life, as David Shenk would suggest? I would certainly agree with the observation that the information overload has increased multitasking significantly. Is this healthy? I would offer that, though I've heard that some research suggests our generation is getting better at multitasking, the proliferation of multitasking has been a detriment to society- texting while driving, anyone? Texting while in class, anyone? Ever had to ask your mom to repeat something because you were... texting? Ha ha, okay, I'm not condemning texting, and I really like the ability to text and do something else at the same time. However, I think it is unwise to ignore the fatal consequences of trying to split your concentration between typing "lol" and something like driving. Heck, I've texted while driving before and I realize communication with friends is important but this is human life that's hanging in the balance. If you want any more of an idea of what multitasking can do to someone, watch Seven Pounds, 'nuff said. Again, I'm not condemning multitasking. I'm just warning that the expansion of multitasking is probably doing more harm than good.

Daniel Tammet, also brings up the point that "distraction costs people and companies time and efficiency. I completely agree- by not setting boundaries on personal communication (or just the amount of information one consumes) people are losing time and money. I know that whenever I try to facebook and do homework at the same time, I usually end up doing only one thing: not homework. In fact, Tammet cites research that suggests people need fifteen minutes to refocus after an email or instant message in order to settle into productive work. Imagine the hours of productivity wasted during a single instant message or texting conversation! Tammet, that's a long time!!

The point is made, however, that "information overload may not be quantity of info but our inability to know what to do with it." I think this is an excellent point- when people get accustomed to having information handed to them on a silver Google platter, they want everything handed to them on said platter- including their world view. I think there's a good deal of young people who can't sort through information because they're wandering around in their own TMI-funk, unsure of what they believe because they've encountered so much to believe.

Arnold Brown also provides strong evidence that there is just too much information to keep up with in our society. He says that "[b]usiness increasingly complain that communication is impeded by too much email." I have certainly found this to be true in my personal life. It's nearly impossible to keep track of old friends via facebook, email, phone, im, twitter, text and forge new relationships on top of going to school! Eventually, some of my relationships have dwindled, simply because I cannot keep up with them in the face of everything else I'm doing.

I think ultimately Americans are going to have to accept knowing a lot about a little instead of a little about a lot if we are to combine our expertise into something useful. There is just too much information to try and know everything about everything, and forcing people to ingest colossal amounts of info just to compete is hurting America.

While it's somewhat disjoint from my last point, I feel like this is a handy little quote from Brown to end things with... "Efficiencey-- doing things right-- should not be the goal. Instead, it should be effectiveness-- doing the right things."

3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510

I think that having copious amounts of information (at least on the internet) is quite a good thing. For instance, if I am working on a research paper I want lots of data from which I can draw my conclusions. What about if you end up with too much information to effectively sort through or if much of your information turns out unreliable? The solution is simple: the advanced search. The advanced search is a wonderful tool that anyone can use to widdle down countless stacks of articles into a more manageable, more reliable ones.

Now one might say that the advanced search is limited in its use and cannot hope to protect us from being overloaded by the ever increasing amount of information on the internet, but I would disagree. I think that the idea of the advanced search has implications on all facets of our information intake in that WE, we as individuals can act as search engines seeking out that information which we might or might not ingest. Look at it this way, there is only a certain amount of information you can feed your brain without making yourself sick (sited in the article as “information fatigue syndrome”). For that reason we must and will (for the sake of self preservation) discriminate (where we can) what information we look at, listen to, etc. And as for information that is thrown at us against our will, I think that if we were reaching a point where that was becoming a real problem, we would could find ways to disconnect from and stem that ever flowing tide of information. I mean all it would take would be to give up things like twitter or (gasp!!!) Facebook and most of our worries about information overload would be gone.

And besides all of this, I think we are forgetting one key (and obvious) gift that MOST of us have been given. God has granted us the ability to forget. Sure we are inundated with tons of information daily, but how much of it do we actually remember? I for one can't even remember what I had for lunch two days ago, let alone most of the other stuff from that day. For this reason I think that as normal human beings, our propensity for forgetting things is a natural defense from information overload.

Now let me go back to the beginning of the last paragraph where I stressed the word MOST. What I meant by stressing this word is to bring attention to the fact that the writer of the common readings is not like MOST of us in that he is in fact a savant and subject to much higher levels of comprehension and retention of knowledge. Based on the fact that he is less able to simply disregard or forget information that is thrown at him on a given day, I believe that any views Daniel Tammet might hold on the subject of information overload are inherently biased. I mean how could Daniel Tammet's views on the information intake come close to being relevant when the very way he views data is so completely alien to normal people.

For these reasons, I do not believe information overload is as big of a problem as we have given it credit for.

Our ADD Culture

There really is way too much information and there really are way too many distractions in our culture, as the first article we read pointed out. You may find that when working on a project for school you are actually spending most of that time filing through information or surfing the web on things like digg or facebook (well that applies to me at least). I have one friend who is so ADD, I swear to you he gets distracted from his own distractions when trying to meet a deadline very late the night before. This may be true for a lot of people but what do you expect when we have this magic place called the internet for most of our refernces where any information, valid or absurd, can be pulled up by hitting the "enter" key. This is why some of us, at times, actually begin to hate the internet.

Now as a wise friend pointed out, it's important to differentiate between information and truth, but that seems impossinle to do when we can get hundreds of thousands of results for any given topic on our favorite search engine. Luckily we have things like the "Power Search" as they showed us at the Library presentations (Freshman, you should know what I'm talking about), where we can use a filter to get legit resources from peer reviewed academic journals by experts in their fields. We still can get aburd amounts of results but at least it helps us in the process of narrowing down our potential reading material.

I believe I can remember a lot of details just from reading or watching something one time but there is always a limit to the information we can hold. And as one of the articles talked about, too much infromation can be a bad thing. I liked when it brought up the book Blink because I agree with the argument of instinct. Oddly enough, I base a lot of my life on instinct, so it makes sense to me that acting on instinct is often better then searching you mind for information that may be unreliable. This is why you were probably told to always go with your first instinct whenever taking a standardized test. If you over think something and try to go through all the information in your head you may manage to throw yourself off the righ track.

So though knowing things is good, the proverbial "Man who knew too much" doesn't seem all that absurd.

Is America Really Addicted to the Internet?

The Pew Internet and American Life Project made some interesting points, some that I agree with and some that I don't.  Its true, in my experience, that older people are less likely to use the internet and if they do its for email.  It is also true that the internet enhances social interaction.  There are a variety of websites that are devoted to just communicating with others such as facebook and myspace.  

I was very surprised to read that the United States was not first on the list of broadband users but was eleventh.  Aren't Americans supposed to be the leading force in technology?  Realizing how old this article was (all results are from 2004) I did some researching.  As broadband users increased, so does time spent on the internet.  In 2007, the list of countries with the most average hours of internet use consisted of Canada, Israel, South Korea, United States, and the UK.  The only study that the U.S. won first place was how many users ages 15 and older used the internet.  The U.S. won with 153.4 million users.

http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=1242

Shocked? I understand that this study is not much younger than the Pew study but still...the U.S. did not win the average hours use?  Stereotypically, American kids spend all day on the computer.  Do we need to start giving America a little more credit?  I mean Israel and South Korea even beat us....

Removed from Reality

http://io9.com/5055863/british-gamer-killed-over-gaming-grudge

Welcome to the dark side, and I don't mean the evil side. I 'm talking about the side that includes the people who live in the dark in their mom's basement in front of a computer screen at the age when they should have a job and should maybe be thinking about getting married and settling down (away from home) sometime soon. This is the dark side of teens who get home from school every day and proceed to step away from reality and into a video game and will remain there for hours at a time, glued to the screen.
Over all, I don't think that these worlds that exist on the internet are a bad thing for people who have some self control, but some people who play these games too much become immersed in these alternate realities that they create for themselves. This article from September of last year is an example of a man who did step away from his computer screen, but forgot to take the crucial step back into reality.
It's a problem that is slowly but surely becoming more prominent. The fact of the matter is that the worlds created in games like W.O.W. and Runescape are much more interesting and fun to many than the world in which we actually live, and some people have trouble choosing these fantasy realms over reality. Reality sucks, and some would rather not have to face it.
This isn't a huge problem yet, but it is a problem that will need to be addressed in some way or another at some point. It will just get worse until someone does something about it.

How Much Potential Does the Internet Have?

In one episode of "The Wild Thornberries" (yes that terrible Nickelodeon show, bear with me), Eliza wonders through the Amazon and comes upon a tribe of hunter-gatherers who she expects to be provincial and devoid of modern technology.  To her surprise she finds that they have cell phones, pagers, televisions, and laptops with internet access.  Even though this may be an exaggeration one cannot help but notice how technology has spread and will worldwide through programs like One Laptop Per Child and maybe eventually to Mars www.astroengine.com/?p=149.

To see just how far we've come lets take a brief look at how at each stage of our development we communicated.  As hunter-gatherers we began to use simple vocal communication.  When we became agrarian we started to use written language.  The first writing was on tortoise shells at about 6500 B.C.E.  It was not until the Victorian Era though that reading spread down to the masses (about 1850 C.E. so a difference of 8350 years).  Once the masses gained literacy all learning broke loose and scarcely 140 years later we developed the internet, a tool that promises to rebuild the Tower of Babel, connecting all peoples.

Are we better for this?  This is a powerful tool.  It potentially connects billions of people which could either create the largest brainstorming group ever or it could create an immense amount of chaos consisting of unorganized ideas and spam.  Presently the effects have been more towards the former.  Our economy has become more efficient.  Have you seen a company that does not have a website?  There are ads for millions of products online on ebay, craigslist, and on the sides of your google search page.  For our entertainment we have videos, ebooks, photographs and other visual art, and music.  Almost every TV show has clips, if not the entire show, on the web.  Ebooks are slowly replacing print.  All classic paintings can be viewed online and many hobbyist post their own visual art online.  What band is not on iTunes or at least doesn't have a myspace?  Even vices are offered online!  Gambling, pornography, and even "legal drugs" are bought and sold online.  The internet is a virtual mega-city.  What is even more exciting is that the internet has brought awareness of ideas to us.  In the seconds I can learn what nihilism is or what Jupiter is made of.  I think we can safely say that yes the internet is beast.

The better question then is since something that is now turning obsolete, books, spawned the internet, what will it spawn and how soon?  If history is a good judge I'd say it will be infinitely better and will come much sooner than we could imagine.

"The One"

Today the Web is 6,628 days old. That number may not be completely correct, but I’m pretty sure I did my math right.

The PEW surveys focused on growth. There's the "Growth of Internet Usage by Gender" line chart and the "HOW USE OF THE INTERNET HAS GROWN" bar chart, but Pew fails to consider how much the internet itself has grown.

According to Kevin Kelly's video on the web at 5,000 days old (this video is 20 minutes long..=/), the Internet started out as the net (linking computers), then the web (linking pages), and will finally become "the One" (linking data). The Internet is growing at an extremely fast rate. You could compare the number of links to the number of synapses in your brain. And the Web to a single human brain...but your brain isn't doubling in size every 2 years. (cue dramatic DUN DUN DUNNNNNN)

Although the Pew survey offered an extremely high percentage of people globally who use the internet, this information is about 5 years old. Internet usage has only grown since then, especially with the introduction of the Iphone in 2007. How did anyone live without those portable little windows to the Internet? Hasn't anyone seen Eagle Eye???? *SPOILER ALERT* The phones and handhelds and telephone lines and the computers are all connected to the Internet. That's how the computer "lady" who lives in the Internet kills people!!!

Yes, the idea of the Internet using its information and unlimited access to everything to kill people sounds a little, ok extremely, far-fetched. As well as Kelly's closing remarks about the future of the web, "There is only one machine. The web is its OS. All screens look into the one. No bits will live outside the web. To share is to gain. Let the one read it. The one is us."
It sounds like some sort of cult that only people who swear by being abducted would join.

But who really could have possibly imagined that Skype would exist, and I could watch my brother blow out his candles on his 10th birthday while sitting in my dorm room? Who ever would have thought of Wikipedia? Seriously. But, in the past 6,628 days, it's all happened. We can't even imagine the next 6,628 days. Kelly predicts that the Internet is becoming an organism, and in a way, it is.

So, I'm not really concerned with the government being the one on the other side of my webcam. I'm more worried about a thing that has access to all my Google searches and facebook conversations....that's just plain scary.

The Future of the Internet: A Double Edged Sword

When I was 5 or 6, we got our first computer.  It had DOS and we loved the little "game" you could play that lit you draw blockish pictures with pixles.  We even got it upgraded to have Pac Man later.  We marveled at the technology.  Now, 13 years later, there's this:

http://www.microsoft.com/SURFACE/index.html

A desk that's surface is a massive touchscreen for a computer.  If this rate of evolution continues, where will we be in twenty years?  There's already rumors of a Yachet that's integrated with the aforementionted technology coming down the pipeline.  What does the mean for communication and our future?

Are the Internet and technology going to be a blessing or a curse for those who take part?  (these days, who doesn't?)

Blackberries already bring the office home, and everywhere else via e-mail.  What about when our Homes start to have computer's that constantly connect us anywhere in our homes or vehicles?  As Orwellian as this sounds, it's not far off.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtKQNwqNLLk

Sure, ordering food with a coffee table is bloody amazing.  But, let's say that this table, like all other Internet technologies, is hacked.  Or what if the government takes access of these camera-laden computers?  Who knows what's next, maybe they start banning pleasure in sex?

As crazy of a jump as that is, the point remains: we need to take care that the vast improvement of technology is safe and protected against molestation.  To keep the future of our Internet communications safe, I believe we should legislate safe guards on the use and access of what we have by third parties, including our own government.

I love George Orwell, but I'd love our future to prove him wrong.

How's THIS for communication?

So I'm supposed to be writing my 3-4 minute speech/debate for class tomorrow, but like any responsible college student, I'm putting it off until 1:30AM the night before.
Here's one reason why
http://www.ted.com/talks/david_merrill_demos_siftables_the_smart_blocks.html
These things have the potential to revolutionize communication, learning, and our everyday interaction with the world.
Siftables are like cookie sized computers that can communicate with each other. They can do things such as word games, math, and of course, make music.
The video is only 7 minutes long and is worth a watch.
Though reading a few reviews there are also seems to be some dangers.

"IMO those are toys for grown ups and learning aids for kids, but they can be devastating to children's creative and inventive potential because they simply overtax and bypass the kids' own creative powers too easily and quickly."
~claude pauly

I do hope they're picked up by some company and produced. These little things just have too much potential.

The Internet: Legitimate Communication?

Before the advent of the World Wide Web in the early nineties, most conversations people had took place in person or on the phone. You could see the body language or at least hear the tone of voice of the person to whom you were talking. You could detect nuances in their manner and expression, and usually it was pretty easy to understand what they were saying. Then along came the internet, which has taken over a large part of the lives of Americans and people all over the world. Now you can e-mail, facebook, instant message, or blog your conversations instead of having them face-to-face.
Is this a good thing? Personally, I love communicating on the internet for several reasons. I can keep in touch with people who live hundreds of miles away, and I can communicate very quickly and efficiently with people who live across campus. Frankly, it’s easier to send a quick e-mail to a professor than to walk to his office. The internet gives me options as to who I am able to talk to and how much time I choose to spend talking to them.
On the flip side, I despise the internet because it makes me an anti-social person to a degree. I don’t have to approach people and talk to them in person; simple questions don’t turn into long conversations in which I learn about the other person and connect with them in a meaningful way. Now it seems that deep conversations don’t just spring up naturally; sometimes they have to be forced.
Some people say that the internet is ruining the social skills of American children, for reasons I listed above. Kids can stay holed up in their rooms and chat with people online for hours, even though they will never make eye contact with them. Other people say that social interaction on the internet is just as legitimate as social interaction in person, and that our generation is simply finding a new way to communicate. They say in order for a kid to succeed, he needs to be well-acquainted with internet communication and conduct.
I personally think both sides are right. Yes, the internet is injuring some very valuable aspects of face-to-face communication. Yes, the internet is a fabulous resource and a legitimate source of social interaction. Yes, things are changing, and our generation will simply have to learn to balance internet communication with the traditional form.

http://find.galegroup.com/ips/start.do?prodId=IPS
http://find.galegroup.com/ips/start.do?prodId=IPS
http://find.galegroup.com/ips/start.do?prodId=IPS

What We Can and Cannot Say

I unfortunately tend to be generally apathetic on issues such as censorship and freedom of speech, simply because it seems so unsolvable to me. The benefits of censorship to those censoring are a sense of order and "healthy" limitations (by their own standards), which I can understand and relate to. However, I can also relate to those being unfairly censored. It doesn't seem right that ideas can't be thrown around, when ideas is what promotes progress - especially in the academic setting. Thus, I don't think that censorship in itself is a problem. I think the situations in which censorship is applied is when problems arise. Who gets to do it, and what is the premise? Should we hang on to freedom of speech in all circumstances in order to preserve the right; are we eating away at that right slowly through the use of censorship? Where is the line?

There have been two instances in my stay at Lipscomb when I have encountered unfair censorship. One being an article a friend of mine wrote for the Babbler about a new church our Campus Minister has started. She was so passionate about the subject and spent a great deal of time on the article only to be told that it would not be published because the church did not abide by "traditional Church of Christ doctrine" (although the church is a Church of Christ). Secondly, another instance was with the literary and arts journal Lipscomb used to publish called Exordium. Last year after submissions were in and the journal was ready for print, the university censored out the majority of the contents on flimsy grounds and the journal was left with naked pages and was not printed until the students raised enough money to unaffiliate it with Lipscomb. It still remains that way this year.

Areopagitica brought to mind so many issues that are still so prevalent today, and it's frustrating that we still haven't come to a decision on the matter. Obviously, opinions will always differ and a "decision" will never be made... but it is interesting to read a take on the issue from a historically different standpoint.

One last note - I think it's interesting that we have a "Fighting Words" doctrine (you can be arrested simply for saying offensive or lude things to police officers, basically) in the US, but we fight so strongly for our right to free speech. I understand the premise for the fighting words law, but it seems that if our constitution wants to provide protection for the right to free speech in ALL circumstances, that this law would directly contradict that. But on the contrary, the Supreme Court has upheld the fighting words doctrine since its existance from the Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire case. And here we come full circle: If you want free speech, it's all or nothing. Otherwise, where does the censorship end? When is it right and when is it wrong? Who gets to decide what gets censored?

I'm telling you: unsolvable.

http://www.freedomforum.org/templates/document.asp?documentID=13718

Freedom of Speech on Campuses

The issue of freedom of speech is an eternal one. Censorship occurred in ancient Greece, 1644, and today around the world. The underlying issue behind censorship is the question of who gets to be the judge of what’s allowable and what’s not? And why are we not given the choice to decide what’s morally right and what’s not? No one is incorruptible, and everyone has differing opinions of what crosses the line and what just toes the line.

The fact that Lipscomb uses a filter for the internet, and most likely censures many of its articles submitted for posting in The Babbler made me think about what other university campuses do to suppress the freedom of speech. One such article I discovered addressed the issue in a straightforward manner: “Free speech at public universities and colleges is at once the most obvious and the most paradoxical of constitutional principles.”

Students are here to get an education, to think freely and to question all. But to repress the freedom of expression is to make us into “backward scholars,” as Milton so eloquently put it. God left us the freedom of choice, and we should be allowed to choose what is right and wrong, even when presented with not so “good” material. Perhaps my favorite quote in all of Areopagitica is this: “They are not skilful considerers of human things, who imagine to remove sin by removing the matter of sin; for, besides that it is a huge heap increasing under the very act of diminishing.” By not allowing us to access or view certain materials or topics, it only encourages us to be ingenious in the way we search for it and feeds the curiosity behind it.

One university, I found, even banned the freedom of speech. In order to submit anything for print, a student would have to submit a request weeks beforehand. Universities may think they are protecting us, but the reality is, we are ADULTS and how does being on a university campus change that fact? We have adult minds, and by stifling us and treating us like children, universities are doing nothing but the opposite of what they are intended for: the repression of education.


“For opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making.”



Articles I mentioned:
http://www.petesodyssey.org/node/173
http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/speech/pubcollege/overview.aspx

The Limits of Freedom?

Freedom is one of the keys to American life, but it obviously must come with some sort of restraint(s). Complete freedom is anarchy, and as with anything else, too much of a good thing can quickly turn sour. Therein lies the question: Where should the line be drawn with respect to freedom? One of the issues at hand in Areopagitica is freedom of speech, but to evaluate this we must first answer the question of how much freedom (in general) is too much. Logically, one should be free to do his will unless it disturbs the safety, dignity, freedom etc. of others. With respect to speech, this line has been blurred. Libel and slander are common, even in publications of national impact. The information provided by media outlets is so thoroughly, even intentionally, biased that to read find true unadulterated news, one must interpret as if reading a foreign language. However, we may someday long for this to return.

The most recent and most pressing freedom of speech issue is that of FCC regulations on political television and talk radio shows. President Obama has at least entertained the idea of enforcing the antiquated "Fairness Doctrine" that requires radio shows to devote equal attention to both sides of an argument. This may appear at first glance to be helpful, but let's look at the underwater portion of this iceberg. This would quickly create a Big Brother-esque intimidating air about the media, which would carefully construct politically correct shows to avoid removal from the air. There is even talk of this policy being expanded: The number of liberally biased shows must be equal to the number of conservatively biased ones. What happens if you are an "extra" show for one side or the other? Bye. What if your show fails to provide the specific amount of bias required? Bye. So much for freedom of speech.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/nov/28/first-media-bias/
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/feb/24/fairness-doctrine-fog/

Questionable Media

At first glance of Milton’s “Aeropagitica” I felt a little dizzy. But, like Jenni, I copied and pasted “Aeropagitica” into a Word document for easier reading and note-taking and this proved to be very helpful. While reading “Aeropagitica,” I could see many similarities between 1644 and 2009. The same issues are still present. How much control should government have over censoring? Should there be complete and total freedom of speech? Is libel and slander included in your Constitutional rights? The jist of it is, is where is the line drawn when dealing with freedom of speech?

One problem I see with government censoring media, such as; television, movies, radio, newspapers, or the internet is there is so much out there that would have to be screened. I think that this is just a waste of time and energy. The government should spend their efforts on something more worthwhile and leave the censoring up to the parents and authorities of children.

Sin will always be present whether or not we have questionable media. As Milton said, “evil manners are as perfectly learnt without books a thousand other ways which cannot be stopped.”

Those who want to be good will choose to be good whether or not the media around them is bad. Those people would believe, “we must not expose ourselves to temptations without necessity, and next to that, not employ our time in vain things.”

With the growing number of accessibility to internet sites and other types of media, how can we as Christians keep ourselves looking for the good media?

This YouTube video explains another great subject. . .the topic of religion in schools.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsuvjEW4UAY

I think it's crazy how the government can try to take God and Jesus out of our everyday lives and allow other malicious works into elementary schools. I don't think the government can make a decision for everyone in the country because there are so many different viewpoints. Can the government put trust in local authorities to make judgements about taboo media? How else could this problem be addressed?

censorship vs. freedom of speech

Once I had plowed my way through the forty some odd pages in Milton's Areopagitica saved in my Word document, things were beginning to make some sense.  The basic idea he was getting at was that no one man should ever be allowed to decide for the public what they can and cannot see or hear.  Not to say that people who take risks in the media or the press aren't subject to scrutiny or even the law.  It's just that on the front end, everyone should have the freedom to choose for themselves what to expose themselves to, just as those putting the information out their have freedom of speech and of the press.  As he's beginning to wrap up, Milton says this on the matter:

"And as for regulating the press, let no man think to have the honour of advising ye better than yourselves have done in that order published next before this, 'that no book be printed, unless the printer's and the author's name, or at least the printer's, be registered.' "

Here he even suggests that due credit be given, but that no control be executed to keep information from certain groups or what have you.  He thinks as I do that no man has that much authority over another that they can dictate what should or should not be viewed, heard or experienced.  He goes on, as he concludes to point a finger at the government who are the first to cover their tracks.  This is the case for any body, company, or organization that rules over another.  Milton says this:

"This I know, that errors in a good government and in a bad are equally almost incident; for what magistrate may not be misinformed, and much the sooner, if liberty of printing be reduced to the power of a few?"

Here he's trying to get across even further that even in the case of the government, censorship shouldn't be tolerated, allowing a few to make the choice for the whole.  A good example of this and how it applies today can be found in a re-airing of an episode of Saturday Night Live.  It originally aired last March containing a biting skit that directly poked fun at the corporate ownership of TV networks.  The bit is modeled after Schoolhouse Rock and its song lyrics are anything but child-like with phrases like:

"It's a media-opoly. A media-opoly The whole media's controlled by a few corporations Thanks to deregulation by the FCC"

"They can give you lots of cancer That can hurt your body But on network TV You'll rarely hear anything bad about the nuclear industry Like when Westinghouse was sued for fraud? Which time? When GE made defective bolts it was an unreported crime Or when it was boycotted for operating nuclear bomb plants just to squeeze a dime..."

"I hear GE made the bullets that shot JFK"

So it's no shock that when this whole episode re-aired in June, this cute little skit was mysteriously cut from the show, end of story.  This is a prime example of a corporate giant censoring a skit that implies they control the media...I don't think Milton would like this sort of behavior, no matter what level it's on. 

here's the link to the article about it. I'd include the link to the video of the skit, but would you believe I couldn't find it?

http://find.galegroup.com.candycorn.lipscomb.edu/ips/retrieve.do?contentSet=IAC-Documents&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&qrySerId=Locale%28en%2C%2C%29%3AFQE%3D%28ke%2CNone%2C19%29censoring+the+media%24&sgHitCountType=None&inPS=true&sort=DateDescend&searchType=BasicSearchForm&tabID=T003&prodId=IPS&searchId=R1&currentPosition=5&userGroupName=tel_a_beaman&docId=A20913887&docType=IAC&contentSet=IAC-Documents

To Close One Gate, While the Rest Are Wide Open

As I sat at my computer reading Milton’s Areopagitica, I tried to see connections between this work from the 17^th century and my life today. Yes, freedom of speech is and always will be an issue, and yes, the amount of government involvement in anything will always be an issue up for debate. I think that Milton’s points are still very relevant in today’s society. He argued that if the government was going to monitor authors’ works of writing, they needed to also monitor every other type of personal expression, which of course is impossible.

For if they fell upon one kind of strictness, unless their care were equal to regulate all other things of like aptness to corrupt the mind, that single endeavour they knew would be but a fond labour: to shut and fortify one gate against corruption, and be necessitated to leave others round about wide open.

I am writing something that in a few minutes will be available for anyone with internet access to read. How do we limit what is posted on the internet? Should the government monitor every site and every bit of information? We all know that the internet can be a good thing as well as a bad thing, so should the bad things simply be deleted or prohibited? As Milton says, like Adam, we have fallen into the doom “of knowing good and evil, that is to say of knowing good by evil.”

In 1998, a law was passed called the Child Online Protective Act (COPA). This law made making any communication for commercial purposes that could be considered harmful to minors a crime, unless there was a legitimate business reason to communicate. The penalty for violating this law was up to $50,000 a day. Immediately after it was passed, the law was contested on grounds of violating the First Amendment. The law never went into effect, and ten years after being passed was finally declared unconstitutional. There are still debates about whether the internet should have certain standards and censors, and it is obviously a difficult question to answer since it took 10 years to settle the constitutionality of this one law.

Since the internet is a fairly new invention, it is still continually changing and progressing. Just as Milton believed that censoring books was in violation of freedoms of speech, is censoring the internet in violation of the First Amendment? Should anyone be able to put anything on the internet, or should we have standards for protection and morality?

Where there is much desire to learn, there of necessity will be much arguing, much writing, many opinions; for opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making.

What are we doing...

Reading the article "Why the Devil Takes Visa" made me think about what exactly Americans are doing with the money we have. The amount of money we spend on needless things is astonishing. Credit cards have only added to this problem by allowing people to spend money they don't even have. What if we spent they money in ways that benefit others instead of ourselves?

Here are some statistics that bring this problem to light:

Top 5 Alarming World Poverty Statistics:

5. More than 800 million people suffer from malnutrition.

4. The United States spends 0.16% of its budget on aid to poor countries, the second lowest percentage among all developed countries.

3. A worker in Bangladesh making garments for Disney would have to work 210 years in order to earn what Disney’s CEO gets paid in one hour.

2. 35,000 children a day die from diseases related to malnutrition, or 1 every 2 seconds.

1. Over three billion people (roughly half the world’s population) live on less than two dollars a day.

Other Random Statistics

Only 15% of Americans report that they would be satisfied with a comfortable middle-class lifestyle.

The average American consumes 5 times more than a Mexican, 10 times more than a Chinese person, and 30 times more than someone from India.

Think about these statistics along with the quote from the original text:

"Never turn away the needy; share all your possessions with your brother, and do not claim that anything is your own. If you and he are joint participators in things immortal, how much more so in things that are mortal?"

Is it up to America give to other countries? And is there a way to do that while also giving them the opportunity to be prosperous on their own? I wonder what would happen if Lipscomb students were told they had to live on $2 a day. True a good number of us will spend a week to ten days "being Jesus" to impoverished people and serving them and seeing how they live. But after that short time we will come back to the comforts of our lives here and rarely think about what it would be like to live like those people live. I don't want to take anything away from all the good that will be done over Spring Break but how much more could we do if we stopped spending on the stuff that we don't need.

Why have we become so accustomed to spending so much money on needless things when there are millions of people going without the daily necessities? And what are we going to go now, where do we go from here in order to change those statistics? We would have to stop focusing on ourselves our greed and focus on others who have needs we cannot even imagine.




http://disciplineforjustice.blogspot.com/2007/04/wake-up-and-smell-numbers.html

Christianity and Consumerism

The world today seems to be run by the need to consume. Advertisements permeate our lives trying to convince people that they need the latest gadgets that everyone else has. With this lifestyle surrounding us, it is easy to get caught up in the world. As Rodney Clapp said in his article, "Why the Devil takes VISA," the consumer ethos is of individual self fulfillment. We have been conditioned to think about ourselves first and worry about getting what we want. Christians, however, are called to live their lives above the world and keep their focus on God.

I think people often confuse consumerism and wealth. Plenty of people are rich but resist becoming enveloped in their material possessions. Others are more radical and give up all their possessions in an attempt to simplify their lives and focus on God. The Bruderholf, a group of eight communities, gave up everything they had in response to consumer capitalism. I think doing something like this would be a great experience, but I do not believe it is necessary to be a "good" Christian. Even someone very wealthy can resist being caught in our capitalistic society; it just depends on where there heart is. In fact, if this wealthy person's intentions are to serve God, they can actually help out a lot of people. My friend Liz and her family have been very blessed monetarily and have a huge beautiful home. Some people say that Liz does not need a house that large but her house is always filled with teens from the youth group, women for baby showers, or men for devotionals. I don't think it matters whether you are rich or have virtually no possessions, as long as you are focused on God and not material things.

One way, I believe, for Christians to live above consumerism is to be content with what God gives us. So many people try to climb the "ladder of success" in the search for happiness, but are disappointed because they are not fulfilled. Many others turn to possessions thinking that if they just had the latest phone or the fastest car they would find joy. They too are unfulfilled because they are longing for products and not for God. We must be careful not to place the items we want or the items we have before God because then they are nothing but idols.

Consumer culture constantly leaves people dissatisfied. Instead of dwelling on what we want, we should:
1- Focus on the blessings God has provided,
2- Step back from the world and its constant advertising, and
3- Take a walk or just sit outside and enjoy what God has created.



http://www.theadcompany.com.au/2006/web/creative/articles/Consumerism_and_marketing.pdf
http://www.gotquestions.org/materialism-Christian.html

"plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh, what a relief it is!",

After reading "Why the Devil takes VISA," I started thinking about how HUGE advertising is in the consumerists world. Clapp tells how about a group of Christian college kids were separated by nations and asked to pick a song representing their culture. Most of the nationalities represented choose folk songs from native lands within a short amount of time, but not only do the Americans take twice as long to decide--they choose the coca-cola jingle "I'd like to teach the world to sing."

Off and on throughout the article various forms of advertising were mention in how they are gradually taking over our lives. Think about it...we have billboards, radios, TVs, magazines, and newspapers--all FULL of different ads beckoning us to do who knows what. Ads are becoming more and more common. When TVs first came out ads were shown occasionally and usually just for show sponsors. Now, it seems as though some channels show more commercials than actual show. Did you know that there are possibilities for having more channels be strictly commercials and no shows?

What gets me is we buy things we don't want or need just because it "sounds cool" or the jingle gets stuck in our head. We can be doing everyday activities then...BAM!!!! We get hit with a random jingle that will haunt us for days, but you know what? It did it's job...you won't stop thinking about it and more than likely you will buy that product. Even if not immediately, eventually we buy the products we've heard the most about or that sticks in our minds the most.

If you think I'm being extreme, look at the list below and tell me you don't know what half these slogans are for:

plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh, what a relief it is...
give me a break. give me a break. break me off a piece of that...
my bologna has a first name...
snap, crackle, and pop
they're ggrrrrreat!!!
i'm lovin' it!

I know some of these are old...but you knew what they were talking about didn't you? Have fun with ads but read/listen to them at your own risk...they are out to get you.


http://www.helium.com/items/848401-commercial-jingles-that-stand-the-test-of-time
http://money.howstuffworks.com/commercial-jingle.htm

Women's Role in the Church: Shave Their Heads

This post is somewhat of a continuation of what Sydney posted earlier. I have contemplated what she said quite a bit and want to keep this chain of commentary going. This subject is actually quite like the subjects of the articles we read, because I feel that one of the biggest struggles in religion is finding that line between what is God’s will and what is societal, and where and how and why and when society becomes more powerful than God in our lives. I feel that in every subject—be it marketing Jesus, or loosing principles to consumerism and capitalism, or my subject, women’s role in the church—we have to figure out the core of what God wants, and ask ourselves if it is more important that we follow a checklist or if we actually follow His will with our hearts.
Ok here is what I have been thinking for a while—just my thoughts mind you. Ever since I read Sydney’s blog on women’s role in the church today, I keep thinking that at the time of writing of the verses on women keeping silent in the church, women pretty much kept silent everywhere else too. A grandmother was generally honored less than a son, unless she was very lucky to have been blessed with a good family. A normal woman had no rights in ancient society unless she had a husband, and no rights at all if he left her or decided to beat her every day were he so inclined. As much as we may not like to admit our "barbaric" roots, this was still what was the societal norm in the time of Christ. (And may I mention did not change until only within the last couple of centuries, and still remains the same in much of the world.) With this point in mind, that women were treated as describe above and expected to accept their role in society, it seems ridiculous to me to think that Christianity could have possibly been a viable religion with women as its head leaders in ancient times. Let me use a crude example from our not so distant past—what if slaves were the heads of Christianity in America during the pre-civil war times? It simply would not have worked to further Christianity in the world as a whole.
This is my opinion: Paul forbade women to take on active vocal roles in the leadership of worship in the early church in order to "keep the peace" between Christianity and the society it was set in. Thus I believe this law is societal in nature.
If you have an issue with saying that this forbidding of women's activity in worship is societal, then let us ignore it. Lets embrace all directions of the New Testament, and try to do worship and behave exactly as the first century Christians were instructed to. We would be prophesying and speaking in tongues, not to mention selling everything that we own in order to form communes. By Paul's instructions, it would be okay to own slaves as long as we treated them well (which likely means giving them at least one meal a day and the opportunity to buy their freedom when they are too old to work anymore). We would also make our women cover their head during worship, and if they do not then we would shave all of their heads (see 1 Cor. 11:3-10). We should also require that men uncover their heads during prayer and prophesy, and have short hair, and count it to them as sin if they do not follow this direct instruction from God's ordained writer Paul. Do you know why this is likely something that you have either never heard of or heard preached on? Because long ago, in a century far far away, a group of "righteous" male leaders decided that this rule, so bluntly stated in the instpired word of God, is based on a society that they were not a part of –and thus it did not apply to Christians anymore. This whole societal-based interpretation is something that is not new—it is accepted and widespread.
All of these examples are in the Bible, believe it or not—and it seems very hypocritical to claim that we as the Church of Christ "are just trying to do church like the first century Christians did church", if we are not set on following every single guideline and example of behavior to the T—that means including absolutely everything.
Let me ask you: Is it okay to have slaves today? Paul obviously is okay with it, thus it is not sin to force another soul to do your bidding for their entire lives without the ability to choose if they want to. Is it a sin for a woman to pray with her head uncovered? In Paul's eyes, I would say that if she did that she would be going against his teaching, and thus guilty of sin—as would the man who prayed with his hat on or dreadlocks flowing—which would likely need to be repented of and confessed. Read your Bible—this is what is in it.
So I have to ask myself—since in our world today it is obviously accepted as a sin to have a slave and not a sin for a woman to have a bare-head in prayer—why is it that in this same world a woman can be president but she cannot teach or preach or lead singing or pray or serve communion or even ask questions in worship? If you can give me a straight faced, no-bull answer that is not based on the way your grandparents did church or some societal brainwashing scheme, I would love to hear it.

Do Christianity and Shopping Go Together?

One of the many ideas in this article that struck me as interesting is the fact that Christians were a large part of the twentieth-century consumer culture. I was surprised to learn that Asa G. Candler, the Coca-Cola owner, and John Wanamaker, the founder of the Wanamaker department-store, were such so dedicated having Christian influences in their advertising.

I was even more surprised to realize that people still do this today. The girls in this class might have noticed that the clothing store Forever 21 has John 3:16 written on the bottom of all their shopping bags. The famous fast food restaurant in California, In-and-Out Burger, also puts John 3:16 on the bottom of their Styrofoam cups. Then there are the hundreds of t-shirts that take a well-known advertising logo and turn it into a message of faith. http://www.christiantshirtshop.com/

The question for me, though, is how helpful these advertising methods are. I immediately thought it was neat idea to put scriptures on the bottom of products, but then I researched and saw that these products do get negative feedback. Apparently, people do not like the fact that the companies assume they are Christian or want to be a Christian. One article did not like the choice of scripture since it “not so subtlety says whoever doesn't believe in Jesus is going straight to hell.”

There are people that like the idea of a company being personable and not a cold money-making machine, but others don’t like the idea of going to eat and getting preached at. So, are these marketing techniques helpful or hurtful to religion? Should we even be connecting consumerism to religion? If we follow the examples in the Bible, we can’t let some negative criticism stop us from spreading the Word. However, maybe the more traditional methods of “marketing” Jesus are better than these modern ones that create enemies or even make religion more of a fashion statement than a way of life.

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=13955
http://www.denverpost.com/ci_5902652?source=rss
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/29/fashion/29dres.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&sq=faith%20shirts&st=cse&scp=5

Experience Life At No Cost! Call 1-800-MEET-God

Today's culture has instilled in us the desire for instant gratification. We want what we want when we want it. We are losing the ability to delay pleasure for something much more gratifying down the road. What is the cause of this? Every day we are bombarded with advertisements that tell us what we "need." As Christians, we are supposed to rely solely on God and so advertisers have found a new way of marketing. If the mix Jesus into whatever they want to sell, they are able to tell us that by buying their product, we are in essence choosing God. We are, of course, to ignore the profit that they make from our "choice of God."

What does this mean for us? What does this mean for God? Christianity today had become so commercialized and watered down that a reading Bible verse on a bumper sticker is all it takes for salvation. How insulting is that!? Jesus has been paraphrased and summarized to the point where a one liner such as "Experience Life At No Cost! Call 1-800-MEET-God" is perfectly sufficient for sharing God with someone else. It even fits all of the criteria of today: quick, simple, and completely devoid of commitment, truth and responsibility.

The gospel itself has its own marketing strategy: "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." Matthew 28:18-20. That sounds good enough for me!

http://net-burst.net/quips/punchy.htm
www.ruighaver.net/bumperstickers/christian.htm
http://www.churchmarketingsucks.com/archives/2008/06/marketing_fear.html