Wisdom whakaaro

Hypertext reality

2006-10-07T19:09:00.000-07:00

Now that I have "almost completed" a hypertext it seemed a good idea to discuss some of the delights I encountered.

I must say text to hypertext is so much harder when you keep thinking sequential. After writing so many linear reports and an endless amount of essays I experienced difficulty structuring information on hypertext. It is truly an art that I need a fair amount or practice with.

I kept wanting to work from a-b so I could at least create a great conclusion. That way my reader could find my bias under all the clicks.

I started with what I thought was "easy" After my researching and collating I wrote a complete essay on Word and thought yeah this is great just cut and paste! Well you got it, my original has no resemblance to what is sitting in my hypertext now. and yes I cut and cut and cut!

Don't ask me about grammar and punctuating it's just non existent.
I am not even sure whether my reader can distinguish between the text and the paraphernalia. The other fear is the digital text still mirrors the printed codex.

I have come to use less information on each "page" and re-establish an identical screen layout because I became slightly disoriented scrolling up and down; and I became so confused about where I was; and confused about how to get back

I think the best advice I can give anyone starting out is
* start your hypertext early give yourself lots of time to make mistakes
* good idea to focus on a single topic to make it easier to understand
* make hypertext nodes shorter than paper articles - I am still struggling with this.
* be more critical of the links - don't be too adventurous with them.
There is no doubt about it a hypertext is under the control of the user who can customize it by adding links and annotations.

Hypertext is definitely a post modern tool which is enabling me to do "new things "or maybe I will get to do "old things" more easily.

Digital Diploma

2006-09-28T21:37:00.000-07:00

Noble's article argues about a new era in which higher education implements new technology with little regard for pedagogical and economic costs.

The article is a warning to students about the dangers of online education.The warnings are not new.

A warning echoes TS Eliots poems "Choruses from the Rock" which goes something like this

...where is the life we have lost in living?
...Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
Brings us farther from God and nearer to Dust.

My concern is line 2/3 of this poem written in 1934 before the internet, or CD's or mass production of TV or DVD's, cell phones, computers or websites.

The endless cycle of idea and action,
endless invention, endless experiment

TS Eliot was concerned amount the overabundance of information in 1934,
With the oversaturation of information available to us, have we lost knowledge and more importantly, have we lost true wisdom?

Does the poem echo what Noble is claiming?
More so have we lost integrity in our fear of getting left behind by the pressures of progress, consumerism, economics?

At the heart of some of most vivid debates within higher education is the question of knowing; what constitutes knowledge? Who is the knower? What do we mean by knowledge? These questions are raised in multiple ways by professors, students, lecturer. But these inquiries extend beyond the academic walls, they are at the heart of popular culture.

Which is? ....Commercialism of higher education, consumerism, computer based education.

Nobles concerns are real when he says quality education could become the exclusive preserve of the privileged but there are many advantages;

* digital education provides a time and place, self paced environment for learning
* fosters crtiical thinking
* opportunity to work globally and collaboratively
* less paper - better ecologically
* opportunities for those living in rural areas

The process of integrating digital technologies into higher education raises foundation questions because there are myriad ways in which we are facing new choices/ new possibilities.

We have to keep asking the hard questions.
* What is the social infrastructure that makes it possible to use species technologies?
* What kind of investment does it require of us both financially as well as socially?
* Can instructional technology be exploited?
* Does it develop student's individual skills/talents?
* What long time effect will this way of education have on the global environment?

Computers exist in high numbers (esp Western world) at the expense of high consumption of natural resources elsewhere, not to mention significant amount so of cheap labor in other parts of the globe.

Global cooperations exert their power to control the media and create the psychological and physical needs that satisfy the requirements of their own growth. Not only the affluent but the poorest people of the world are being usesd as pawns in the hands of the powerful capitalist technology.

Our task as religious educators in this new education milieu is to become explorers and revelers of religious imaginations, The world of digital media is not an alien world. And we should enter the word with integrity and boldness.

The web site for Noble's article sorry but link not working .

Te atapo - the dawn

The text - divinely inspired?

2006-09-27T00:48:00.000-07:00

27th September blog

Returning to my recent blog “hype(ertext) of biblical authority.” I will return to the hype of authority.

I am fascinated and with the young reader's take on the psalms in particular Psalm 23. Brought up on the psalms I often changed the lyrics to suit my age/situation/need at the time. I love this image of psalm 23 young reader can add to Holder's HIP HOP interpretation.

Does the image jeopardize a sense of divine authority? No for the kitten some sense of authority is lurking - fear, confidence, arrogance?

Unlike the Scripture the psalms became a tool on which the psalms spoke for us rather than to us. This gave us a deeper understanding of the meaning of life in God's world and the psalms still speak to me out of the depths of my experiences.

So Psalms are not just words to God also words about God and it teaches us about God; and in a way who God is.

So, when we read the psalms seriously and ask God to speak to our hearts through its inspired teachings, we begin to realize that God does indeed speak with divine authority through God's word, the Bible.

When we speak of the deconstruction of psalms and its ability to perhaps jeopardize divine authority I want to ask if there is such a thing as supreme authority?

Let me ask this another way. Is there such as thing as a supreme authority that governs Church life and Christian action and if so, what is it?

Mmm...believing scripture is authoritative for the church is not a point for which I wish or feel I have to argue. I simply observe that it is true and has always been so. There are of course those who wish to abandon the notion of Scriptural authority at the theoretical level and probably plenty Christians for who scripture does not function authoritatively in any very indefinable way. The deconstruction of meaning might be highly threatening to the church as a community whose identity is rooted in a reading of an authoritative text.

The authorty of the Bible whatever we may think of it will convince no-one who does not grant it such authority.

Now many Biblical texts are ambiguous and capable of more than one iterpretation and no interpreter is infallible. But I don't think for one moment the Bible is impaired by this. So why not embrace the Hip Hop version of psalm 23.

Reading the Bible as Scripture then, is never a mere matter of handling texts and the relationship between texts. It is above all a matter of being in the presence and open to the handling of the One who in some sense is the final author of its message because "He" is the one whose story it tells and it is as we know him.

And as we dwell in God's presence and have God dwells in us then what we see and hear what he is saying and showing us through it. At this point hermeneutics fall short.

Reading Laurie's argument on "why the web will win the culture war"...made me sit up whe he mentioned "surfing mimics a postmodern deconstructuralism perspective by undermining the authority of texts"

Immediately this got me to re-reading the young reader's post Friday 08/09 where she agress the authorty of the text lies with the surfer.

Derrida deconstruction strategies have a way of undercutting the "master text," which reflects Laurie's exposition of his basic technical tools. One way or another Derrida's oeuvre is an exploration of the nature of writing in the broadest sense as difference. To that extent writing always includes pictographic, ideographic, and phonetic elements.

Hypertext has a ring of similarity when you note what Derrida says "writing this way is not always pure and as such challenges the notion of identity and ultimately the notion of the original. It is neither entirely present nor absent but is the trace resuting from its own measure in the drive toward transparency."

Is this not what we tend to do with hypertext structure of text.
First search for the written text by another and adopt a kind of secondary role before the primcay of the text.
Seconed, turn the primacy text into a source of new inspiration and creativity like conneting frames, hyperlinks, with a web of of associations and connections. Now the reader no longer simply interprets but becomes a writer in his/her own right.

Keith Carley in his response to Psalm 8 de-constructed and wrote this psalm

O God of depths and heights of infinite expanse and every place
Your glory is seen in all things
In gentle persistent growth unnoticed by humankind
In diversity prodigious that takes place in my soil,
Your glory is displayed to those with eyes to see.
How foolish humans are to assume your ways are as conflicted as their own.
To think you deal with enemies as they do
Your love surrounds those who appose you
For your justice always come with mercy
And new beginnings

When I look at the sky, how wonderful the whole creation is
you care for sparrows, feed lions
And still have time to care for human beings!
The warring of those who think themselves superior
Makes a place of horror
Their weapons seem to threaten all life
In greed they force growth or poison it
destroying forests, I can never re-place in their life times,
Must I die that they might learn the outcome of their foolish foolishness
What arrogance they think you have put them in charge
Yet they depend on their fellow creatures
For clothing, labour, food, for air and water
When they pollute in ways thou now percieve only dimly
You never willed them to be conquerers
Rather partners in the unfolding of your beauty
They have not learned the lessons of exodus and exile
And taught so well by their monarchs
That subjection brings resitance,
Which you bless with liberation.
yet still you care for them
O God of depths and heights of infinite expanse and every place
May your glory be seen by all things.

Point of departure - inspiration must surely be the views of the last generation of evangelicals. It is they who keep the issue alive.

Te atapo - the dawn

hype (ertext) of biblical authority

2006-09-20T03:40:00.000-07:00

You have to ask don't you "how can a text written over two thousand years ago still have authority over the lives and actions of people today?" Unless of course the text transcends history.

So if its ways and views are timeless, applicable to all occasions then it must not in any way be limited or even conditioned by its own historical society, its own cultural period or its own individual context. It is truly and radically a-historical.

Anyway lets get over the hype of authority I want to do is go back to my hypertext effort. As Elaine says "the interpretation of the biblical story in today's world for today's people does require a "spiders genius" - the ability to spin and weave even from the broken web of the story as as we have received it from our ancestors.

Then lets hope I can spin and weave the" portraits of wisdom' on my web. At present moment I feel like I am in a virtual web- not spinning and weaving but wrapped up like a fly choking, Last night I manged to do a LINK yes but when I went in today - it just did not work! ooh...

I guess there is wisdom that can emerge from patient and heartfelt endurance in the face of so much suffering .

I will continue...

Te atapo

Hypertext and Publication in Biblical Studies

2006-09-15T20:33:00.000-07:00

Check the changes Tim is referring to
* past to present
* oral to written to electronic
* scroll to codex
* text to hypertext

Avi Santos in Media Commons talks about changes, in the current scholarly publishing culture. Changes that work in dialogue with other readers and possible peer reviews.

By generating this kind of discussion, feedback is potentially great and productive discussion has enormous implications for the future.

And back to Tim's article a really huge change yes the " text to hypertext revolution" take the electronic hypertext medium cheap; when reading u can explore some paths and ignore others; available;and has potential for all levels of reader/creator.

no y - You don't have to be highly computer savvy to enjoy putting your own hypertext together or even to read your colleagues work.

No what? I look forwrd to showing you my completed "biblical passage" in hypertext. Unlike an assignment - don't get to see your collagues efforts.

Won't check out disadvantages just yet, will soon come across them when creating hypertext.
Te atapo

Digital texts and the New Testament

2006-09-15T01:25:00.000-07:00

I thought I needed a dictionary handy to understand this article but not! I am becoming computer word savvy even though I still have trouble finding "my bstheo711 documents" folder.

I think it deliberately tries to hide from me when blogging is on the agenda.

You know this guy Parker I can relate to him I know how he feels when he says,
What am I really looking at when I gaze at the screen,
I certainly have no idea."
Certainly if is pretending to look something like a page of text,
but it equally certainly is not a page of text, it is an image of some kind on a screen,

Parker is aware of the changes in publishing, even though it is at the experimental stage. The digital texts still mirror printed "books but, with continued creativity these codices will fade.

And he says, too many computer scholars are copyist.
So it is illuminating to realise under the guise of reconstructing original texts we are really reconstructing new ones.

What I noticed in my own preaparation for creating a hypertext for wisdom literature, I was thinking how much clearer the understanding of wisdom (Biblical) would have been for me in digital form.

For example in many articles written about wisdom
Wisdom is a personified figure, mythical, hypostatsis multifacted, elusive, immanent, creative order, substantial, corporeal, tangible figure.

What does any of this mean for the new reader.

But with "text" to 'hyypertext" well watch the space when I complete or "chissel" away at my hypertext. When the reader tackles the genre of the text (using a mapping system), with an easy click s/he will know that "she - wisdom" is not a mythical figure but a literary device.

We'll see.
Yes watch the space!
Te atapo

Biblical text - printed and digital,

2006-09-13T03:20:00.000-07:00

Every text we know is understood in light of many texts that the reader has already encountered.

The text is something the readers create but it is something that also creates readers. The challenge here is the reader's interaction with the computer that is different than it is with a printed book.

On a computer the Bible becomes fluid. The digital Bible appears in multiple text files which can be easily added to, deleted, inserted or modified to suit the reader's preference.

The technology of the written text demands skills of reading and writing, In the modern world we take these skills for granted but actually reading and writing are neither natural or normal. No matter how transparent or effortless the skills seem there is nothing automatic about learning them. Ask someone who cannot read or write.

And for some of us that is where we are - learning the demands of the skills for digital technology.

Now writing is a technology that has its greatest value in the absence of the writer. And yes, once the text leaves the writer's hand the author no longer has control over it or any effect on how the reader will understand the text's meaning.

This is I'm thinking same for digital writing/reading.

Consider development from written (manuscripts), to digital or electronic and what the development means to future biblical scholarship.

The handwritten manuscripts were frequently altered by the scribes who copied them and the

Canon was an attempt to guard against such alterations. Once a book was canonized it was recognized as authority and deliberate modifications were not permitted. The development of legal and ethical structures regarding copyright and plagiarism provided further secular security for the printed texts.

Now in the "electronic culture" the digitizing of text makes it possible for nearly anyone to prepare, copy, or modify texts, skills that were formerly the property of few. Anyone with a computer can physically rewrite the digital text in any way. Take a passage from the digital bible -cut and paste into word and bingo! You can alter the text.

So the stability of the texts is threatened by deleting, pasting, inserting and inserting. As the World Wide Web increasingly replaces traditional hard copy sources for texts such as the Bible the original text begins to lose all value.

Perhaps the text will be transformed once again into something nonalphabetic, whether sounds or graphic icons,

The hermeneutical text

2006-09-10T03:49:00.000-07:00

Hermeneutics how does it go? checking my last year's lecture notes,

pre- modern hermeneutics is based on trust;
modern hermenetics is guided by doubt and;
post modern hermenutics is dominated by suspicion.

A typical question that a person operating with a hermeneutic of suspcion must ask is,

" is there some way to rescue this text from its oppressive perspective and use so that it can liberate the very people that it was written to oppress or the people who have been oppressed by later interpretations."

In a roundabout way using a hypertext resource can resue the text for its oppressive perspective but I don't think that is quite what Fiorenza means oh well...

What I actually want is to explore whether "scholarly writing" using hypertex, blogging, electronic reference, etc.. has implications for hermeneutics.

With the information of technologies already available I can sit in my back yard with cell phone and moniter the video images from my DVD and with a laptop computer to ensure my blogging, assignments , emails and journaling are all kept up to scratch.

This kind of distancing power has shifted me back to future of the book post. As a reader of if:book this post will enagage with Ani Santos's project in progress Media Commons.

Santos argues for "writing in a mediated environment" in which folks like you and me (us), who can lead the way particularly in publishing Biblical articles. One way is the hypertext resource that we are in process of setting up.

I myself felt the gradual shift from thinking an "electronic press" to thinking about "electronic scholarly publishing".

As Polanyi pointed out, "we indwell our technologies, we extend our bodily presence to interact with each other." and so it is with blogging.

Blogging allow us to have a converstion, dialogue and share our thoughts, a way to research, get other's views. It employs a kind of peer to peer discussion on subject, topic at hand.

A chance to be professional, personal, and a way to research. Reading If Book discussions gives the chance to link into what others have to say about future of the book.

A future that could have blog entries bound together in "codex " form. Now that could be interesting - all those different voices contributing to one topic. Watch the space huh?

Take "Ruth" each one of us contributing our own hermenuetic towards the topic.

From such a cross-cultural class, we could use so many different lens,

* post-colonial,

* feminist,

* cultural,

* immigration,

* suspicion,

* otherness etc...

It is a complex proecess but it is time for a new a new way of doing book.

Te atapo - the dawn

Barth and hypertext

2006-09-09T05:47:00.000-07:00

Ooops this post should come after "behind the text and in the text" my postings are in confused state- bear with me,

I finished the last post "behind the text and in the text by writing that "electronic hypertext has the capacity to confront authors with the ability to bring the text to life..." so let me continue...

Let's face it, the intellectual approach to past Biblical texts is inadequate for the digital culture we are in. And like it or not new information technologies are beginning to transform the way we do Bible.

So decided to cite Kirsten Abbot and offers her ways of bringing the text to life... in her article "Wrestling texts"

using hypertextual media these include;

* using a different kind of writing

* non sequential writings branches out and allows choices to the readers

* the writing structure needs to be easily navigable

* Writing on the screen needs to be concise and scannable

* Use of text bites and bullet points, rather than traditional academci style of building an argument.

* glossaries and explanations for beginners and technical discussions for more advanced students

* include sound and images etc...

* shows how to succesfully navigate complexities of genre, texts, and contexts.

doing electronic hypertext allows and requires alterations in organizing material, writing style, quality/quantity and accessibility of supporting material.

Not too overwhelming I hope, after all these changes show some features with major ideas in literary theory such as reader response, theory, post structuralism and deconstruction.

Before I post, I want to quickly touch on Karl Barth not for the reason he is probably the greatest theologian, well, at least the greatest Protestant theologian of the 20th century,), but because, I want to show briefly how his thinking in the 20th century continually seeks to be understood in the 21st century digital culture.

For Barth,

human language is the vehicle that God chose to be the unique
witness to God's revelation,"

"in the Bible we meet with human words written in human
speech and in these words God unveils Godself by veiling Godself i
n human language, therefore the Bible is a genuine witness."

Barth also says scripture takes primacy because rather than we reading it , it reads us...

If this is true then it means we are not involved, so this kind of "scripture reading" means the reader is forever standing on the outside.

But using electronic hypertext means we (author/reader) can become fully involved to interpret the text.

However, in both the Barth and hypertext cases the interpretation shows it is is on-going and taht it can detach itself from its authors making itself new realtionships.

In a way this tells us why the Bible is constantly exposed to the life of the Church as it continually seeks to be understood afresh and hence exposed and interpreted.

What electronic hypertext offers is a quantum leap into a strange new world within the Bible.

What hermenutics will it use?
Hermeneutic of trust? faith? suspicion? prophecy?

"Behind the text" and "In the Text"

2006-09-09T02:36:00.000-07:00

One of first questions for hermeneutics is,

What actions are performed in the making and the use of text?

Actions acquire meaning from their functional relationship to other actions. In order to grasp the meaning of a text, therefore we need to go outside the text as well as inside it.

To understand the text, Schleiermacher says "

"the interpreter must put her/himself

both objectively and subjectively

in the position of the author."

Schleiermacher was referring to author in a printed mediated world - no different for the interpreter in a electronic/digital one.

Speaking on the author the more we know about him/her, the better equipped we are for interpretation . Therefore we must proceed methodically employing all tools of historical research as we reconstruct the life -world behind the text.

After preparing my hypertext proposal I have come to know a "few things" - hyperlinks if done well can direct the reader to what is meaningful rather than being confronted with a whole lot of different approaches.

The illustrations and referencing in an encylcopeadia, footnotes in an article are not that different from electronic hypertext. I agree with Bulkeley

"each reader comes to the commentary witrh different prior knowledge and experience, therefore each needs a different set of information in which Hypertext links allows."

Interpretation though like artistic creating (done with Hypertext), is a form of human action and is thus subject to the same vicissitudes and open to the same possibilites in all human actions

We recognize that that we do not come to these biblical texts "fresh" and that we are not the first ones to read these texts and struggle with their relationship to faith and practice and that we are part of a global community of believers who over time have returned again and again to these text for stability and challenge and encouragement.

Electronic hypertext has the capacity to confront authors with the ability to bring the text to life thereby extending their readers to create an awareness of their own hermeneutical processes.

Te atapo - the dawn

letting go

2006-09-07T21:58:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,

Did you all have an awesome assignment, blogging free break?
I have just t returned from the country, retreating with glow worms at Findlay Park near Lake Karapiro, Cambridge. Witnessing the glow worms I could feel the pull that a sacred place, a place of origins, has on its own creatures. As they glowed in their home (cave), I felt the need to visit my own hometown, near the valley of my childhood.

The nest day I traveled up to the Far North - Herekin0 - a place truly lost in time. No computers, no emails, , television (no sky), and no mobile network -yes I did get withdrawal symptoms.

But I got to read The Good, the Bold, and the Beautiful, by Dan Clanton. The story is very richly interpreted. It is the story of Susanna and the Elders from the Apocypha. The narrative touches on attempted rape, female sexuality, abuse of power, punishment for the wicked, and voyeurism, to name but a few themes.

I got to play outdoors and developed my own organic relationships with nature - cows, chickens and even the unloved possums.

Also went fishing and watched the kahawai and mullet in motion, Indeed fish in motion and by extension the birds and all animals are nature's work of art.

I picked watercress from flowing creeks and oranges from fruit laden trees. Eating dinner from the porch at nights I looked up at the skies speckled with zillion stars. and understood the psalmist speaking of God's glory in creation.

Now, I am back to blogging, laptops, emailing and a part of a world frantically pushing at technology, continually being fascinated by the wonders of human ingenuity that overcome frustrations of distance and time.

But I ponder still for we are part of a world whose technolgoies continue to threaten the very basis of life, leading to scarce and poisoned water, infertile soil and polluted air. How have we arrived at this critical state?

Ooh my family will love the Bible in Hypertext - instead of Codex - tell you why next blog

Te Atapo - the dawn

future of the book

2006-08-19T00:38:00.000-07:00

I can dream a dream - that would be something in hypertext.
Tim did that and look what he got AMOS!

The printed book will be around forever Why?

* Cause novels better suited to text codex?
Not so! novels best read lying down beside the fireplace.

But monographs and commentaries as text and hypertext definitely "in"
Why?

1. Screen printing saves trees

2. no use having all those unread books on your shelf - Instead of standing in the book shop reading the intro or listening to a friend's version, you can read a bit on screen first then make a decision to buy.

3. Can produce own research book in Hypertext, complete with your own pikis.

4. education institutions could produce own research or text books books - that will surely save costs for struggling students

5. From pencil to typing we changed our way of recording -Tim is correct, as students we need to approach reading (books), in other ways too.

6. Another thing (with books) codex text, how often are we seduced by the wisdom of the author. With Hypertext it allows the processes of thought and learnng to be retained, expressed and enjoyed, it allows the reader to question.

Yep hypertext will alter our way of studying the bible.

The dawn

Connecting to the Religion of Broadband with wisdom woman

2006-08-18T04:36:00.000-07:00

It is not easy to read an article referring to "biblical rubies" and Proverbs 31 without mentioning "this woman of wisdom."

Te Arikinui Dame TeAtairangikaahu .

He tokomaha nga tamahine i u te pai o ta ratou mahi,
otiia hira ake tau i a ratou katoa. (Whakatauki 31: 29).

Many daughters have done virtuously
but you excell them all. ( Proverbs 31:29 )

Tomorrow morning at 6.00am I will be travelling (with my tribes Te Rarawa and Te Aupouri) down to Turangawaewae to the Maori Queen's tangi.

As I watch the Queen's tangi on televison, read the news and checkout the internet I think of the marvellous way broadband communication has brought her "tangi" into our homes these past few days. Never before have we been inside the royal marae where such awesome "mana" has lain or been layed down.

Yet there is pensive sadness. The Maori tangi that normally takes place behind closed doors has gone public. Private moments (similar to like Bach's private faith), finds very public outlets through the media's appetite for voices, stories and choices.

And the viewer is caught up in the blatant religious imagery (hymns, music, popular rhetoric, clergy presence, carvings, etc....), produced by camera men, the newsreaders, the websites, and newspaper citations from from the internet - all reporting this memorable moment. A reminder of technology and broadbanding at its best. Not so for private grieving.

What profound "korero - talk will she take to her ancestors - now that we have electronic sights that are far beyond our own understanding.

What legacy does she leave?
"The gift of community? She received the Maori people/world as a gift from the Creator and used it to nurture and be nurtured by relationships of trust and caring - she bulit a community holding gently together "religion, media and politics " to live in praise of God "(talk from Maori elder).

Broadbanding can also cultivate affirming communities by creating interrelationships between religion, politics, and media. It is my hope, otherwise like 9/11 we too will be left with the religious smoke around the tangi event and the different interpretations of it.

Watch for swelling pendulum to stop swinging when the new heir is announced. Unless we buy the video the tangi all memories/moments will fade rapidly while broadband offers us sensationalism elswhere.

Farewell Te Atairangikaahu we know when you meet again with your ancestors
"you will speak noble things
and from your lips will come what is right" (Prov 8:6).

Te Atapo - the dawn

Close Listening

2006-08-17T16:21:00.000-07:00

Oh wow! what a joy if I could do all my readings this week through close listening instead of beating my eyes up. Imagine wisdom woman in Proverbs 8:1-21. Can almost hear her crying from the gates of the city. You'd get a sense of her boldness when she takes centre stage vying for everyone's attention linking cosmic order and social order. Little bit like that with audio listening - linking my life with the cosmic out there somewhere. Dominating as well as manipulating my space. I was brought up on a diet of close listening. Books too expensive; Holy Bible and a set of encyclopaedia that was it - my imagination was belonged to the speaker not to me.

My dilemma with the audio is I have no control (except on/off button). When I want to re-read, pick up where I left off, speed up or slow down. Linger over a romantic scene or power through the jet ride. I might want to keep rewinding to get the word - that way I might lose the momentum. Oh no I want to be in CONTROL.

Audio listening could be just another way towards domination - of time, imagination, dreams. Reading Lord of the Rings reinofrced the desire that the good would always conquer and the bad would be destroyed. But "reading closely" gave me an insight that there is a little bit of evil within us. Reading stories like this shaped me-part of who I am .I read the Lord of the rings 3 times. The movie? I had already brought the story to life in my imagination.

Now weekly readings - close listening could help- Yep I could be eating my dinner and listening to Heidegger's theory on "being and time" at the same time. I could keep rewinding to get a better understanding. Oops the tape could wear out (before I got the gist), after a dozen rewinds. Books well you can read and read and read...till you get it.

Locating wisdom multi media v network

2006-08-09T00:02:00.000-07:00

Difficult to comment on multimedia v network when you just getting used to the network. Yep locating books inside the internet is just a whole lot of photocopying that might be cheaper ///no way ink , paper cost heaps. Nothing is really free.

Gone are the days of tucking yourself up on a cold night reading a good book. Oh no too busy now searching the web for knowledge, knowledge and more knowledge that comes to us via mass media that sets the agenda for us to think politically and yeah culturally.

Much of printing revolution increases resources of previous generation, now digital has begun to connect contemporary resources on huge sacale.

Interesting the network- can be cumbersome (until I get the hang of it), at times me thinks. But ooh is it not soooo exciting - its like learning a whole new language, down side is you can't blame the teacher when you don't get the tools.

I love the networking I really get to know how my colleagues think instead of sitting in the lectures wondering if she/he have a brain or not. You know what I mean you don't need to open your mouth and feel foolish like I often did in Hermeneutics. Instead you can ask questiions and write a less than one page message that is clear and precise for both you and the reciever.

Another thing connecting to the world - and articulating commonalities. Sharing sharing, relationships. You no wat? all my "now" friends have a certain packaging but on the net one's imagination can run free.

What about research? I agree the social and ritual practice of research and interaction will move from the text driven book to the assocative imaginitive nonlinear networks of the multi-media. The non-linear text will allow readers to make choices and to follow varying routes through the material presented. Yet it can be divided into linear and non-linear , but like films there is no navigator in linear. Non- linear offers all the interactivity something I discovered in Tim's work. If you wish to explore how how the move from text to hypertext impacts on biblical commentary check out the Amos commentary It would require considerable alterations in the organization of material. The finished product is similar to the "book" because it still relies on the imagination of the creator.

Most basic and most effective technique in writing well for electronic media is to use fewer words. Kirsten Abbot uses concise and scannable writing while creating a website for her biblical studies project wrestling at the jabbok. Concepts and thought become more complicated as as they encompass more avenues of expression.

Apparently way back in 1965 digital multimedia was used to describe exploding plastic performance that combined live rock music.

I guess multimedia makes for more audio, graphics and video while networking leads more to interacting with colleagues, critics and others so there is a feedback - something that might not always occur with multimedia. Plus one can achieve a great deal interacting with others-by moving to and fro, backwards and forwards.

Another awesome "thing" I have discovered you don't have to work with a theasuarus at your side, you just write it, even if you have to sleep on the idea overnight.

How about the shopping it is like a great big library eh? And you don't have to catch the bus to get there or even pay for professionals' works - it's on the net. I myself have accumulated my own list of writers, scholars because I get to read their work rather than having to purchase a book. Perhaps I will get to building up my own professional identity.

Intellectual property rights can be an issue but there is the upside the published work gets to more people than sitting in the bottom shelf gathering dust.

No doubt like networking there is so much that needs to be discovered and for sure multi-media is more than audio and video, I imagine there are multiple interpretations from a whole lot of different lens and even after all that we still bring our own cultural bias to interpret the text -our own hermeneutic.

I guess with multimedia technology like most technologies we can examine the present and reconstruct the past and but even with the possibilities of multimedia we can still only peer into the future.

But there are questions that weave in and out of my thought patterns. What are people's liturgical expectation in a multi-media world. Does digital communicaton tend to strengthen or weaken people's religious committments ? Can we find a new Wsidom in multi-media technology?

Glimpses of Wisdom

2006-08-05T00:22:00.000-07:00

It is wet and misearble outside and here I am inside on a Saturday evening responding to a post on If:book. Such a banquet of posts and and who is this individual living in a world of intellectual abundance? - I see it is john mcclymer -

Oh no! far too long a post for my brain to soak up on a Saturday night particularly when I could be watching James Bond on the tube.

Oh here is a post by ray cha "three glimpses at the future of television Oh I can recall those delicious times when the whole family was crowded around the radio listening to "Diana and the golden apple" Such wonderful images floated around in my wee small brain. Not to forget the bonding between brothers and sisters, mums and dads.

Radio broadcasting began at the turn of the century, perceived as a powerful educational tool. Yet, New Zealand (unlike Southern Korea), its new media is still not triumphant for while the new media of information technology (computer/internet), play a role today, most NZ people live in a world defined by old print, televison radio and film.

NZers still hunger for images, pictures, music and myth. This is evidenced by the vast popularity of programs watched daily on the tube. Whatever the tube tells you , you do...you dress like the tube...you eat like the tube...you raise your children like the tube ...and you even think like the tube.

New Zealanders will take longer to shift from the television boxe to laptops. After all we are community people who enjoy sitting around the big black box watching rugby, racing and Shortland street (No I don't watch it).

Those under the poverty line (and there are many), will yearn for the days when televisons prices come down. They will say..."You can have your affluent families sitting in their privates studies watching DVD on laptops. Yet television manifests as the most subtle of all powers. It introduces distorted images of reality in the minds of people.

In communities, where unemployment is prevalent, powerless people are forced to see technology from a different perpective than in the cities or regions of affluence. We have to place technological eduation in their very midst to give choices and open up life changing possibilities. ooh a good opportunity for the church huh?

Television and movies offer us a creative language that can bridge the gap between the sacred and the secular, the church and the world. To live as Christians/theolgians in our time, requires learning to engage media and culture.

Become aware of the power of the images and finding the tools to explore and critique these images.

Take the movie "Shawshank Redemption" The film featured Andy Dufresne who was given two life sentences in the Shawshank State Prison. If you saw it you will recall the theme of hope:; Hebrew view of creation; redempton of life and other theological inserts.

Perhaps the most powerful image of rebirth and new life in the movie is the scene where having crawled through five hundred yards of sewage Andy stands victorious, stripped bare n the pouring rain, Andy's bare body is symbolic of a stripping away of the old and preparation of the new. In the scene nakedness is a visual metaphor for birht or rebirth - transition from the old to the new, Similarly the apostle Paul uses the metaphor pf childbirth to desribe the hope by which the Spirit is liberating not only humanity, but creation as a whole. For we all know the whole creation groans and sufferes the pains of childbirth together until now...saved(Romans 8:22-23).

Video sharing site mmm...it would be a a place for Christians to set the bible into drama sounds very much like Tim's Amos project. Doing it this way could create a remix of old stories. We could create a spiritual dimension of technology that Kelly calls "regenesis"the urge that human beings have to create creation.

Biblical Creation - The struggle between good and evil. why not? Star Wars had same theme.

For the gospel to be communicated today, we must learn to express its meaning to us in terms of stories, televison and the internet. It must be carried out with wisdom - it requires the exercise of humility, right judgment, justified boldness and caution where there is uncertainty.

It's late

Good night

Te atapo (the dawn).

Using Wisdom Wisely

2006-08-03T04:34:00.000-07:00

How can theological education use the new technologies wisely?

On the internet every voice can speak, and, every voice can be heard, so the the new adventurer can tell his or her story creating an imagined world for the listener. The stories can be available to anyone who wants to search it out intentionally or not.

What does this create? Perhaps a world absent of one to one relationships, a world that makes us who we are (warts and all). I think it is this immediate world of reality that the wisdom and knowledge of God can be known to us.

Information technology deals with meaningful human existence - where we create community, and sustain relationships. Therefore it is important we use IT wisely and with wisdom.

Searching for Wisdom

2006-07-29T03:41:00.000-07:00

Last Friday I was priviledged to be invited to a lecture given by Norman Habel editor/writer of the Earth Bible series. By highlighting the Biblical creation story Habel helped us recognise that the voice of Earth is suppressed. My understanding is that by applying the concept of voice to earth the reader of the Bible views Earth as a human subject. Yet I suspect that this is not the intention of the term "voice" rather it is the sounds, images or signs that Earth communicates to other members of the earth community. Signs like climate changes, deforestation, disappearing rainforests etc...Images that remind us constantly of earth's fragility.

Often we speak of earth as "mother earth" and this is how the biblical creation story shows it. We are made out of the body of earth so we risk disaster when we forget the profound relationship between us and mother earth. We come from earth and return to it.

It seems to be then, that we are responsible for nurturing the earth, serving it so that it can be the beautiful place God intended it to be. Yes the earth is beautiful and we share the love of God and all that grows from it. Moreover we share the wisdom of God to care for God's precious earth. I believe the symbolic stories in the Genesis creation are not about something that happened long ago rather they are stories about now. Every season, and every day God is looking at creation and seeing how good it is. How can we look at the sunset, the sunrise, the waterfalls, the coastlines, the whole of creation, human and non-human and not feel God's profound presence.

We can pick up on this concept of God's presence in the world in the Gospel of John (1:1-14). Here it is clear that there is no theology of creation that is independent of a theology of incarnation. John's prologue presents Jesus as the divine Word that was with God in the beginning and was God. It moves to reveal the Word as creator amd sustainer of the universe, the source of life and knowledge of all creatures.

Insofar as I understand, Jesus is identified with Wisdom the "pre-existence" agency in creation; the revelation of the knowledge of God and the giving of life; incarnation and divinity itself. So who is wisdom? The Lord by wisdom founded the earth (Prov 3:19); she is the giver of life (Prov 4:13), the Lord created me, the first of his acts (Prov 8:22), whoever finds me finds life (Prov:8:35), come and eat my bread (Prov 9:5).

Wow! this insight illuminates some aspects of Wisdom that allows us to appreciate the inter-relationship between the interconnected universe, all its creatures and the saving work of Christ.

Te atapo (the dawn)

Begins with Wisdom

2006-07-26T17:23:00.000-07:00

Geographically I am a New Zealander living at the South of the Pacific. Expanding on that I live in Aotearoa, New Zealand. My position is that of an indigenous Maori woman who is shaped by my genealogical, political and spiritual set of experiences. Through my parents I belong to two main tribal groups and have close links to my English ancestry. My father is of the Te Aupouri and Te Rarawa tribes and it is through him that my sense of place and spirituality became so firmly grounded, He nurtured me with myths, legends and wisdom, developing in me a spiritual relationship to the land, our tribal mountain and its river.

My mother on the other hand, strongly influenced by her white Anglican heritage provided nourishment from the Bible developing in me a love for God and the Holy Scriptures. Annie believed the Bible was a fundamental pathway to not only knowing God but a way of gaining wisdom, education, and affluence in an environment surrounded by cow paddocks, bushland and poverty.

Today the New Zealand society, like many others, has become an environment unlike yesterdays. It is a place shaped by technology in which God is not apparently absent but is functionally no longer necessary. With technology paving the future there appears no recognised higher power other than the human-made system that people in charge now worship. Moreover. there is no imitation of God, no vsion of something greater to strive of.

According to some Biblical wisdom scholars the creation of the Wisdom figure was a response to the events of the sixth century exile; the destruction of the Jerusalem temple; the exilic crisis; loss of autonomy over land; and the impassivity of of YHWH. Perhaps the time has come to create another kind of wisdom to respond to the world of Information Technology. We realise the world of IT does confront many people of faith because the our culture's world view is increasingly tied to the spirit of capitalism with its commitment to pragmatism and to technology rather than human values.

In response to this world of consumerism, war, poverty, relationship brekadowns, etc...perhaps it is time to create a new wisdom, share your thoughts with me
Te atapo (the dawn)