How Bible Technology
Shapes Our Faith

Before you skewer me :)

Director of Web Development at Dallas Seminary

http://bible.johndyer.name/

• Technology and Society
• Mediums and Messages
• Bible and Technology

Good
Bad
Neutral
“It’s just how you use it”

Phone = neutral
Call your friend = Good
Call in bomb threat = Bad

How many phone numbers do you know by memory?

Phone = morally neutral
Phone ≠ effectively neutral

• Know fewer numbers
– Effect on the mind
• Constantly accessible
– Effects on relationships

Cars = neutral
Drive to church = Good
Drive over a person = Bad

Car ≠ neutral
• Blacksmiths
• Requires roads & laws
• Connects/separates

It’s just how you use it
Actually, it’s that we use it
Technology is not neutral

Every medium has the capacity to
communicate regardless of its
content.

I am awesum at PowerPoint

Humble yourself before the
Lord and don’t bring
attention to yourself.

• Genre
– Poetry, Narrative, Apocalypse, etc.
• Medium
– Talking Donkey
– Burning Bush
– God in the Flesh

• What does __ extend?
• What does __ make obsolete?
• What does __ retrieve?
• What does __ reverse into?

2000 B.C. to A.D. 2000 in 25 minutes

Oral Written Printed Digitized
Adam-1500BC 1500BC-AD1500 AD1500-AD1980 AD1980-present

Oral
The community is the device

Written
• More consistent
• Costly
– Communal

Written

Written
man 男
woman 女

Written
• From 1500B.C. to A.D.1500
– Preaching
– Hearing
– Memorizing
• Images and Icons

Print
• Exactness
• Mass Distribution
• Reference/Footnotes
• Chapter and Verse
Numbers

Print
• Extends: communication,
storage
• Obsoletes: communal/written
knowledge, church authority
• Retrieves: access to truth
• Reverses Into: individualism

Print
• Authority shifted from the
Church to the individual
• Personal Bible study, individual
faith
• Faith is logical, not emotional
• Think in verses, not books

Print Digital
• Photograph
• Computer/Internet

Print Digital
The boys are hungry

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tinajoebrianwillie/851443071/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ramdiboy/3299674549/

• Fast
• Passive
• Trivial/Entertaining
• Story vs. logic

Digital
• Information/Scanning
• Multi-tasking
• Decontextual Language

Digital
I worry that the level of interrupt, the sort of
overwhelming rapidity of information — and
especially of stressful information — is in fact
affecting cognition. It is in fact affecting deeper
thinking. I still believe that sitting down and
reading a book is the best way to really learn
something. And I worry that we’re losing that.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt

Digital
• Increased Access
• Cheap/Free
• Links to other
information

Digital
• Bible as information
• Bible as search
– John 3:16
– Romans 5:8
• Tools can reverse into
crutches, stifle learning

• Reject “The mediums change, but
the message is the same.”
• Read scripture aloud, in community,
without PowerPoint
• Reduce information, read and
memorize large chunks

• Reduce multi-tasking
• Create alternate experiences of
the Bible
• Offer recommendations, not
data dumps
• Minimize helps

Email: johndyer@gmail.com
Code: johndyer.name
Theo/Tech: donteatthefruit.com