I recently traded my HTC smart phone in for a shiny new
Galaxy SII. For years I had been satisfied with a Sony Ericsson phone, it was
neat, small, had all the contacts I needed in it and worked well as a phone.
But sadly the day came when some of the keys started to falter and the screen
was so scratched it was barely legible.
I decided to try a smart phone and settled on the HTC
Wildfire, more compact than an Iphone but it opened Pandora’s box for me.
Suddenly I could email and tweet and Facebook whenever I wanted. It even had
Google maps on it and I “found” myself in London and Brum several times. I
became a big fan of the Smart thing. The one thing it didn’t do well was act as
a phone. I hardly ever managed to answer a call at the first attempt.
So when my contract period was up, I was ready to go for
something a little bigger and better hence the SII. But it also reminded me of
this article about Shane Hipps and the Iphone 5 launched last year
One of his key arguments is that one effect of social media
is to water down the quality of communication. Facebook, twitter etc are very
low cost easy ways to communicate with a lot of people, which is good. But the
communication is quite thin. It’s like a guitar with one string versus a 12
string guitar effect you get when meeting with a group of people.
He argues you can’t really be an online disciple because
love, compassion etc don’t transmit well via social media. If the medium is the
message, then you meet God through the local church, which i suspect is a challenging
thought for quite a few of us. Give it a read, and see what you think
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