Re-entering my PhD program has caused me to think much about technology.  Two years ago, when I stopped my program, technology and Web 2.0 were at one place.  They have obviously continued to develop rapidly, and are now quite different than they were.

Issues of privacy are no longer as important or highlighted as they once were.  Below are two videos put out on youtube that illustrate the tension between public and private.  The first video is a humorous (yet poignant) looks at what happens when information that we readily display on facebook is asked of people in person.

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The Social Network is a film that fires on every cinematic cylinder in an age when we’re lucky if a film fires on just one or two. From the opening scene to the closing shot, this is a film that packs so much into every moment. It has a razor-sharp script by the ever clever/chatty Aaron Sorkin, a stellar ensemble of young actors who are destined for Awards season accolades, a gorgeously dark score by Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor, and all sorts of other goods that make it, in my view, the best film of the year so far.

The Social Network is first and foremost a David Fincher film. His distinctive mark is on every meticulously detailed, stylish frame. On the heels of the elegant/genteel/literary Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and the obsessive/creepy/methodical Zodiac, Fincher’s latest reflects the worlds and styles of both of those films, as well as their thematic concerns: obsession, ambition, the tension between human intimacy and time/efficiency/work.

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While working for Pepperdine University as a Resident Director, I was first introduced to facebook by an administrator.  Though brand new (and frankly silly sounding to me), he spoke of it in common terms.  He told me that students were flocking to it, but the catch was that only those with e-mail addresses ending in “.edu” could be on it.  I set up a profile due to my “.edu” password, and it felt kind of cool to be portraying some of my college self again – music, films, friends, etc. 

It soon became fascinating as I heard students ad lib about status updates, pictures, and gossipy pronouncements.  Students didn’t censor themselves.  They didn’t have to worry about their profiles being observed by curious parents, University employees, or others – just their friends (which of course rapidly changed and again redefined the term “internet privacy”).  What at first was silly and fascinating soon became frightening – talking about it with students was like walking on eggshells filled with rusty nails.

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I think it’s fair to say that many of us who write our own blogs also read a lot of blogs. We might also spend a fair amount of time on twitter. We might also waste a bit of time on facebook. And before we know it, we might find ourselves wondering how it got to be 1am and we still haven’t put the dinner dishes away.

And by we, I mean me.

I spend entirely too much time online. It's what a call a neutral addiction. It's not hurting anyone - I'm not flying into a drunk rage or throwing my life away or getting arrested. I'm just quietly wasting lots and lots of time.

I have a love-hate relationship with social media. It has certainly expanded my worldview and made me feel a part of a broader community of moms. I have never had that sense of isolation as a mom that I heard my mother’s generation talk about. Despite the fact that some days I don’t ever make it out of my pj’s, I still feel like I get to do a little socializing every night on facebook. When my kids go down for a nap, I can catch up on my reader to see what my friends are doing, or relate to an anecdote from someone else in a similar lifestage. I can blog about my struggles with choosing a minivan, or dealing with the school bully, or my inability to remember my assigned snack day in the classroom, and the comments often feel like my very own community of women, propping me up and guiding me along the journey.  It's also provided me with an amazing community of adoptive moms, with families that look like mine.  I may not see them every day, but I know they are out there, and I get to keep up with them on facebook and twitter.

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Leave it to a group of Jewish hipsters to remind us Christians how important it is to observe the Sabbath for what it is: a day set apart for the Lord.

Shabbat--the Hebrew for Sabbath--is big with Jews, some would say the biggest Jewish holiday of them all. For Jews, Shabbat begins on Friday evening at sunset and ends on Saturday night "when three stars are visible in the sky." On Shabbat, Jews "remember that God created the world and then rested from His labors" (Genesis 2:2). Shabbat is considered a festive day to pray, read, eat, drink wine, spend time with family and friends, and basically rest.

But Shabbat is Jewish, right? So what's that to the rest of us? As it turns out, plenty. And it took a bunch of Jewish artists, thought-leaders and tastemakers operating under the banner Reboot to tell us Gentiles what we're missing. In their search for "a modern way to observe a weekly day of rest," the folks at Reboot created the "Sabbath Manifesto" as "a creative project designed to slow down our lives in an increasingly hectic world." 

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Reunions are often awkward events perpetuated by either 1) academic tradition or 2) the one crazy aunt in the family who believes in fairies and forced family bonding (and yes, reunions are almost always planned by women). Such events may be fading as the notion of corralling physical bodies into a common room is being supplanted by the notion of corralling virtual people into a common network.

If you’re a Millennial (born since 1980), you will never know what it feels like to re-discover your past life during that first week of Facebook frenzy. I mean, when a fourteen year-old signs up for his first FB account, he’s flooded with the man-sized responsibility of choosing his network from among his already fixed social milieu; his friends haven’t changed much from yesterday’s “X-Men are the bomb!” status to today’s “Eating Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.” But when a Gen-Xer climbs into the saddle, he discovers that the Facebook trailhead is neither linear nor simple; rather, he finds all sorts of hidden trails leading to dark, shadowy places in his past—the high school stomachaches, the college apostates, the awkward career moves, the Ghosts of Churches Past.

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I wrote a new technology piece in Relevant magazine’s September/October issue, entitled “Short Attention Span Faith.” You can read the whole thing by clicking here, but here’s a short little excerpt:

Unsurprisingly, this frenzied, obsessive-compulsive proclivity toward being digital busybodies has deleterious effects on Christian disciplines like Bible study and prayer. How do we justify sitting down and praying for an hour when there are Hulu videos to browse, “What Ninja Turtle are you?” quizzes to take, and online “community” to cultivate? If we’re not wired, plugged-in, and communicating with the world at all times, it seems like such a waste of time…

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