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[Here we're collaboratively developing the materials, links, plans, etc. for Week#___ of CU-490 "New Media for Urban Change"]

Unit #3 -- Social Impact of Technology and Internet...

...for urban people and ministries:

A survey of the usage of media, computers and Internet technology in urban centers. What are the current trends among youth and adult populations that afford evangelistic and service opportunities.

            [click to enlarge]

[Review Last Week's Unit#2... Race, Culture, and The Church ] 

[See official assignments for tonight's unit.]

The Big Ideas Tonight?

• Who did Thomas Friedman contend is getting... "Left Behind"?

   

• How does information change anything? -- Massage the wiki-page into a more concise understanding of that central issue to this course.  If you don't 'own' that premise, what further do you hope to gain in this course, anyway?  But if you own the vision for how the information highway is the infrastructure for our future (much like superhighways changed everything)... the following big-ideas will be golden nuggets... to help accelerate the spread of the gospel and its loving impact.  Carpe Diem... "Seize the moment".  How can you be a good 'steward' otherwise?

   

• Objections to Technology ...  But first... A lesson about PRIDE & DIVIDE, first.... including King Uzziah's example.  Thus let's keep it in perspective... this is about PEOPLE... and opportunities with people... not some method God hadn't thought of previously.  LOL -- It's not as if God needs anything made by human hands.  Unless the Lord...  So it's not so much WHAT you know, as WHO you know.

   

• Innovation is not 'technology'.  It's about 'opportunity'.  It's not gadgets.  It's looking underneath the gadget, at the usefulness of the gadget.  And it's watching how life may be changing because of use of the gadget.  All this as God-given wisdom to look for OPPORTUNITIES to 'carpe diem'... seize the day... seize the opportunity... to change the world... ie, to overcome the world... to be more just and more merciful... and to more effectively share the Good News and model the self-sacrificial nature of God Himself... as we love our neighbors as ourselves.  All the while, pointing to the perfect model, Jesus Christ.  Conversely, Cobal programmers are technologists... but not today's innovators.

• The big opportunity we have, is to quick, reconfigure the way we do 'Church' here in the early part of the 21st Century.  Connect it up right.  Multiculturally.  City by city -- reconciled and working together.  Set apart from anything our culture has observed about the Church ever before.  And social-networking is the latest-greatest innovation for helping the Church do exactly that -- reconfigure.  Show the Metcalfe diagram briefly -- it's what we're talking about.

• And in doing so, go help the digital have-nots... and who could benefit the most, but have the least (real) access.  How does God feel about this 'unjust irony' of the digital divide?  Much like Thomas Friedman points out how the global had-nots now benefit from the flattened earth... so also, we should help this concept proliferate among our friends and neighbors in the inner-cities of America.  And the surprise blessing may be... They're people rich in faith, motivated for change, and somewhat like David's Mighty Men... revolutionary change-agents.   [Surf TechMission.org -- What problem are they trying to cure?  Brunswick Center in Gary?  How about "UBcafe and the AskAnythingSaturday" program?]

•  Skill-training Planned For Tonight...  Browser Buttons.... Wiki'ing... and Tagging...

   

John Madden visited our class tonight, and took notes on the board for us...

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Actual Summary of tonight's progress...

• Attendance:  Keith, Shad, Ellen, Mike.  [Pastor Hudson was at Ball State tonight.  Hosea Baxter was at CBC Board Mtg.  Ezell was AWOL.  We missed you all!]
• We used this wiki-page as a clickable agenda for the evening.
• We reviewed last week's Unit #2 -- Race, Culture, MEDIA and The Church.
• We discussed the research data from the IndyStar article on Race.
• We watched a very compelling video produced by a high-school girl re the effects of 'race' on African American girls.  100,000 have watched her video on YouTube.
• We prayed.
• And we continue to reiterate... "All of YOU can TOGETHER CHANGE THE WORLD."
• I shared personally re the death of Dr. Kennedy... and re his God-inspired EE concept of learning evangelism via OJT.   That is... each one SHOW one!  Model it.  And go actually DO evangelism together.
• Great discussions!
• Great issues raised.
• Great whiteboard drawing -- and captured via camera... suitable for print & framing.
• Thomas Friedman's video was apparently compelling for all of us.
• We used the Metcalfe diagram to represent the internet... and being 'left out'... but we won't actually explain the diagram itself until we get to the unit on social-networking.
• I think I can safely say, everyone truly 'got it' about the need to exploit 'info 4 change' !
• And our basic concept that 'innovation' is not just about 'technology'... it's about seizing OPPORTUNITIES !
• We talked briefly about the 'Bill Gates best kept secret on the internet'.... those BROWSER BUTTONS ('Links' feature) which can be customized for ease & effectiveness.
• [But we failed to go on to make the point that this 'browser' can effectively become your 'dashboard'... to help prioritize your day/life.]
• We talked about the issue of how hard it is during the Information Deluge to 'pay attention'.  Think Information Forest.  We need trustworthy guides... tagging the way for us.  And on those yellow-sticky 'tags', we can write some helpful keywords... and even a meta description.  Very helpful. 
• We discussed King Uzziah... an innovator... who became proud.
• We highlighted the importance of our 'connections' (our peeps)... asking "What in your life have you accomplished or learned solely by yourself?"  From the moment of our birth, we were designed to be 'connected'... and isolation is the tool of the devil.  What does this suggest about the fractured Church?   What does this suggest about your new opportunity to reconnect the Church?
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• New Media Skills We Learned In The Lab Tonight...
• Everyone was able to EDIT a wiki page.  In fact, they each started their own wiki page.
• Everyone got a del.icio.us account, in advance of next week's TAGGING study.  [IMHO tagging is something people need to hear about, see, try... and then hear about again.  So we exposed them in advance of really trying to learn it well next week... especially the collaborative TEAM TAGGING concept.]
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• We failed to cover the following (planned) items...
• Actually showing how to customize your browser, adding 'Links' BUTTONS.  [do it in the lab sometime.]
• Didn't surf TechMission or discuss -- assign it.  And ask for discussion on Facebook.
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• Assignment for Next Week...
• Your wiki-page... Continue practicing on your personal wiki-page.... by STARTING to write about... "New Media for Urban Change".... Think:  What was compelling tonight, and what wasn't? 
• Facebook Discussion Topic for Unit #3... "If you had to preach it at your church next Sunday, start bulleting your key sermon points."  [And start adding examples in your wiki as you think of them.  (You can use examples we used in class.  You can even 'collaborate/copy' off of your other classmates... as long as you 'cite' them.  Note:  We'll continue improving your wiki-pages throughout the semester.  It'll be part of your portfolio at the end.
• Tagging... Tag all the items which have been assigned so far in the course.  [If you're short of time this week, this can be optional.... But this will be required for all assignments of this course.  Thus you're effectively creating a clickable list of resources for use well into the future.]   And remember... Tag your assigned pages as you read the assignments.  Preferably always include the 'c4ui' tag.  By the end of the course, you'll want to show all the things you've tagged as a result of this course. Might be a good idea to take advantage of the 'notes' field as you tag them at del.icio.us.  And feel free to send Pastor Hudson and I any special articles/websites/links that you believe we'd be interested to know about.  Remember how?  Use the "for:" tag.  And our id's are... bryhudso & indychristian, respectively.
• And now... Assignments re NEXT week's subject matter.... "Web2.0".
• Watch the 'Did You Know' video... at UrbanNewMedia.org... if you haven't already.  You may be quizzed on it.
• Internet Tool Kit... Go get familiar with clicking through the "Internet Tool Kit"... which is almost 100% "Web2.0" type of tools/capabilities.
• Skills.... Hyperlinking.  In the 'Internet Tool Kit'... review Coffee Lesson #1... You need to be able to create hyperlinks in YOUR wiki-page.  Create some.  In fact, create a link there in your own wiki-page... to go to your own personal del.icio.us page of bookmarked links.  [If you can't figure it out... email me or call... 490-1255 (cell).]
• Skills... RSS capabilities.... Watch the 4 short video-demonstrations... 1 in each of the pages re... What's Web2.0, Tagging, Social Networking, RSS.
• Skills... Team-tagging.... Consider these 'Tags 4 God' concepts and be prepared to discuss during class next week.
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Strays... (just optional stray thoughts & links -- maybe helpful or maybe not)

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•  [Skills:  tagging?  [And just in time for tonight... delicious update!  Browser-buttons?  Absolutely... As life speeds up, our browser is our dashboard... with limited reality (and time).]
• [Review a bit from last week... [goto... Race, Culture, and The Church ... especially the new polling graphic and linked article.] Divided By Faith, United By Faith... Our majority theology being comfortably 'individualistic' faith... vs. the minority leaning toward 'corporate faith'... ie, the Church as an inseparable body.  Also Emerson points to tight social networks of white evangelicals... tending to work against structural issues... So intentionality in breaking our tight social networks could be a way forward.  And what better time than when Jesus upset the table-configuration (focused on money) in the temple?  The new-paradigm offers us a chance to reconnect the diverse, citywide Church...  and aids in helping us get to know PEOPLE DIFFERENT than ourselves.  We're proposing consideration of changing the very dna structure of the Church at Indianapolis.]
• Tommy House:   "There's a big difference between 25 years of experience... and 1 year of experience 25 times."  [One speaks to efficiency of routine & institution... but never changes.  And the other speaks of always looking ahead for opportunities for great effectiveness tomorrow... often at the expense of efficiency today.  That's what investment in infranstructure is all about.  Friedman, in today's video, stressed how the convergence of collaborative tools has created a great infrastructure (ie, a platform) for future improvements for years to come.  Again, think of the superhighways we're still enjoying the benefits of.  Friedman says the overbuilding of fiber infrastructure... was purely accidental due to the hot market of the dotcom era.
• Hmmm... 'survey of usage of media, technology and internet in urban centers? -- research?  TechMission overview.  What need are they meeting?  Curing the digital divide among (young) leaders of tomorrow.  Surf/survey the UBcafe and our 'Ask Anything Saturday' program there.  Alternatively, Pastor Hudson's church has deacons that go out to the members' homes to help them with such.  Which will work best?
• Hmmm... 'current trends among youth and adults that afford evangelistic and service opportunities?  [Cell phones everywhere but no laptops?  What does that suggest?]  Many of us know about internet evangelism in general... perhaps with today's edgyness being Second Life.  One young guy was witnessing at BlogTV.com using his cam.  Or sharing a gospel presentation using your cell phone or pda.  PDA?  What's a PDA?  Technology has finally converged, and the numbers won out... Cell phones.
• Discuss briefly:   Pro's & cons of trying to deploy tech innovations in urban ministries?  [where's the research substantiating this?]  Maybe this is a good point to discuss Overcoming Objections to Technology
• How do you know Truth on the internet?
• Why so concerned re 'opportunities'?   SWOT, Gap and PEST tools.
• "How Does Information Change The World?"]
• "Understanding Attack Blogs" -- by Bill Seaver, MicroExplosion, Author of Pastors Guide to Web2.0.  [definitely need to work this in -- it speaks to 21st Century Leadership]
• What happens when mainstream media... notably newspapers & magazines... go away, as a result of not being able to compete (by selling enough ads on their sites)?
• (negative side of the information deluge... no longer can 'pay attention' -- hopefully we'll try to solve that later in the units... and thus be better equipped to draw conclusions at the end of the course re LEADERSHIP capabilities needed)
• What if... Just what if... the speed of life really IS accelerating?  Does the author of Ecclesiastes speak to that?
• Issues of click-and-mortar... urban?
• Draw the internet? [Turn the volume up... it represents the 'Pay Attention' issue, doesn't it?  Anyway... the actual internet drawing would be very similar to the Metcalfe Law drawing above.
• Define/mention 'open source' (Friedman did).
• Friedman quoted a friend saying, "A crisis is a terrible thing to waste."  What do you think of that statement?  Is it analygous to "a paradigm-shift being a terrible thing to waste"?
• TechMission.  [pull Andrew in via Skype?]. 
• UrbanMinistry.org site?
• Maybe discuss community-mapping (SAVI). 
• Cite Pew Research re technology NOT producing more secluded social-misfits; rather more socially-connected. 
• One social novelty, btw, is increased use of CELL PHONES among men.  Impact of privacy issues? 
• Scams?  Phishing?  [when is Public Awareness night?] 
• Outstanding TIME article re Web2.0 coming down to neighborhood/user level. 
• Southern Baptists Convention outcomes affected by their bloggers.  Adrian Rodgers church blogging case study? 
• Secular examples -- see Top 50 Reasons blog. 
• Btw, is this the best place to promote the vision for collaborating for greater impact?  Metcalfe's Law?  Reed's Law?  Brooke's (counter-) Law?   Is the multicultural dimension of the Church a cousin to this principle of collaboration among diversity? 
• The Unjust Irony -- If the internet cost users $10,000/month, who would benefit most... urban or suburban?  (suburban, right?).  What if it cost $500/mo?  (suburban still, right?)  What if it was nearly FREE?  Urban, right?  Because by definition, the poor inner-city will NEVER be able to compete dollarwise with suburbia.  But now, this new tool called the internet is readi-made for URBAN opportunity, right?  But the 'unjust irony' is that urban is least-represented on the web.  Thus the 'digital divide' is not simply just another 'haves vs. have-nots'.... it's a crying shame that the people who could use it the most, have the least access to it for one reason or another.
• What's uniquely changed about LEADERSHIP in the 21st Century?
• What might happen if the new-paradigm wave rolls over the top of 20th Century type leaders?  Can leaders afford to let that happen?  What might happen to new-paradigm leaders -- might it be like Reformation leaders using the printing press?  Is martyrdom ahead?  **wink**.  Re 'digital divide'... see assigned NTIA study results... including this quasi-definition... "Digital divide implies that significant minorities of the population are effectively denied access to a technology that, like other public facilities like libraries and superhighways, is thought to be open to anyone."

• Assignment:   Watch this Video Lecture: Thomas Friedman, MIT... "The World Is Flat"
• Assignment:  Read "Outstanding TIME article re Web2.0 coming down to neighborhood/user level"
• Assignment:    Scan these 4 Research articles re various aspects of the Digital Divide.  [and make sure you're familiar with the term... at Wikipedia, for instance.
• Assignment: Scan this wiki-page and be prepared to discuss... "How Does Information Help Change Anything?"
• Assignment: Surf TechMission.org at least enough to understand the basic need they're trying to solve.
• Example:   Here's one such center... Brunswick Center... in Gary, Indiana.
• Example:    Here's another... Unleavened Bread Cafe... in the heart of Indy.

I'd like to interview in Andrew Sears via Skype webcam.... Founder of TechMission.org (UrbanMinistry.org)

Stray Thoughts -- perhaps topics to cover tonight...

• King Uzziah -- Innovator... but...
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Stray Notes while listening to Thomas Friedman video (assigned)... 'while I was sleeping...'

• Outsourcing.  Realization... the playing field has become leveled... world has been flattened... and the U.S. was not (is not?) ready for it.  New media changed the playing field... aiding the poor, previously hopeless masses.
• Salt Lake City reservations center... where telephone operators are at home... and thus aiding the founder's premise, that one spouse should be at home.  New media for changing families.
• Globalization 3.0 is now shrinking the world from 'small'... to 'tiny'.  The new thing is the way INDIVIDUALS (and small groups) can think of themselves globally and locate themselves globally.  And not built around white Western individuals... but rather every color... and plug & play.
•  Ten Flatteners:   
• 1989 Fall of the Wall (Berlin) and raising of the Windows (GUI interface),
• 1995 Netscape went public (browser brought the internet alive, used open standards, people could connect like never before, and triggered the dotcom bubble... which contributed to the accidental over-investment of fiber-cable... a gift that keeps on giving... with impact for many years to come -- people communicating globally, almost for free).
• ____ Workflow -- proprietary software largely by Microsoft.  Applications started being able to work TOGETHER like never before... and at the same time PEOPLE could connect TOGETHER like never before... What we created was a global platform for collaboration.  More people could connect & collaborate than ever before.
• ____ Outsourcing -- a new form of collaboration.
• ____ Offshoring -- when China joins the world trade organization.
• ____ Opensourcing -- a new form of collaboration -- geeks working together on the Linux operating system... a growing segment of technological commerce.  It's hard to beat 'free'.  Firefox... downloaded 10million times in one month.  MIT Open University.
• ____ Suppy-chaining (like what Walmart does)... just in time inventory because of the optimizing of the whole vertical system.
• ____ In-sourcing (what UPS does).  "Your World Synchronized."  They're taking over your entire world _____ -- take your Toshiba to the UPS outet... it goes to Lexington, KY and is fixed by UPS employees.  Papa Johns pizza is now outsourcing to UPS employees.
• ____ Informing.  (my name for Google.  for SEARCH.  I can collaborate for data, all by myself.  Likewise, Tivo.)
• ____ Steroids... wireless voice-over-IP, file-sharing..... These are now turbocharging all the others, so that I can even do all the above... mobilely.
• 2000... Convergences... all 10 flatteners merged, right around 2000.  Created a solid platform for interaction.  This convergence explains so much in history.  And we're all having to learn these collaborations...
• (great analogy re 'electrification'... with lagging productivity boost due to ____ yada yada).  Likewise, we now have a great platform -- yet its true value won't be fully realized until years to come. 
• (Southwest Airlines illustration... while we were sleeping... I got de-prioritized because I didn't know or wasn't capable of printing out my own boarding-pass.  Next time, I will capture 60 minutes of productivity by printing my own ticket next time.)
• 3rd convergence... at the same time as the above convergences.... 3 new sets of players just walked onto the playing field... Russia, China, India.  They'd been sidelined up to this point in history.
• This will be as big as Gutenberg and the printing press!
• And just as the world got flat, Enron & Worldcom distracted us and pulled some hope away from us.... just as the other world players rush onto the field filled with hope.  But politically, at the time of Sept 11, we weren't ready to accept outsourcing etc.  It was the perfect storm... and the new global players were able to take advantage of it all.  So right at this fundamental ___ point, nobody told the kids what world they're going to grow up in... "People in India are starving... for your jobs.  And in a flat world, they can have them.  There's no such thing as an American job anymore."
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•  Illustration of HP technology changing a village... was giving an NGO a solar-powered camera & printer... thus creating a business.
• "Quiet Crisis.... Our parents... science & engineering, space-race generation in the 20th Century now are retiring & dying.  But they're not being replaced by us -- they're being replaced by global players.  Who needs to immigrate when you can innovate?  Why stay in chilly Boston, when you can continue living in your own culture, maintain a very high standard of living in that culture.
• I worry about... our reaction to 9/11... a withdrawal from aggressive participation in the global economy... to our own hurt.  (paraphrased).
• We need a new New Deal.  We need to invest in our future.
• "A crisis is a terrible thing to waste."  (a friend of his quoted this).
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Big Idea:   The new platform... now changing the world (especially 'the least of these') is the convergence of tools of collaboration.   "Carly Furina (sp?)... She said... Tom, everything we called the Technology revolution all these 20 years... sorry to tell ya, that was just the warmup act... the sharpening, forging, distribution of the tools of collaboration into this new platform... We're now just at the end of the beginning -- what you're now about to see is the real IT revolution."   So friends... get ready... because the world is flat.

Did all of you watch the "Did You Know?" video?

Bryan's thoughts... Big Idea re tonight's Topic...

• urban access... (most have internet access... but not capable (thus not significant-access).
• [have's v. havenots persist?]
• (maybe his church's dna has drifted toward more tech-savvy... help.  Deacon serving by helping elderly, and other disconnected.)]   Bryan has stopped sending 'letters' to his congregants... saving money... and helping them become more innovative.]
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Strays:    Victor Davis (Kira Davis) New Brunswick Center for Technology.

• youth -- this is ath egroup we can get th emost impact with.  But you need the leaders too.
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