Author Archives: Steve Mays

Google+ Hangout

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In the small town where Barb and I spent some of our best years, it was not uncommon for someone to pop in, without calling, with a six pack and just hang out. Before the evening was over, there could be 8 or 10 people, just hanging out. Nothing planned, no preparations.

I think that’s sort of what Google was going for with the Hangout feature on Google+. To make it that easy and that comfortable to hangout with friends. And I think they nailed it.

The video above does not do justice to the quality of the audio and video. Or to the ease of making it happen. I can easily imagine myself surfing mindlessly with the Hangout light on and people dropping by to chat for a few minutes..

You have to try it to appreciate it.

God as software engineer

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“When we make these virtual worlds in the future —worlds whose virtual beings will have autonomy to commit evil, murder, hurt, and destroy options— it’s not unthinkable that the game creator would go in to try to fix the world from the inside. That’s the story of Jesus’ redemption to me. We have an unbounded God who enters this world in the same way that you would go into virtual reality and bind yourself to a limited being and try to redeem the actions of the other beings since they are your creations. So I would begin there. For some technological people, that makes the faith a little more understandable.”

— From a piece titled “Geek Theologian” Kevin Kelly talks with Christianity Today’s Katelyn Beaty.

Difficult to noodle on such things and not recall the scene with The Architect in the later Matrix films.

“A planetary soul”

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“I think we should prepare ourselves for all kinds of new religions based around the idea of a planetary soul. As in a single web of electronic neurons around the globe, connecting all sentient beings. The Noosphere will go from a hypothetical speculation by a Catholic priest to an outright competitor to the Catholic faith. We will see the rise of Noosnics, Globalists, Overminders, Bit Monks, Quantumarians, and a hundred other sects and cults that take seriously the idea of a glorified planetary spirit as a reflection of the divine.”

“The internet will become a religion in part because everything will happen on it, including all other religions. But mostly because it will be the first platform for true Otherness that will appear on the planet. Not Other as in other variety of human, or other variety of animal, but Other as in an agent not like us, yet bigger than us. A true alien being. Of which we are part. This conundrum will trigger so many spiritual and religious buttons that it will also shake the established religions.”

— Kevin Kelly interview in CHRISTIANITY TODAY

Bonus Link: AI, God, and the Future of Faith: A conversation

Is the party moving?

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Been a while since I went five days without sharing something here. Most of Friday and Saturday in Tulsa with family. Busy at work. But the real culprit is almost certainly Google +, the new social “project” from Google. I’m spending a lot of my online time there, and less all other places (here, Twitter, etc).

I won’t try to explain it. I learned that lesson with Twitter. If I have to explain it, you probably won’t use G+.  And I’ll be very surprised if it “kills” any of the other social sites. But for those who like and use Google products/services, Google + is fun.

Like most users, the Circles approach to following and sharing is the big thing for me. I have a circle of friends & family; work; and interesting people who I don’t know but like to read. This is pretty close to how my life works.

So what about smays.com. That’s a good question. Some of the Cool Kids have already shuttered their blogs and moved lock, stock and barrel to Google +. Unlikely I will do that. I have almost 10 years invested in this blog and I like having my on place to park things. But I do expect to post less.

I’m thinking I’ll share something here here when I have something “original” to contribute. All of the the “did you see this?” stuff will get posted to my Google + stream. That’s got to be a 10-to-1 ratio. Maybe higher.

As for Twitter, who knows. I really like the Twitter format. And the people I follow on Twitter. If many/most of them migrate to G+, Twitter becomes that much less interesting. We’ll see.

We need more chaos in the news business

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Clay Shirky argues we need for the news business to be more chaotic than it is because ” there are many more ways of getting and reporting the news that we haven’t tried than that we have.” Here are some excerpts from his latest essay:

Buy a newspaper. Cut it up. Throw away the ads. Sort the remaining stories into piles. Now, describe the editorial logic holding those piles together.
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For all that selling such a bundle was a business, though, people have never actually paid for news. We have, at most, helped pay for the things that paid for the news.
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But even in their worst days, newspapers supported the minority of journalists reporting actual news, for the minority of citizens who cared.
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I could tell (my) students that when I was growing up, the only news I read was thrown into our front yard by a boy on a bicycle. They might find this interesting, but only in the way I found it interesting that my father had grown up without indoor plumbing.
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News has to be subsidized because society’s truth-tellers can’t be supported by what their work would fetch on the open market. Real news—reporting done for citizens instead of consumers—is a public good.
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A 30% reduction in newsroom staff, with more to come, means this is the crisis, right now. Any way of creating news that gets cost below income, however odd, is a good way, and any way that doesn’t, however hallowed, is bad.