From my frequent email friend the Rev. Dale Owens:
I finished reading everything posted on the Internet yesterday.
Of course, one cannot read literally everything on the Internet! In order to make the task manageable for the afternoon designated, I decided to limit myself to things written in English. I apologize if this review is, therefore, English-centered, written in English, and comprehensible to those growing up in English speaking nations.
I will review all the Chinese and Spanish content next week.
My review?
Much of the Internet is tedious and highly personal. It is of no interest to anybody but the person writing the material. Corporate sites seem interested in marketing product and put up nothing of literary value.
Really most of it has no revolutionary or social awareness at all. This is, of course, the most reactionary position a site can take.
If you are not for change, you are against it.
Much of the information found was repetitive especially the sort of information pre-post-moderns called “true.” Weirdly, even in the age of hyper-links, “facts” such as the winner of the Second World War persisted over almost the entire Internet with sites mindlessly repeating the pre-new media tropes about the Allies and victory.
The persistence of such culturally shaped notions as “reality” is remarkable.
The saddest part of the entire afternoon of reading was the political arena. There are some good sites, such as the Daily Kos, where reality is being reshaped to fit what is best for humankind. On the other hand, in the name of liberty (so called) one sees almost no social control being exercised over the raging hatred found at such places as “Townhall” (especially from one Hugh Hewitt) or Evangelical Outpost. If we can support socializing medicine so that government can set a progressive social policy for everybody’s body, then why can’t we support a socialized Internet to help their souls?
We are not going to see the kind of generational change we need as long as people are allowed to “fact check” those whose progressive ideals must be respected and not attacked by hegemonic corporate behemoths. While it is tempting for a progressive to support the false liberty of allowing the sort of hate speech routinely coming from “talk radio” and the unregulated Internet, one must think of the children.
The children.
The children.
The children.
The area of religion was a disaster that makes the Bush Administration look like North Korea (with apologies to our friends in the Beloved Leader’s progressive paradise)!
As if we will ever have free health care like North Korea, free college, and a government that prevents obesity in Bush’s “free” Amerika!
Lol! (As the kids say. . . )
When I allowed myself to leave my normal Progressive Episcopal sites (see you at Saint Chads!) and the sister groups such as the United Church of Christ, I discovered a whole world of religion unreconstructed by modernity let alone post-modernity. Shocking as it may seems there is a person known as “Benedict XVI” who does not favor the spirit of the age. It is amazing how technology can give groups like this so-called “Vatican” the appearance of size and influence.
Worse are folk like “Al Mohler” or the people at the “John Piper” site who are obviously in need of the sort of re-education that a modern state would provide.
For every encouraging sign of some child of an Evangelical trenny enough to embrace hot-mess ideas first expressed in fierce and groovy magazines like Christian Century, one runs into discouragingly reactionary sites such as Salvo. When much of the Internet has not progressed much beyond the sort of conservative theology found at Harvard Divinity School there is little hope for the “new” media in religion.
Bluntly, it is time for government to upgrade Internet content. We need a web 3.0 that does not focus on technology, but the message.
Am I discouraged by my time reading the Internet?
No. A prophet is never really discouraged. I wrote the following poem expressing how I felt when I got to the last page of the Internet. I call it:
On Reading the Entire Internet
And finding hate
and so little love
with everyone
a one
and nobody asking
to be
facebook friends
with poor
lonely
anybody not
sucking some
corporate latte
or learning Walmart’s
liturgy
in their cutting edge
McDonalds
McCain
McAmerika
Way.
So children
grow up
not fierce
in a good way
but posting
about baseball
and golf
without having
the experience
of being real.
On reading the whole
Internet
I long
to end it.
?
This is the Rev. Dale Owens of Saint Chad wishing you a sun shine day.
