[This
article was written and published in print in August 1998]
The Internet began in the 1960s as American planners sought to ensure that no Soviet nuclear strike could cripple their military computer network.
By the 70s computer geeks and techno-savvy academics had discovered its potential as a communication channel. They began to learn its arcane disciplines, and in the 80s the National (US) Science Foundation took the 'net over.
In the 90s NSCA Mosaic and Tim Berners-Lee made point-and-click possible, and graphical interfaces put pictures everywhere. So now the web is growing exponentially, and even your next-door neighbour's child is online.
Last year the coming big thing on the web was "push technology". Microsoft, and every other trendy multinational conglomerate software giant claimed that shovelling their information to us would save us all the bother of going out and looking for the stuff. We'd all get news and sport and entertainment, selected just for us according to our interests, without moving from the desk.
Happily, the Gate's vision - a world of couch potatoes without the couch - has been bypassed by most users of the web. Push is seldom talked of today.
If "the Devil finds work for idle hands", then TV must be the epitome of devil-work. For unlike the reader of a book, TV viewers are thoroughly idle. Not so websurfers, clicking here and there, they are bees not potatoes. Ideas criss-cross the globe pollinating new developments as they pass.
Printing, the last big change in human communication, opened up the Church in new ways. It encouraged reformation, and enabled the modern missionary movement.
How Electronic Communication will change the church is still up for grabs, will the web offer devil-work or provoke reformation and mission? That the church will be changed is certain.
Our grandchildren's world will be as different as Luther's was from Chaucer's. So will their church.
© Tim Bulkeley, 1998
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The other sites Tim runs Postmodern Bible - a hypermedia (hypertext and multimedia) Bible commentary project; Bible3 Ancien Testament :: Méthodes d'etude.