*WARNING: This post is really just a series of random thoughts. Do not attempt to extract a thesis from it*
I do not have the nerve to even hazard a guess at how many hours I spend online each week. It is doubtless vastly accelerating the progress of myopia, and for some reason it really bothers me to think about how much of my time is spent in the company of my decrepit iBook G4 (This little trooper has lasted since before Mac started using Intel).Now, don't get me wrong, I love the internet and technology and all that, and if Facebook, Blogger, Gmail, and the archives over at First things disappeared tomorrow, I would be in a very bad mood. On the other hand, I might get more actual work done.
I have just been thinking recently, how the internet, and electronic media have transformed the idea of place. Not so long ago, your life and interests were confined to a relatively small geographical area. Now, much of my social interaction, on a daily basis, is with people on the other side of the country. If I were a teeny bit more cosmopolitan, it would include people on the other side of the globe. There is something bizarrely disincarnate about the internet. It takes flesh and blood people and turns them into pixels and information. I wonder, how will this effect our theology in the next few generations? It seems to me like it might exert a pressure in a generally idealist direction. What will it do to our whole notion of place? I tend to be sympathetic to the Eucharistic ecclesiology of Eastern thinkers like Zizioulas, but place plays an essential role in that ecclesiological scheme, with the bishop understood as the head of the Church in a given place. What does place even mean anymore for most of us? If the most important parts of our life are not lived within the limits of a physical place, does it make sense that the Church's structure should be determined by those limits? Why not have dioceses determined by affinity, as the ACNA seems to be doing for the most part? But then, does the concept of a diocese become evacuated of its real meaning? These are not, I think, merely academic questions. They seem to me to be highly relevant to a number of churches, most notably the emerging ACNA, but also the Orthodox churches in this country, as they continue their task of trying to achieve a unified Orthodox church.
All this just because I spend too flippin' much time on Facebook.
Maybe I'm crazy, I don't know, but the medium is the message and all that...
This is like Ghost in the Shell taken to the level of the theological reflection. As a similar internet fiend, I've also given thought to the disembodiment of online life. The internet seems to have the power to sustain the illusion of relationship, of community--of being? But as far as technology takes us, it is only ever an abstraction, at least one step separated from the "real thing". Existence, so to speak, precedes techno-essence; all objections to the contrary turn a blind eye to what it means to be human.
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