Showing posts with label Internet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Internet. Show all posts

Thursday, January 9, 2014

10 Commandments for Social Media

Kevin DeYoung posted these "Ten Commandments for Twitter."  I'd say they apply to blogs and Facebook also. Enjoy!
And the Lord of Twitter spoke all these words saying, I am the Lord your God, who gave thee computers and tablets and smartphones, the Holy One of all social media who foreknew the internet before the foundation of the earth, yea even before Al Gore was born:
Thou shalt worship others gods before Twitter. Take heed lest ye waste your life 140 characters at a time. What shall it profit a man if he has 100,000 followers and forgets what it means to follow me?
Thou shalt not assume the worst about the tweets of others. Careful qualifications and robust explanations are not to be expected in two sentences. Cuttest thine enemies some slack.Kevin DeYoung posted these 10 Commandments for Twitter. I'd say they apply to blogs and Faceboo
Thou shalt not take the name of thine own person too seriously. If thou art prone to feeling offended at every turn and to feeling sorry for thyself publically before others, I beseech thee to gettest thou over it. To tweet like an eight-year-old is an abomination before me.
Remember thine hyperlinks, to keep them holy. Three things are a nuisance to others, four things are always to be avoided: broken links, trashy videos, rickrolling, and linking to thine own article 17 times in the same day.
Honor thy father and thy mother and all others to whom honor is due. Let thy tweets be full of encouragement and praise. Find what is commendable and commend it before others. Forgettest not that athletes and politicians are real people too. And rememberest thou that thy parents and pastors can read thy tweets.
Thou shalt not humblebrag. Better to be humble and say nothing or to brag and say everything, than to fool no one but thine own conscience.
Thou shalt not disguise self-congratulation in the form of lamentation. If thou shouldst mention before a multitude, and with conspicuous disappointment, that thou wast the only one white person who entered a float for Nelson Mandela Appreciation Day or that it breakest thine heart to think about the church’s responsibility for the Crusades, small shall be thy reward in heaven.
Thou shalt not make public demands of complete strangers. Calling upon others to respond to thy blog or denounce the evil thou refusest to put to rest is like unto social media terrorism. It is a constant dripping on a day of steady rain.
Thou shalt not retweet thine own awesomeness. The decree to “Let another praise you, and not thine own mouth” shall not be loosed all thy days. It is a perpetual statute, even unto the age of Twitter. Let it be a light unto thy path, to guard thy head from swelling and thy friends from cringing.
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s klout; thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s retweets, or his followers, or his hip Instagram photos, or his travel complaints, or his mentions, or anything belonging to thy neighbor.

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Stupid Links

Today is the birthday of St Augustine of Hippo. Happy birthday, old brother!

What can Augustine, who lived in the 4th century AD, teach us about 21st century internet habits? Tony Reinke has the answer in "Why We Click Stupid Links."
By “stupid links,” I mean hyperlinks on the Web that do nothing but tap our kneejerk curiosity. They do little for us because they have little to offer. We click, we read, we watch, and often we feel dumber for it.
Such clamorous links litter the Internet, offering up celebrity gossip, bizarre crime stories, violent videos, and sexual images — each link asking for little more than a click (such a petty request).
So just how pervasive are these links? As I write, the CNN home page features these seven hyperlinked titles as “Top Stories”:
  • Crack-smoking mayor won’t quit
  • Was pushed husband blindfolded?
  • Woman killed in cougar attacks
  • Misquotes fuel Tom Cruise attacks
  • Deer pierced in the face by arrow
  • Guess who’s back in skinny jeans?
  • Do astronauts clean their undies?
Augustine and Idle Curiosities
The magnetic pull we sometimes feel to headlines like these predates the Internet and the evening news. It was a concern taken up by church father Augustine, born on November 13, 354 A.D. (more than 1,650 years ago).
Augustine reflected on the temptations clouding and distracting his own heart in his classic of church history, The Confessions....
Curious? read the article at the link.

Friday, August 23, 2013

Your Kids and Smart Phones

I hope all parents who read this blog read the Anne Marie Miller article on Your Kids and Sex I linked to on Wednesday. If you haven't already done so, please read it...

...and then read this one: Teens and Unrestricted Access. It's time to start monitoring those smart phones.
 

Thursday, July 26, 2012

When Your Internet is Down


When our internet access is down, our idolatry is revealed. I've felt like doing all of the above!

Hat Tip: Vitamin Z

Thursday, July 5, 2012

Don't Believe Everything You Read on the Internet!

There is a quote supposedly from C.S. Lewis currently circulating on Facebook, Twitter and some blogs that says ”You do not have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.”

When I saw the quote, my first thought was that it did not sound like C.S. Lewis at all. My second thought was that it's not Biblically accurate, no matter who said it. The Bible looks at human beings as unified souls and bodies, and to be without the body is to be unclothed (see 2 Corinthians 5:1-5). Hence, God's promise of new resurrection bodies.

Saw today confirmation that this quote is not from Lewis at all, but from George MacDonald. See Mere Orthodoxy and Justin Taylor for more details and proof.

Oh, and Francis of Assisi also never said “Preach the gospel; use words if necessary." Totally apocryphal.

This shows that you can't trust everything that you read on the Internet. As Abraham Lincoln said (and he would know) "The problem with quotes on the Internet is you can never be sure the guy didn't just make it up!" 

Sunday, July 31, 2011

Internet Addiction = Idolatry

Yesterday my neighbor was digging a trench for a new sprinkler system and accidently cut the Comcast cable to both of our homes. Result: we had no cable TV, telephones or internet access for 24 hours. Another result was that the extent of my internet addiction (and media addiction in general) was revealed once again.

Also Yesterday Take Your Vitamin Z posted the image to the right and a link to an article by Alexia Tsotsis referring to Facebook as The New Smoking:
We’ve all been there; You’re at an outing or a dinner table with friends but itching to check your email or Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or Google+ or Yammer or what ever digital hit of serotonin you prefer. Have you ever “gone to the bathroom” in order to check email or come up with a socially appropriate excuse to pull out your smartphone just so you can check your @ replies on Twitter
Remember when the critical mass of smokers used to leave the table or meeting in groups to go indulge their habit? I straight up open my laptop at bars and parties, and then feel more guilty about that than drinking.
A new British study released today backs up what we otherwise know intuitively, that Internet usage is increasingly becoming an addiction. Out of 1000 people surveyed after being cut off from the Internet for 24 hours, 53% reported feeling “upset” about being deprived of online access and 40% said that they felt lonely after not being able to connect to the Internet. Participants described the digital detox akin to quitting drinking or smoking and one even said it was like having his hand chopped off (!).
Read the rest here.

Not sure what I am going to do about this, but I need to do something. Anything, good or bad or indifferent, that becomes an ultimate thing has also become an idolatry thing. God deliver me from all idolatry!

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Dos and Don'ts for Web-Savy Ministries

At the website of America Magazine, "the National Catholic Weekly," there is a good list of 10 Dos and Don'ts for Web-Savy Organizations. Good advice here for any church, ministry or any Christian organization.

Hat Tip: The Anchoress

BTW: Did you know that the Pope now has a twitter account? See http://t.co/fVHpS9y
    
 

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Help for Christian Bloggers

Any other Christian bloggers out there who stumble across my humble little blog should probably check out The Upright Project, a web page designed to help Christian bloggers to "Blog better." Some recent articles included:

A Serious Bloggers First Year Goals
100 Goals to Consider With Your Blog
The Christian Approach to Writer's Block
Before You Start Your Christian BlogHow I Found My Perfect Niche

Thanks to blogger Christopher Morris for creating this resource for the rest of us.

Getting Religion

I recently discovered a interesting and provocative web site called Get Religion. The subject matter is the press, news and entertainment media and their understanding of religious stories and issues (and their frequent misunderstanding of the same)

The writers review various stories from the main stream press, as well as local media outlets, and discuss the religious angles to stories that are misunderstood, not noticed, not fully explained, or misinterpreted. They also occasionally note a reporter who got something right!

IMHO, the site is worth a regular reading. I expect to be frequently linking to their stuff.
    

Friday, May 13, 2011

Blogger Down: We Now Rejoin Your Regularly Scheduled Program...

Okay, Google's "Blogger" platform has been down for most of yesterday and today. I, along with many other bloggers using that system, have lost some posts.

Upsetting? Yes.  Frustrating? Yes. Some work necessary to restore things? Yes.

But Jesus is still Lord, God is still in control.  Life goes on.  We now rejoin your regularly scheduled blogging, already in progress.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011