Reaping Data

Not to mention how companies and governments so haphazardly use this data for causes and purposes…

The unchecked power of companies that harvest our data is a great problem—but it’s hard to get angry about an idea that’s so nebulous. Like climate change, the reaping of our data is a problem of psychology as much as business. We know that the accumulation of massive power in so few hands is bad, but it’s impossible to anticipate what terrible result might come of it. And if we could envision them, these consequences are imaginary: abstract and in the future. It feels so oppressively intractable it’s hard to summon the will to act.

Source: Cambridge Analytica Is Finally Under Fire Because of Whistleblowers | WIRED

Facebook is facing an existential crisis

Zuckerberg really needs to make a statement. This is going thermonuclear and Facebook’s sole commodity is trust via relationship.

The Cambridge Analytica scandal has done immense damage to the brand, sources across the company believe. It will now take a Herculean effort to restore public trust in Facebook’s commitment to privacy and data protection, they said. Outside observers think regulation has suddenly become more likely, and yet CEO Mark Zuckerberg appears missing in action.

Source: Facebook facing an existential crisis over privacy and data – Mar. 19, 2018

What Facebook knows about you and me and what I can do about it


Cambridge Analytica harvested personal information from a huge swath of the electorate to develop techniques that were later used in the Trump campaign.

Source: How Trump Consultants Exploited the Facebook Data of Millions – The New York Times

I often have consultations with clients involving data sources. Marketing has always been closely tied to the acquisition and analysis of data related to potential target audiences or desired demographics. A large part of what I do every day is staring at spreadsheets and trying to derive direction or wisdom out of data that Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or Snap or Google has gathered from their (often overlapping) groups of products users for our clients’ campaigns.

I loathe using the term “campaign” to refer to anything marketing related… it’s not a battle and we’re not at war. Even worse is the dehumanization that often occurs in marketing conversations we all have about the data generated by real people on the web. Both are related in that our gathering and use of this data combined with our resulting conclusions and “targeting” (again with the militaristic violent language) makes actual people into abstract data points.

It’s little talked about in our industry, but data ethics are something we really need to take more seriously in all aspects of our marketing efforts, whether you’re working with a Fortune 500 company or a small country church.

I know that I personally feel a twitch of regret mixed with reservation when I click on a radio buttons to specify that I’d like to target women above the age of 40 who have relationship issues but live in this affluent ZIP code and enjoy looking at pictures of wine and spirits on Instagram. It’s terrifying. But, it’s relatively cheap and incredibly effective. Our church and nonprofit clients on shoestring budgets can’t get enough of the reach and response from this kind of data marketing (“like shooting fish in a barrel” is a common saying for a reason).

I did a good deal of work on ethics in Divinity School. I’m taking a course in the coming weeks on Data Science Ethics. Now, I need to do a better job of thinking through these types of marketing efforts and explaining the ethical implications of using this data given that most people have NO IDEA how much is known about them (yes, because of Facebook and social media but also because of the relative ease of connecting someone’s phone number or address or email with their browsing history, activity on location tracking services, voter records etc). I need to do a better job of helping clients think through the humanization and dehumanization involved with marketing and advertising and their own goals (especially for churches and nonprofits). I need to do a better job of providing real alternatives to the types of data usage that resulted in situations like our current political climate. I need to provide shoestring budget options for marketing that emphasizes humanity and relatedness rather than victory.

Otherwise, I’m just hanging out in Omelas.

Is there space for “ethical marketing” in a crowded environment of agencies driving the cost of “targeting” and “campaigning” and “development” to the lowest common denominator in terms of price and friction? I’m not sure. But I’m just crazy enough to start giving it a try.

“to queer the prophetic body”

Rather, she is interested in how queerness, in all of its polysemy, “works” in the prophetic texts. Her aim is to “trace the prophetic body as a queer object and to queer the prophetic body” (p. 7)—a project that is both queer and feminist. The result is an imaginative, illuminating investigation into the bodies of various Hebrew Bible prophets.

Source: Book Note | Are We Not Men? Unstable Masculinity in the Hebrew Prophets — ANCIENT JEW REVIEW

Interesting… will definitely read!

Spotify in 2018

[et_pb_section bb_built=”1″][et_pb_row][et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_text _builder_version=”3.0.106″ background_layout=”light”]

I bought a lot of CD’s when I was a teenager. I frequently made use of the Columbia House style deals where you could order 10 CD’s for free while paying for just 1 and then canceling after a few obligatory months. The 90’s were a beautiful time for music-on-media and I adored the books and books of CD sleeves that I’d collected in a short time span. I loved displaying all the CD cases on a wood rack in my bedroom and then dorm room. One of my friends made a wall hanging of his collected CD booklets and I thought it was the greatest thing in the world.

My college didn’t get high-speed internet until my Junior year, but once it did we were rapid adopters of Napster. The campus (at least those of us who collected music) changed almost overnight. Gone were the random runs to Best Buy, Circuit City, the mall or even Wal-Mart to pick up a new album and all night downloading sessions of mp3’s on Napster quickly replaced those adventures.

My friends and I felt like we were on the precipice of something new… for the first time music was “freely” available at our fingertips and just required enough bandwidth and patience to find what you were looking for at any particular moment. We would have conversations about the future of music and how that future would include music at our fingertips via our bulky desktop PC Clone computers, ZIP drives, and 3.5-inch floppies. Little did we know we were just a few years from the iPod and ultimately the iPhone and the promise of that vision was just a decade or so away. Little did we realize we wouldn’t have to carry a desktop tower halfway across campus to get our playlists going at the Fraternity house.

Even in 2010, it seemed like something as audacious as Spotify was futuristic. I’m an early adopter. I bought way too much music on the iTunes Store, via Rhapsody, have a Pandora account going back to 2004… I was ready for on-demand streaming of any song or album I wanted. At least I thought so.

Just checked the receipts… I’ve been a paying member of Spotify since July 2011 (shortly after this post was published evidently… and Klout?? Ha! Forgot about that abomination):

To join Spotify, you’ll need an invite (the first batch are being dished out by online influence tracker Klout). You can skip this tedious step, though, using that old fashioned universal lubricant – money. Sign up for either the monthly Premium or Unlimited plans and you can walk straight in the door. Premium, priced at $5 per month, gives you as much ad-free music as you like. Unlimited ($10) adds offline storage of tracks and lets you use the Spotify client on your mobile device (the Spotify iPhone app is now available in the U.S App Store).

Source: Spotify Launches in the U.S at Last | WIRED

Little did I realize how much the paradox of choice would really impact my passion for music. There was a time I had to think deliberately about whether I wanted to spend that $12-15 on a Thelonious Monk or Wilco or U2 album or if I wanted to try out another genre. Now, that’s just a literal tap of my finger. It has taken me almost 7 years to wrap my head around that paradigm of choice and my music intake has suffered as a result.

I wrapped myself up in the cozy arms of “Dad Rock” and Bowie and The Beatles as I approach 40. I listen less to new artists and I have no idea what is even happening at the Grammy’s anymore. There was a time when I’d pour over the Billboard rankings or Rolling Stone reviews to determine what my next CD purchase would be. Now, I just click play on my Spotify playlist for the day and am made comfortably numb by Pink Floyd or Ryan Adams without much thought as to what I’m missing.

Maybe that’s one of the side effects of getting old. You stop wondering what else is out there and you relish in the sounds that rocked your 20-year-old head. You celebrate the bridges and riffs of “You Never Give Me Your Money” and stop trying to stay on top of the latest Kendrick Lamar album or what might be happening with post-rock.

The 30’s are a time to grow into your jeans and start becoming comfortable with yourself, right?

Screw that. I’m using Spotify to listen to what else is out there as I grow into my 40’s. It’s time.

Here’s to the next ten years of whatever delivery mechanism we make for music we love and music that challenges us.

[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section]

Episode 143: Boys Keep Swinging

Dr. Thomas Whitley and the Rev. Sam Harrelson discuss boys' weekends, gender assumptions, the Documentary Hypothesis, the historicity of the Gospels, and Justice850.

Support Thinking Religion

Links:

Episode 142: “Too great of a religious hurry”

Dr. Thomas Whitley and The Rev. Sam Harrelson discuss the fierce urgency of now, and why the church should be the gadflies of tension in a time of transition.

Support Thinking Religion

Links:

“Worlds colliding, Jerry!”

This is interesting… Dropbox and Google Drive have always been competitors (in my mind and usage), but it seems like Dropbox is taking on the “internet scale storage system” that Dave Winer mentioned on Twitter… more like competition with Evernote?


Dropbox users will be able to create, open, edit, save, and share Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides directly from Dropbox. And when you’re working in Dropbox, you’ll be able to save Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides to your Dropbox account.

Source: Working with Google Cloud to bring all your work together | | Dropbox Blog

How to use Evernote

We all need another brain to remember things and even remind us later. Evernote basically accomplishes that for me.

I’ve been a fan and user of Evernote for (over?) 10 years now. Here’s a nifty guide for using the app in ways that even I found valuable:

You’re just getting started with Evernote, and you’re asked to create your first note. What do you do with it? Make a shopping list? Write a poem? Plan your life? A blank page offers endless possibilities. Here are some cool ideas you can use to make that first note—and all the notes to follow—matter.

Source: 38 Things You Should Save in Evernote

Churches Should Turn and Face the Strange

 

The “America” that Baby Boomers and my fellow Gen X’ers grew up with is rapidly changing, and Protestant churches are an example of community institutions that will be most affected… and made irrelevant or obsolete if they continue to operate as if it’s still 1985.

Of course, whites are a smaller share of the post-millennial generation than any other, so their views will be less dispositive in shaping its direction. Other changes cataloged in the poll underscore how great a change the post-millennials could bring. In the survey, 45% of these young people identified as religiously unaffiliated or non-Christian (compared with about 3 in 10 among all Americans), according to results provided to CNN. And about 1 in every 16 young men and 1 in 7 young women identified as gay or bisexual.

Source: The Parkland students are our first glimpse of the post-Millennial wave that’s going to change the country – CNNPolitics

Episode 141: Could Jesus Read and Write?

Dr. Thomas Whitley and the Rev. Sam Harrelson discuss British trivia shows, the concept of literacy in the ancient world, what accent Jesus might have had, and whether we now have historical proof of the prophet Isaiah.

Support Thinking Religion

Links:

Should Americans buy Hauwei phones?

The Mate 10 looks like a pretty amazing device and I’ve wondered at times whether I should pick up a Hauwei device to make sure I’m staying on top of things. Last week, U.S. intelligence officials warned citizens about buying devices from Chinese companies such as Hauwei and ZTE over concerns that there are potential “back doors” allowing for the Chinese government to eavesdrop on Americans. Given all that we do on our mobile devices in 2018 (I literally run my company from my device), it’s easy to see why there might be concern.

However, the U.S. government hasn’t put forth any evidence of tampering or back-doors and Americans who do own devices from these companies haven’t been able to detect any intrusion or suspicious traffic. I’m not asserting that the concerns over Chinese devices isn’t warranted but I have wondered all week whether these warnings were a result of politic-economic motivation.

Great write up by Jerry Hildenbrand here:

Huawei is the third largest smartphone manufacturer in the world behind Samsung and Apple. It is also the ninth largest technology company (by revenue) worldwide with 180,000 employees and an average annual revenue of $78.8 billion. In other words, Huawei is as “big” a company as Microsoft. That’s good news for Huawei, and usually seeing a company move up the ladder to challenge the market leaders is good for consumers, too. Officially, Huawei is a subsidiary of Huawei Investment & Holding Co., Ltd. in Shenzhen, China and that’s where the real issues the U.S. has with Huawei start.

Source: The U.S. government’s beef with Huawei isn’t really about phones | Android Central

Sumer and the Modern Paradigm

Modern artists discovered Sumerian art between the world wars, at a time when British and American archaeological missions were working in southern Iraq. But archaeologists like Leonard Woolley, head of the mission in Ur were less fascinated by their finds. They considered Mesopotamian art inferior to Egyptian and to Graeco-Roman art and thought Mesopotamian iconography was an expression of a violent culture. Sacrificed bodies found at the Royal Tombs of Ur were the proof that the Bible was right about the Mesopotamian barbarism.

Source: – ANE TODAY – 201802 – Sumer and the Modern Paradigm

Baptist Fields

“Out beyond ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase ‘each other’
doesn’t make any sense. The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.”

Rumi

The painful truth the Illumination Project uncovered in their long discernment process is how silent our churches are when it comes to what is life and death for real people in our pews. The “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach of most of our churches toward LGBTQ Christians leaves them in the shadows, if not in the dark. If we want CBF to be a bright light on the spiritual equality of all Christians, that light must begin to shine more brightly from our CBF congregations. CBF would not have to parse its hiring policy so carefully if our churches did the hard but liberating work of the gospel where Baptists know it matters most.

Source: Illuminations: Spiritual Equality of All Christians – EthicsDaily.com

“Celebrate Valentine’s Day without compromising your Christian faith on Ash Wednesday”

My advice is that American Christians have much bigger issues to concern themselves with than whether or not they can reconcile Valentine’s Day and Ash Wednesday, so stop taking yourself so seriously…

On Feb. 14, many Christians face a dilemma as they try to reconcile their faith with the traditional celebrations of romantic love. How exactly do you observe Valentine’s Day on the day Lent begins, marking the season of atonement leading up to Easter?

Can you be a believer and still celebrate with champagne and chocolate?

Source: Valentine’s Day 2018: Celebrate Ash Wednesday without sacrificing faith — Quartz

Here’s a post from the New York Times entitled “Eat, Pray, Love: An Ash Wednesday and Valentine’s Day Dilemma“.

Show and Tell: Handling Art at the Wurtele Center

My time with the incredible finds from Dura Europos at the Yale University Art Gallery are some of my fondest memories…

Walking alongside the shelves, one can step from intricate African sculptures to ancient Greek vases to Chinese porcelain to a collection of Picasso ceramics. Opposite the entrance and behind glass display cases are a series of white, metal sliding shelves. They are filled with, among other things, wooden staffs, tea cups and wall fragments excavated from Dura-Europos, Syria.

Source: Show and Tell: Handling Art at the Wurtele Center

Thinking Baptists: CBF’s Illumination Project Recap

Merianna and I released a new episode of our rebooted Thinking Baptists podcast last night reflecting on our own personal feelings about the CBF’s Illumination Project as well as our own viewpoints regarding church policies at the institutional and local levels…

The Rev. Merianna Neely Harrelson and The Rev. Sam Harrelson break down this week’s release of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship’s Illumination Project report from their own perspectives.

Source: Thinking Baptists: CBF’s Illumination Project Recap

“What is the spirit saying here?”

Good reflection by Julia Pennington-Russell here on the CBF’s Illumination Project work as well as moralism, legalism, and theopolitics regardless of denomination:

And many, maybe most, CBF churches are so anxious about jeopardizing a fragile harmony that they avoid even the mildest conversation about human sexuality, even as their LGBTQ brothers and sisters suffer outside the gate. What is the Spirit saying here?

Source: Illuminations: The Healing Space between “Good” and “Bad” | CBFblog

CBF’s New Hiring and Personnel Statement

Here are results from the 18-month long Illumination Project that the CBF launched to address its controversial anti-LGBTQ hiring policy back in 2016.

Thomas and I did an episode of Thinking Religion last night to share some thoughts if you’d like to know where I stand.

To reflect the practice of most of its congregations, the procedure states: “Among other qualifying factors, CBF will employ persons for leadership positions in ministry who exhibit the ideals set forth in our hiring policy, have gifts appropriate to the particular position and who practice a traditional Christian sexual ethic of celibacy in singleness or faithfulness in marriage between a woman and a man.” For other positions on the CBF staff in Decatur, applicants will be considered who meet the qualities set forth in the new hiring policy, including Christians who identify as LGBT.

Source: CBF Governing Board receives Illumination Project recommendation, adopts Christ-centered hiring policy | CBFblog

Episode 139: Hiring Policy

Dr. Thomas J. Whitley and The Rev. Sam Harrelson discuss beards, Life on Mars, and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship's hiring policy (and past, present, future).

Support Thinking Religion

Links:

“Did they worship this car?”

“He wondered what aliens might think if they ever came across the Roadster drifting through space. After all, SpaceX packed other weird items in the car, among them a small toy Hot Wheels Roadster (complete with a miniature Starman) on the dashboard.

“Maybe [it will be] discovered by an alien race, thinking, ‘What were these guys doing? Did they worship this car? Why do they have a little car in the car?'” Musk said. “That will really confuse them.”‘

Source: Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster Is Headed to the Asteroid Belt