Much is made of the information overload of the modern era.
With the 24/7 news cycle, multiple feeds, and social media, we have a proliferation of information. This has been an exaggerated feature of the pandemic: endless Covid ‘live feeds’, whether it is ‘second wave updates LIVE’ or ‘vaccine roll-out LIVE’. Commentators then perpetuate this with near-instant reflections on these live updates.
A few years ago, I was asked to do a main stage seminar on digital technology at a large conference for ministers.
In the Q&A time I got a rather angular question from a minister who I think was feeling overwhelmed: ‘This is all very well for those who are young and trendy, ministering to hipsters, but what does it have to do with the rest of us?’
One thing is for sure, when Covid-19 is finally behind us, the ‘new normal’ will not be the old ‘normal’.
I was speaking to a businessman in my church who was saying that his company surveyed all 400 or so of its employees and not one of them said that they wanted to go back to working full-time from the office – not one! There will be some areas where things will go ‘back to normal’ but, as Christians, we need to reckon with the reality that the pandemic has changed how people think about life online for good.
In 2016 a therapist, Dr Steven Stosny, coined the term ‘Headline Stress Disorder’ in response to the increasing number of psychological studies demonstrating the link between the 24/7 news cycle and anxiety, sadness and hopelessness. It seems that the obsession with breaking news is breaking us.
As I write this we are in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic and if you go to any mainstream news outlet, their homepage will have a ‘live’ feed to coronavirus updates. This is now the common response to any breaking news story: set up a live feed for minute-by-minute information. But, while such updates can be helpful, they also have a powerful effect on us.
We might be a month late, and you may be feeling defeated having failed to last even January with the resolutions you made, but I’d like to encourage you to consider some digital resolutions for the coming year.
‘But aren’t New Year’s resolutions a secular idea, and should we as Christians really buy into them?’
In the past few years there have been growing fears of a crisis in online security and fraud.
As more and more of our banking, shopping and information moves online so the demands on digital security increase. In 2016 the FBI described the losses due to cyber crime as ‘staggering’, with over $1billion in that year alone. One in five people (and rising) are victims of online fraud and about half never get their money back, with the average loss being £800.
In the West we have turned time into a commodity. We talk of ‘spending time’, ‘making up for lost time’ and ‘wasting time’ – all conveying the sense that it is a currency we trade in. In such a context one of the big draws of mobile devices is that they are ‘time-saving’, there to make our lives more efficient (where efficiency is productivity/time). So any moment that you are waiting, and therefore not maximising your productivity, your hand reaches for your phone to check your messages, emails, Facebook or Instagram account. And what’s the problem with this, after all, isn’t God in favour of productivity? Aren’t we told in Ephesians 5:16 to ‘make the best use of time’? While there are of course many verses in Scripture to warn against laziness, one of the casualties of our pursuit of saving time is the art of waiting well. Notwithstanding the fact that much of our frantic activity is actually not very productive (for example there are numerous studies that show multitasking is actually not as efficient as working on one task at a time), waiting time is not a waste of time.
What a difference 30 years make. To mark
three decades since he submitted his Internet
proposal, Sir Tim Berners-Lee says
that
global action is required to tackle the web’s
‘downward plunge to a dysfunctional future’.
Sir Tim has identified three main areas
of dysfunction today: ‘Deliberate, malicious
intent’ (such as State-sponsored hacking and
online harassment), ‘System design that creates perverse incentives’ (such as clickbait),
and
‘Unintended negative consequences’
(such as polarised online discussions). Who of us could really disagree with such a diagnosis? These flaws are all too commonly felt
by ordinary users.
Thousands of Christians around the UK play sport every week.
Just think of the numbers involved: 15.74 million adults play sport weekly – that’s about a third of adults in the UK. The number is higher in the young-adult bracket where 55.2% take part in at least one session of sport a week, and even higher among 11-16 year olds where it is 86.6%!
On Monday 26 November Nasa’s Mars InSight probe touched down.
It is a wonderful technological achievement. Please note, I am using the adjective intentionally, ‘wonderful’ – an achievement that is (and should be seen as) ‘full of wonder’.
They certainly garnered plenty of attention during the football World Cup. With the Video Assistant Referee (VAR) system making its competitive debut, there was even more opportunity to scrutinise officials’ decisions.
With the World Cup under way, it is nearly impossible not to get swept up in the excitement and fervour.
How many times do we as England fans tell ourselves that just making the knockout stages would be an achievement for this young squad, only to start entertaining that glimmer of hope: ‘but there’s no reason we couldn’t go all the way’? Whatever the outcome for England, the tournament extends a different hope that is much needed in our divided times: it gives a glimpse of a world united.
This month’s column tackles the hot potato of doping.
Doping. It’s a word that rears its ugly head all too often in the world of sport. Already in 2018 there have been a series of drug scandals, while the international sporting community is still coming to terms with the scale of Russian state-sponsored doping.
You are having a conversation with someone when your phone buzzes.
Immediately you start to wonder what the notification is about. You think about checking your phone, but you hesitate because you don’t want to be rude. Then you realise that you have zoned out from the conversation and you don’t know what they’ve been saying. You’ve been distracted.
Let me talk to you about Charlottesville, trolling and the need for digital civility
A week after the terrible events in Charlottesville that led to the death of Heather Heyer, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) launched an initiative to crack down on hate speech online. Prior to the announcement, laws against hate speech did not cover social media and online communications.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a concept that excites some and frightens others.
But, whatever our reaction, it is increasingly becoming a big part of the technological landscape. Unfortunately the focus of too many discussions is grounded more in science fiction than science fact. This may make for provocative and alarming headlines, but it seldom enables discussions to focus on the right areas.
The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) has named post-truth as its word of the politically tumultuous year that was 2016.
Post-truth doesn’t mean that truth is no longer important to people, but it does indicate the way we understand truth has changed: ‘Objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.’
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