The Landscape Is Changing...Again |
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New World Outlook, September/October 2009 Not long ago, a childhood friend found me the old fashioned way--through my mother, Marjorie House. My mother is a great social networker, but she generally prefers the face-to-face method of networking--"presence"--over the rapid response method of "messaging." Yet, my parents were the first in our family to acquire a personal computer with network hookup and email. They could feel the earth shifting beneath them and they knew when to jump into the new landscape. My mother's mother, Evelyn Lamphier, was also a great social networker. She preferred the written word. One of her vocations was to write letters and keep up correspondence with a broad variety of people. At her funeral, the family discovered a pen pal she had been writing to since he served as a soldier during World War II, a correspondence maintained over 60 years. Considering how the landscape of this country has changed over my grandmother's lifetime, both literally and figuratively, today's move to electronic media seems far less daunting. The computer screen, after all, looks like the ever-present television screen that I grew up with. A cell phone isn't all that different from a home telephone, just smaller and portable. If it serves as a mini-computer for some, so be it--I can't really read much on a screen that small, so I'll stick to my laptop. Something I learned from working on this issue is that this type of technological progress is not necessarily linear. Just because the United States arrived at the cell phone after almost every household already had phone service doesn't mean the developing world has to experience these innovations in the same way. The developing world will just skip all that progression and leap into the new landscape. So the fact that hardly anyone in Cambodia ever had a landline only means they'll start with the cell phone. They have skipped all the infrastructure of roads and wires and telephone polls and built cell towers. Progress accomplished. Many members of our US congregations may not have a clue how to Twitter. Even so, the conference communicator from Côte d'Ivoire last week was sending tweets back home to his constituency and to US friends every day so they could follow the highlights of his communications training in Nashville. The implications that these new forms of communication and social networking hold for mission ministries are explored in this issue. The landscape is definitely changing--not little by little, but all at once. Although it may seem daunting, this kind of progress isn't all that different from the social networking and fellowship that congregations have always done, whether in person, by phone, or through the mail. Just hop into the new landscape at any point. It isn't necessary to understand how to program a computer to send out email, even though years of programming went into making email possible. Type a message out on the screen and hit the send button...progress accomplished! Christie R. House
Date posted: Aug 26, 1990 |
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The Mission Magazine of the United Methodist Church
