Blog 1!

The Internet, the quintessential example of what The Communications Revolution Is Capable Of, has gone from being a way for a handful of eggheads at various universities to trade research to the most important technology since the printing press.


The ability for people to communicate with potentially billions of people has given rise to social-networking websites where an entire second life—to steal a phrase—is possible.

The biggest news about this communications revolution is the fact that people who have typically not been great users of the Internet or computers in general now have an online presence. Elderly grandmothers sending jokes and such in email has been a common phenomenon for years, but the Catholic Church has recently got into the game.

Two recent news stories illustrate:

Today the Roman Catholic Church will expand its presence in cyberspace when Pope Benedict XVI launches the Vatican's own channel on YouTube.

The Pope will use the site to post daily news clips, videos of his speeches and other ceremonies from the Vatican, with audio and text in four languages: English, Spanish, German and Italian. The channel is due to go online today during a news conference in the press room of the Holy See in Rome.

"It certainly shows that the church recognizes the value of YouTube and making itself as accessible as widely as possible using whatever means possible," said Rev. John Pungente, an ordained Catholic priest and executive director of the Jesuit Communication Project in Toronto.

Father Pungente also suggested the Vatican should consider getting a Facebook page or an account with the micro-blogging site Twitter.

source:theglobeandmail.com

But also:

Pope Benedict XVI says social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace can foster friendships and understanding, but warns they also can isolate people and marginalize others.

Benedict urged a culture of online respect in his annual message Friday for the World Day of Communications.

Benedict welcomes as a "gift" new technologies such as social networking sites, saying they respond to the "fundamental desire" of people to communicate.

But he also warns that "obsessive" virtual socializing can isolate people from real interaction and deepen the digital divide by excluding those already marginalized.

He urges producers to ensure that the content respects human dignity and the "goodness and intimacy of human sexuality."

source: Associated Press via huffingtonpost.com


While this may signal the start of a new chapter in the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Benedict XVI appears to see the Internet as both a force for good (in the sense that it can bring people closer together than ever before) and evil (in that it can also, paradoxically, isolate people from one another, trading face-to-face contact for the more distant, at-arms-length world of online.)

Random thoughts

...while waiting for 305 to start in an effort to drive the pretty black girl I saw on the west lawn from my mind.

1. Pizza and beer is the best lunch.

2. People seem to think that I hate kids.

It's not that I hate children. I'm not an ogre. I just hate screaming, whining, crying and temper tantrums so endemic to children as a whole.

Take the two kids I met over the weekend while I was at work.

Saturday night, a 9-year-old girl was at work, eating with her parents. To be precise, her parents were eating, she was not. She was sitting there reading Calvin and Hobbes.

So I struck up a conversation with the child. Calvin and Hobbes is, she said, her favorite comic strip. Mine too! Cool! I said.

The mother's "My child is conversing politely!" smile fell hard and fast when I mentioned that I'm going to be getting Spaceman Spiff tattooed onto my arm.

"COOL!" the child said.

The other kid was a three-year-old boy on Sunday afternoon. He had a Day-Glo green band-aid on his chin and was eating his hot dog and bun separately. Turns out he had gotten stitches on his chin a few days earlier. We bonded (I showed him my own scar on my chin, visible through my stubble). It was awesome.

Especially when she told me that he had to be forcibly strapped to the operating table.

When I ran down a steep hill and into a fence in New Jersey, I was seven. I remember my mother, father and a nurse lying across my body and barely managing to get me still enough that the surgeon could stitch me up.

Either way, this kid was sticking out his chin and proudly displaying his wound. Then he lifted his shirt to show off the scar that ran directly across his belly.

"Chicks dig scars," I told the kid. Then he fist-bumped me.

Three years old. This kid is going to turn out well.

TEXT BLOG: A NEW ERA DAWNS

Sitting around in Wysocki DOCTOR Wysocki's web publishing class. We are, evidently, to set up and establish blogs in class today.

So, insofar as I'm already ahead of the game, I get to save a few minutes of time that I'd otherwise be spending on thinking up another Ghostbusters reference. With this wealth of time I'm now, uh, writing this.

youwillperishinflame.blogspot.com shall live on, upward, not backward, forward, not upward, and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom! Huzzah!

DID YOU KNOW? I HAVE A TWITTER! So, like, add me or whatever.

On a completely unrelated note:

So, you know how it's weird and all when someone you don't know calls you by name?

Well, when it's the chick behind the counter at the pornography store, it's about ten times more awkward.