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The post Thinking Out Loud 120: What World is This? appeared first on Thinking.FM.
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Most Christians are Republicans and a few liberal ones are Democrats (or something like that). That’s been the conventional thinking for the past few decades, especially with the rise of the Moral Majority and Evangelical movement going back to the late 60’s and early 70’s. However, the election of 2016 is pointing to a possible shift in perception of this old adage. Are we seeing a role reversal where the Democratic Party becomes the party of patriotism, American Exceptionalism, and faith while the Republican Party becomes the party of angst, cynicism, and Russian influence? We discuss the last two weeks of both parties’ conventions and why that role reversal might just be the case.
The Democratic convention’s most surprising argument: Christianity is a liberal religion | Vox
The post Thinking Religion: Trading Places appeared first on Thinking.FM.
But Marsbot is important for other reasons, too. She represents a different kind of bot than the ones you see in Facebook Messenger — one that’s proactive rather than passive. She’s not a chatbot, but an interruptive bot. Crowley says that most other bots are in the model of Aladdin’s lamp: you invoke them and the genie appears. Marsbot is more in the Jiminy Cricket mode, hanging over your shoulder and chiming in when needed.
Source: Marsbot Is Dreaming of You — Backchannel
I’ve been testing out Marsbot the last few days, and I’m seriously impressed. I’ve been using the Ozlo bot for my random food suggestions based on location, time, preferences etc… and I’ve been happy with Ozlo.
However, Marsbot has something unique going on… it’s not a bot that waits for you. Rather, it’s proactive. If you’ve seen Her, you know immediately what I’m talking about.
Plus, it’s based on Foursquare’s accumulated data over the years, which is immense. Plus, it works in your text messaging app (iMessage if on Apple) where you’re used to getting personal updates or messages rather than going into another app on your device.
Messaging bots are going to be big and change the way we do computing and think of computers.
Take notice, churches 🙂
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Thinking Baptists
Merianna and Sam discuss the notion of hospitality and how various churches welcome (or don’t) visitors and strangers into their worship services.
The post Thinking Baptists 21: Welcoming Visitors to Your Church appeared first on Thinking.FM.
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Elisabeth and Merianna talk about moving your draft from the splatter paint on the canvas, letting the words fly off your fingertips to a manuscript with purposeful meaningful words. Words matter. Choose them carefully, especially if you are staff writer for a presidential candidate.
The post Thinking Out Loud 118: Words Matter appeared first on Thinking.FM.
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This week, Thomas and Sam discuss how to use social media effectively, why you shouldn’t invoke God when comparing others to Lucifer, and ways to save money on all of your internet subscription services.
The post Thinking Religion: Permission Slip appeared first on Thinking.FM.
My partner Merianna was preaching at a nearby church last month and she needed a time estimate for the drive that Sunday morning. We googled the church and got the address. While on the results page, I noticed their “Hours” stated they were closed. It was a Sunday. That felt… peculiar.
It wasn’t intentional, of course. It’s just a tiny detail that is easy to overlook. But when you only have, on average, about 3-5 seconds to “convert” someone to making a click or engaging with your page in some way, these tiny details add up.
We all like to pretend that we’re expert marketing strategists. We grimace at bad commercials, parse political campaign logos, and pretend to disregard those annoying Facebook video posts from mega-global sugar water makers. We tend to think we don’t need help with our marketing strategies, especially the online ones, because… anyone can create a Facebook Page or Twitter account or even website. It’s easy!
Right?
Well, yes.
But not really. Not if you want to spend your time doing what you’re good at and not making tiny mistakes that add up over time and actually do harm to your “brand” (and yes, we all have a brand whether we like to admit that or not). Seemingly trivial details such as having your Google Business information correct or your Webmaster settings correct for the best Google results or your Facebook Page details can be the deal breaker for someone deciding on whether to call or visit your business, church, nonprofit, etc.
Budget wisely, but keep in mind that doing so doesn’t mean cutting the corners by turning over your very important marketing details to a summer intern or someone who has a mobile phone and a Twitter account. Call us if you need help.
Bryan Richardson, Android software engineer at stable|kernel, wants you to consider this: what if firefighters could wear a helmet that could essentially see through the walls, indicating the location of a person in distress? What if that device could detect the temperature of a wall? In the near future, the amount of information that will be available through a virtual scan of our immediate environment and projected through a practical, wearable device could be immense.
Source: The Technology Behind Pokémon Go: Why Augmented Reality is the Future
Call Pokemon Go silly / stupid / trendish / absurd etc. To a certain point the game is incredibly inane. However, it does illustrate the ability of memes and mass fads to still occur in large numbers despite the “fracturing” of broadcast media and the loss of hegemonic culture.
The more immediate question to me, though, is what to do with this newfound cultural zeitgeist around AR? Surely, there will be more copycat games that try to mirror what Pokemon Go, Nintendo, and Niantic have created. Some will be “better” than Pokemon Go. Some will be direct rip offs.
Tech behemoths such as Facebook, Microsoft, Samsung, HTC, and now Google understand the long term implications of AR and are all each working towards internal and public projects to make use of this old but new intense hope and buzz around the idea of using technology to augment our human realities. I say realities because we shouldn’t forget that we experience the world based on photons bouncing off of things and going into our eyeballs through a series of organic lenses that flip them upside down onto the theater screen that is our retina before the retina pushes them through the optic nerve to our frontal cortex where our electrochemical neurons attempt to derive or make meaning from the data and process that back down our spinal cord to the rest of our bodies… there’s lots of room for variations and subjectivity given that we’re all a little different biologically and chemically.
We’re going to see a fast-moving evolution of tools for professions such as physicians, firefighters, and engineers as well as applications in the military and in classrooms etc that will cause some people pause. That always happens whether the new technology is movable type or writing or books or computers or the web.
Games (and porn unfortunately) tend to push us ahead when it comes to these sorts of tech revolutions. That will certainly be the case in terms of augmented reality. Yes, Pokemon Go is silly and people playing it “should get a life.” But remember, the interactions with that game and each other that they are making now will improve the systems of the future and save / improve lives. Also… don’t get me started on what it means to “have a life” given our electrochemical clump of neurons that we all are operating from regardless of our views on objectivity, Jesus, or etiquette.
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Thomas and Sam are joined by Merianna Neely Harrelson to talk about True Love Waits, Kissing Dating Goodbye, Promise Rings, and all the interesting parts of Evangelical Christian culture of the ’90’s (and how much of that is being reexamined)… and why Sam still calls himself an Evangelical.
The post Thinking Religion: Growing Up Evangelical in the 90’s appeared first on Thinking.FM.
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