Episode 102: Let Me Move That Glass Over Here

Thomas and Sam discuss the Billy Graham Rule, flipping coasters and dominance.

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Episode 101: The Sounds of Silence

Thomas and Sam discuss the persistence of memories, Evernote, device agnosticism, web automation services and whether the Karl Barth Chatbot will take off in the near-future.

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Episode 100: “The last thing I would consider myself is a theologian.”

Thomas and Sam celebrate 100 episodes and discuss Thomas' bent towards Process Theology.

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Episode 99: It’s Hard to Put the Cat Back In the Bag

Thomas and Sam discuss Just War Theory, Karl Barth and where we go from here.

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Episode 98: The Pull of Nostalgia

Thomas and Sam discuss what makes things great. Again.

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Episode 97: Prayer Breakfast

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Echo Chamber

A friend asked recently what I thought of the Amazon Echo and whether or not I was concerned by privacy issues surrounding the platform. The friend knows we have a number of the devices in our home.

The issue goes along the lines of the the Echo being able to “hear” at all times since it is listening for the wake word (ours is currently set to “Computer” since I’m a Star Trek nerd). As a result, it’s clear that Amazon is taping every sound that is made in our homes and sending directly to law enforcement / the NSA / the CIA / insurance companies / pick your poison.

Obviously, that’s not the case but the line of thinking is definitely circulated regularly on social media and in conversations with people with just enough exposure or information about a product or service to make an uneducated and biased claim.

Sort of like politics, I guess.

The internet promised us democratization of knowledge. It has definitely delivered that. It exposes us to new ideas, thought patterns, technologies, tools, services, images, videos, and music we’d never experience otherwise. I remember relishing my set of World Books as a 12-year-old because they gave me the knowledge and escape.

What the internet hasn’t done is given us a sense of perspective or inquisitiveness. Our limbic system is predicated on our survival, and we often listen to our lizard brain when a new thought technology threatens how we thought we understand this strange concept we call existence.

We need other mechanisms for that perspective and inquisitiveness. Otherwise, the internet can be a powerful sounding board to provide reaffirmation of what we already thought we knew or believed.

Having access to information (textual, visual, video, or audio) does not make one an expert.

Sort of like politics, I guess.

As we transition from fingers to voice as the primary input mechanism for computing it will become even more important to recognize the need for deeper human learning just as we push the boundaries of what deeper machine learning means. Our democracies on the web and in politics depend on it.

We have an Amazon Echo or Amazon Dot in most every room of our house. It’s fantastic technology, and I enjoy the ability to perform both simple and complex computing tasks by using our collection of assistants.

“But Sam,” my friend might say, “sure it’s great that you can turn on your lights or play Bowie or add things to your calendar by just speaking into the void in your den, but what about your privacy?”.

To quote Dylan, “play it loud.“

Episode 96: Nintey Six

Thomas and Sam discuss Google Voice, Alexa, Evernote, and how the Democratic Party has failed voters but especially the next generation of public officials (and what we can do about it).

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Episode 94: Any Religious Left or Any Religion Left?

Thomas and Sam discuss the upcoming inauguration of Donald J. Trump as President of the United States, and what that means for the country’s religious landscape.

 

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Episode 93: “All we have to do now is to take these lies and make them true (somehow)”

Thomas and Sam kick off the 2017 season of Thinking Religion.

  • New Years Resolutions
  • Try a New Years Revolution | NY Times
  • On Giving Donald Trump a Chance | Marginalia
  • Sam’s January 1 “sermon”: “I think I realize now that the author chose to include the massacre of the infants in the nativity story of Jesus to establish not only Jesus’ claims to being the Messiah or to connect Jesus with Moses and the Exodus, but also to plant the seed that Jesus was born into a broken world that has always slaughtered innocents and still does. Jesus’ challenge to the authority of his time ended with his own slaughtering.”
  • TIG Mod | ThisIsGround
  • TIG Venture Backpack | ThisIsGround

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Episode 90: No Bread, No Bag, No Money

Thomas and Sam discuss titles, office spaces, new jobs, being unplugged from the hive mind during the work day, and everyday carries (along with some deep philosophical ideas you’ll have to stick around for).

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Episode 79: Thinking Religion 89: Do You Want To Talk About Pants? – Thinking.FM

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Thomas and Sam discuss pants, button down collar dress shirts, briefcases, leather goods, and the role of religion in political rhetoric.

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Episode 78: Thinking Out Loud 121: Even Superheroes Have Flaws – Thinking.FM

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“But I thought you were a superhero?” Elisabeth and Merianna talk about that moment when someone you know discovers that you have flaws and how that impacts your relationship. This is why it is important to make sure your characters have flaws as well. Even superheroes have their kryptonite. 

Show Notes

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Episode 77: Thinking Religion 88: Snapchat is the New Oral Tradition – Thinking.FM

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Thomas and Sam, along with guest host Roshan Abraham, discuss Jonah’s presumptive bisexuality, Classics’ past present and future, Ephesus as the ancient 4chan, roles of the public intellectual, autobiographical memories, textuality, authority, and Bernie vs. Hillary sexism.

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Episode 76: Thinking Out Loud 120: What World is This? – Thinking.FM

worldbuilding

“But that could never happen!” Elisabeth and Merianna talk about world building, especially in regards to changing technology. What should you include? What will make your story seem outdated and irrelevant? How do some authors get away with having outdated technology, but still have avid readers?

Show Notes

What are Merianna and Elisabeth reading this week?


Rising Strong

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Episode 75: Thinking Religion: Trading Places – Thinking.FM

Thinking Religion

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.

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Marsbot Is Your New Scarlett

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 🙂

Episode 74: Thinking Baptists 21: Welcoming Visitors to Your Church – Thinking.FM

Thinking Baptists

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.

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Episode 73: Thinking Out Loud 118: Words Matter – 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.

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Episode 72: Thinking Religion: Permission Slip – 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.

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The Importance of Getting Your Details Correct

 

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.

Why augmented reality’s future is more practical and rational than you realize

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.