By Moshe Dror
I am sure that you have heard of the phrase:
“The more things change, the more they stay the same”.
Translation (in our context):
Human nature has not changed much at all in the past few thousand years and what was created and established in the past and obviously worked well is still valid and applicable for today.
AND
All of this technology stuff is nice and cute and jazzy and the technology is a tool- no more, that lets you do some nice stuff, but it does not deal with the core issues of what it means to be human.
So we can deal with “eternal” values and all of the associated talk.
Another quite different approach is that while many aspects of the human being has remained the same – there are some very significant differences that do effect change and transformation of what we know as the human.
AND
“Times they are a changing…”
This Net Generation are living in a world that quite literally is different in some very fundamental aspects of what it means to be human and that these are being brought about by the technologies we are using more and more . They are in effect changing the brain we use and the communities we live in.
Many of the Net Generation do not attend the usual services in the traditional Churches and /or Synagogues. This has been going on for some time already.
So they fear that OMG (Oh My God) religion is dying.
Yet it is this very same people who spend so much time and energy on line and in cyberspace who are some of the most creative and innovative periods of the churches and synagogues and spiritual questing in many a year.
God is Not at all Dying.
We are just approaching the divine in different ways.
It seems to me, and many other people, that these technologies are very much affecting at least these aspects of humanity.
We do know more about the human being that people did in the Biblical days.
1. A new appreciation of the way the human brain functions. The rise of the Right Brainers (Leonard Shlain, Daniel Pink…), neuroplasticity.
2. Multiple Intelligences (Howard Gardner )
3. Neurotheology
4. Others to come….
These will effect what seem to many the consequences of this as it effects congregations:
1. RELIGION ONLINE
2. ONLINE RELIGION
3. CYBER RELIGION
4. CYBER SPIRITUALITY
5. CYBER TEMPLE
6. CYBER CHURCHES
7. CYBER SYNAGOGUES-Bet Knesset, Bet Midrash, Bet Tefillah.
8. VIRTUAL CONGREGATIONS
9. AUGMENTED CONGREGATIONS
10. IMMERSIVE CONGREGATIONS
11. WEB 2.0
12. WEB 3.0
13. WEB ??
Each one of these designations is a new dimension of this new world and I will deal with each one in turn.
I will deal with each of these themes as part of the general culture and then relate each specifically to the Jewish aspects of these issues.
I would like to share with you some of the research that I and my colleagues have been doing of late and engage you in the collaborative effort of asking some significant questions.
We will be just scratching the surface of these explorations, we are just beginning.
The purposes of these blogs ARE to:
PROBE
EXPOSE
PROVOKE
EXPLAIN
SUGGEST
ENJOY
PLAY
INNOVATE
CREATE
