Thursday, February 23, 2006
consolidation/convergence and specialisationThis is a long post - so you may want to read the headers and decide to skip to the bit on the church rather than read all my techno waffle.
It seems like the web is going through the process of consolidation at the moment, for many years the internet has been spiralling towards specialisation. Where you would have loads of bookmarks that would need to be checked regularly in order to keep abreast of whatever you were into.
Web 2 - the internet, but all in one place
With the advent of web 2.0 the drive now is towards consolidation and convergence - no need to check 100 blogs using your browser instead see them update live using RSS feeds - in fact don't bother why not just use technorati to check who's saying what about whatever you are into. This is convergence on steriods - why go to 1000 different websites - let them all come to one place.
Looking for a space to store your photos? Want to see similar ones to yours or have an interest in a particular type of photography? Then use Flickr a one-stop shop for photos worldwide - it also syncs with technorati. Ditto for buying stuff - why go to every online shop when places like Kelkoo search them all for you and even allow users to rate stores so you know that the cheapest may not always be the best.
The web is getting more and more intelligent - for years the sheer amount of knowledge avaliable was overpowering - you needed all day to search through stuff and keep up with the latest happenings in the blog world, now intelligent web 2.0 applications are making life easier and bringing data into one place from a variety of sources. A bit like a search engine but more refined.
The church as web 2
This fluctuation between convergence and specialisation seems to be a constant in our technological times. And could easily serve as a metaphor for the church today - the 80's and 90's witnessed the massive growth of the homogenous mega-church - a one stop for everything, convergence for the church, with the best worship, the best speakers and the most comfortable seats, enabling you to give and belong easily. I would suggest that today we are rapidly moving away from this into specialisation, witness the explostion of 'fresh expressions' of church - where rather than a one-stop shop you have a sunday league football church, a café church, a church for single mothers etc...
Is this a good thing? It could be argued that church could be seen as even more of a commodity than during the mega-church era. It could be equally said that the church it at last reaching out to people who for too long have not been able to 'get into' church because of barriers the church puts up (language, structure, place etc...).
The need to keep talking
One of the main problems with technology is that introducing the latest gadget into the mix is always problematic. How do you get it to talk and communicate with older technology? How do you get a brand new macbook pro to communicate with a ZX Spectrum from the 1980's? You can using a mix of old and new technology, but its a hard job keeping it all together and working.
I think this is a similar problem we are having at the moment. A lot of Anglican churches operate on a one-stop shop mentality (which is not a bad thing) where people have the option of either the 8am service on a sunday for the 1662 liturgy or an 11am modern worship service. This drive towards specialisation gives churches who operate on this basis much cause for concern, this redefinition of what constitutes church is threatening to them, and rightly so. Its also easy when you are one of these fresh expressions to wish the 'old skool' would get on and die so us young un's could rule the roost.
Yet we both are part of the same body of Christ, even if sometimes we would see ourselves as Macbook pros and the rest of the church as ZX Spectrums. We need technology that allows us to communicate and get on, to learn each others codes and programs, understanding how and why they work and why they are necessary, and even discussing why they may not be necessary.
Hopefully, in the end, we will learn to love the 'old' along with the 'new' - a bit like musicians, who these days endlessly chase after old keyboard sounds (moogs) or old guitars (1964 fenders) or amps (Vox AC30's). They bring something that they/we miss, something that cannot be recreated - something that musicians need to create an 'authentic sound'. Similarly some of the old technology will die - but only as it becomes of no use and is superseded, some of it will always remain, re-imagined or even left completely intact.
So lets work out what we need to communicate, learn each others code, lest we decimate Christs body rather than keeping it together.
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