Archive for the 'Spirituality&Technology' Category

the way to pilgrimage

Published on 8/25/2007 in aphorisms and Spirituality&Technology. Closed

…it is not surprising that the “Way to Santiago” has been sometimes considered as an example of the Church’s pilgrimage on its journey towards the heavenly city. It is a path of prayer and penance, of charity and solidarity; a stretch of the path of life where the faith, becoming history among mankind, also converts culture into something Christian. The churches and abbeys, the hospitals and shelters of the Way to Santiago still speak of the Christian adventure of making pilgrimage in which the faith becomes life, history, culture, charity and works of mercy.

John Paul II, Pastoral Journey to Santiago de Compostela and Asturias on the occasion of Fourth World Youth Day, 1989.

Second Life is a land for evangelization

Published on 7/29/2007 in Spirituality&Technology. Closed

A recent article [1] of the official journal of the Jesuits focused on the opportunities offered by virtual worlds for evangelization. Jesuit Father Antonio Spadaro said that “The best way to understand (the Second Life phenomenon) is to enter into it, (and) live inside it to recognize its potential and dangers”.

Father Spadaro looked also at the risks to which users of this new medium might be exposed: users might experiment their virtual appearance with less inhibitions of their real appearance, “but on the other hand one can also get caught up in a spontaneity that knows no limits or discretion,” he said. Another big danger he pointed out is to become alienated from the real world and begin to identify oneself according to one’s self-created myth.

Another problem is that virtual world users play with a low level of responsibility. As many actions can be reverted or easily erased, users are exposed to a “low level of risk,” he said. While this might be good in some situations, it can yield negative psychological and spiritual consequences, like having fear of getting engaged in real-life actions, with an higher level of risks. “This has worrying emotional and affective consequences,” noted the article. In the virtual world everything is “under control and reversible,” making the real world look frightening.

Si va espandendo in internet il fenomeno della Second Life, cioè la possibilità di vivere in maniera simulata una sorta di ‘seconda vita’ digitale. L’articolo descrive il fenomeno, valutandone rischi e opportunità, e segnalando anche la presenza di elementi religiosi. Ogni iniziativa capace di animare positivamente questo ‘luogo’ è da considerare opportuna: la terra digitale è, a suo modo, anch’essa ‘terra di missione’. Occorre, comunque, essere attenti al bisogno ormai diffuso di un ‘altrove’, nel quale l’uomo pretende, in modo talvolta scorretto, di ritrovare se stesso.

[1] Antonio Spadaro S.I. “SECOND LIFE”: IL DESIDERIO DI UN’ALTRA VITA - La Civiltà Cattolica, 2007, III, pp. 266-278, quaderno 3771-3772.

More: [2] – [3] – [4] – [5]

Church Second-Life

Copyright notice: the present image was taken from the following URL, the copyrights are reserved by the respective author/s.

The Sacred and the Virtual: Religion in Multi-User Virtual Reality

Published on 7/16/2007 in Spirituality&Technology. 1 Comment

Schroeder, R., Heather, N., and Lee, R. M. (1998). The sacred and the virtual: Religion in multi-user virtual reality. Journal of Computer Mediated Communication, 4(2). [url]

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This paper presents participatory observations of virtual religious meetings. The authors participated for a coupe of weeks in these meetings and reported their experience comparing the virtual meetings to the actual meetings.

One of the difference the authors noticed was that virtual church permits design and experimentation of virtual spaces that are less constrained than a church in the real world. The authors pose the question on whether virual religion will have a corrosive or an invigorating effect on religion on the contemporary society. As Durkheim noticed, religious rituals consists of three elements: the physical co-presence of people to enhance emotionl energy, the ritualization of actions which includes a coordination of gestures and voices, and symbolic sacred object that reifies and reinforces the group’s sense of itself (1992, p.42). This three elements are absent in virtual encounters.

An interesting idea reported was that of sharing the prayers composed during the meetings with the rest of the community: “…Leader2 asks whether prayer requests may be passed to the world controller for display on a public space within the E-church world. This space, to which all will have access, fulfils the role of a church noticeboard or prayer letter, or the wider informal sharing of requests and needs which would naturally ripple out following the group meeting…”

Practicing the disseminary: Technology lessons from Napster

Published on 7/7/2007 in Spirituality&Technology. Closed

Adam, A. (2002). Practicing the disseminary: Technology lessons from napster. Teaching Theology & Religion, 5(1):10–16. [url]

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This paper describes how the success of Napster can be applied to theological education. The main point of the article is that should by no means perpetuate yesterday’s media in tomorrow’s environments.

The author reported a case study from diferent semesters of teaching where he used online discussions and materials to support the classroom work. He noticed interestingly that students that were shy during classroom discussions tended to post regularly online. Also he list interesting drawbacks of common technologies used in classroom teaching. Reserve materials are always printed as reading online is difficult and you cannot annotate the content easily. PowerPoint presentations are great but they may convey certainty to enduring problems and mysteries.

Most educators tend to react to new media imposing control. The author argues that a newway of thinking is required: the way of production and distribution of knowledge are now inexpensive. He proposes the concept of “Disseminary”, a common effort to put as much theological sutenance at the disposal of as many people as possible.

He proposes 5 lessons from Napster: 1) It is not the interface: we should put more effort in the production of content than on its presentation; 2) Free: this is the main value of the internet. Knowledge access shouldn’t have a cost; 3) No one gets awards from Napster, and no one would care if they did. The music is its own reward: it is more blessed to give than to receive; 4) Users who have downloaded large amounte of music tend to be better acquainted with more music; 5) Users who are enthousiastic about music they download will buy the CD and will especially go to the concert.

He notice that many educators fear that free distributions of online materials will diminish the appeal of on-campus education. However he highlights that theological education depends for some of its deepest formation on in-person interactions.

Spiritual dimensions of informal learning

Published on 7/1/2007 in Diary and Spirituality&Technology. 3 Comments

English, L. M. (2000). Spiritual dimensions of informal learning. New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, (85):29–37. [pdf]

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Informal and incidental learning occur contrinuously in the everyday world. In this chapter the author focus on three primary learning strategies: mentoring, self-directed learning (SDL) and dialogue. She explores how each of these strategies can facilitate spiritual development. The main argument of the author is that informal learning can foster a (a) strong sense of self, (b) concern and outreach to others, and (c) continuous construction of meaning and knowledge.

(a) Adults learn from their encounters with others about alernate and varied ways of being. Spirituality develops from a strong sense of self (MaKeracher, 1996).

(b) A fully integrated spiritual person reaches beyond his or her self and acknowledge the interdependance of all of creation, appreciate the uniqueness of others, and ultimately assumes responability for caring.

(c) The opportunity to engage with others and in the activities in which one is involved assists in the process of constructing meaning from experience (Merriam and Heuer, 1996). The search of meaning is bound up in the understanding of everyday life. It involves a realization that life is greater than our sphere of influence.

Human potential requires nurturing. This can be stimulated by study circles and by the learning by doing. An objective of adult education should be to help individuals make meaning our of their experience. The learner should be brought to take charge for his/her learning experience. A technique that can go in this sense is a journal of the student educational practice.

Also, knowledge is constructed collaboratively. Therefore it is important to develop self-understanding and awareness as these abilities put the learner in contact with others. The community should be engaged in collective activities of constructing meaning.

The author concludes with a final remark that shed light on her idea of spiritual dimension: “although all humans have spititual aspects in their being, not all are aware of this dimension in their lives. Informal and incidental learning provide the context and support that nurture this spiritual component.”

for this we pray: enhancing prayers with RFID tags

Published on 6/29/2007 in Diary and Spirituality&Technology. 2 Comments

for this we pray is an art installation inspired by the tradition of lighting candles during prayer. The user can select one of several prayer cards, each with an embedded RFID tag inside, and hold it close to a wall-mounted “srine” reminiscent of a stained-glass window. Once the card is recognized, a light is turned on.

The author, Aya Natalia Karpinska, argues that:

The technology employed brings something new to reading, it ties the writing to an action that enriches the experience. Writing becomes performance. The use of cards is inpsired by the prayer cards I would receive after special Catholic masses as a child, cards with an image of a saint on one side and a lyric or prayer on the other side. These cards are kept in your bag or in your prayer book, wherever you would be likely to happen upon them and reflect once more on the essence of the thought the prayer card communicates. Each of the cards in for this we pray are devoted to a specific intention, each is a fragment, a musing on the role of prayer in the life of a hyper-digital urban atheist such as myself.

For This We Pray

Technology in spiritual formation: an exploratory study of computer mediated religious communications

Published on 6/29/2007 in References and Spirituality&Technology. Closed

Wyche, S. P., Hayes, G. R., Harvel, L. D., and Grinter, R. E. (2006). Technology in spiritual formation: an exploratory study of computer mediated religious communications. In CSCW ’06: Proceedings of the 2006 20th anniversary conference on Computer supported cooperative work, pages 199–208, New York, NY, USA. ACM Press. [pdf]

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This paper aims at explaining the use of technology in religious life. The author performed a series of intervies with Protestant Ministers. Most pastors responded with a list of duties including educating the laity, preaching, and communication. More in details they reported using thechnological means to organize Bible study groups, for the pastoral care of the laity such as reaching sick parishioners or conunseling those in spiritual or personal crisis.

A good part of the article focus on thechnological enhancement to preaching and presentation. An interesting reported finding is that altough Ministers reported using commercial products for their presentations such as PowerPoint or Keynote, they expressed their misgivings about the fact that these software were designed with generic purposes in mind and that they do not support the peculiarities of spiritual training or presentation.

Some pastors expressed their feelings about the fact that using technology is essential for the church to be ‘contemporary’ but at the same time it is a matter of negotiation: a tradeoff between ‘relevance’ and ‘reverence’, but also a tradeoff between connection and distraction, remoteness and actual encounters. E. G., for spiritual practices solitude might be important.

Finally the authors reported interestingly that parishioners used technological access to spiritual material at work. So, we observe an ‘infiltration’ of domestic life in working settings. This allowed them to practice during the week instead of waiting for Sunday.

On a critical note, focusing the study on a single religion might have somehow biased the results. It might be interesting to broaden the spectrum of analysis to see if the same results apply.