EMA 2011 David Wells 02

David Wells was good again. The accent is Southern African I guess. His second paper was on the impact on world views of globalisation and information technology in particular. Unlike previous generations, there is a unique and constant proximity to other worlds. What effect does all this have on Christians? What is affirmed and what is undermined? He considered two things.
1. How does this technology work? Space and distance have been practically annihilated. Our mobility increased first and led to a loss of community. This is the impact of modern travel. This has been added to by TV, telephone, e-mail and the Internet. Suddenly omnipresence and omniscience appear to be realisable. It is in the area of economics that globalisation has been most obviously felt.

There is a world of consumer goods and it has power to shape thinking. There is a process by which information increasingly becomes global. Cars for example are typical of consumer goods that are produced on a global basis. The reason is economic. It enables discounting leading to affluence and consumerism. There is a moral dimension here but this is intended to be descriptive. By way of illustration he described a remote Maasai village with no trappings of western commerce it would seem yet at one point a man held up a plant and said "This is our viagra"! He also mentioned MacDonald's move into Peking - a fast food restaurant in a land where the meal is still thought of as a time for sitting and talking or seeing a student in China wearing a "Why can't I have it all?" T-shirt. Increasingly one can get the same goods, see the same movies, etc, in such different places. It is through IT that this is happening. This is new. Until now cultures have belonged to certain peoples with their own history and tradition.

2. The consequences from a Christian point of view

Benefits

1 The benefits of instant communication are not difficult to see. This is obvious.

2 We have become more globally conscious, as we should be. The call to go to the nations now involves us in

Disadvantages

Our capacity to maintain a Christian world view may be diminished. IT increases our ability to discover and retain information. However, the world that enters our minds can have a great influence on us in away that other technologies would not. We are affected by

Amount. Since 1960 we are taking in three times more information and the actual amount of info available is growing exponentially.

Speed. The speed with which it all comes in makes it very difficult to discern true from false, trivial from weighty, etc. No filter can enable us to deal with this. William Donnelly predicted a confetti era when all things are supposed to be equal until assessed.

Observations

In 1909 Kuyper's three important co-ordinates were our view of God, of ourselves, of creation. Today there is the virtual world and the question of what truth itself is. The Internet is full of lies and there is no criteria to establish what is what.

Fascinating and thought provoking stuff.