Day Conference on Virtualisation and Society in Edinburgh

If you find yourself in Edinburgh, Scotland next week you might be interested in a free day conference sponsored by the Church of Scotland.

The conference is on Virtualisation and Society and the aim is to reflect on how society and the Church are being impacted upon due to the rise of digital networked technologies. They have assembled an interesting panel of scholars and researchers to talk on a variety of issues related to virtuality and technology and I have been asked to speak on religion and the internet, albeit virtually via skype.

The event will be held Thursday Jan 21st and is open to the public (but you have to RSVP). For more details check this link at the CofS website.

GodTube in the LA Times

David Sarno wrote an interesting piece appearing in yesterday's LA Times, called Linking into the market for ministry that questions the growing impact and development of the GodTube for the online Christian market. Yours truly is also quoted, though I would clarify that when I was interview I stated that SOME, but not all people, find that the internet offers "more sustained and satisfying personal interaction". At this point it is accurate and safe to say the internet still serves as a supplement rather than a substitute for offline religious engagement. However I still sense a fear amongst many religious practitioners about this fact. It seems GodTube is responding the idea by providing tools to consciously link religious users online with offline church interaction as well via GodCaster. The article also provides some interesting info and reflection on Muslim use of the internet.

Post AOIR

AOIR 8.0 is over, but much fun and learning occurred! On Friday afternoon I enjoyed getting to hear Henry Jenkins give a review of his work on Media Convergence and speculating on how online fandom is both informing web 2.0 corporate development as well as introducing some interesting forms of participatory knowledge making. Saturday I attended a great panel on the state of research into social networks (ala facebook, myspace, etc) and got to hear from key researchers such as Nancy Baym and danah boyd on the studies being done about users, coporations and media culturing for social purposes. There was even a fellow from Facebook there giving us his 2cents which was a greater insider perspective. It was also confirmed that not much research has been done on religion and social networking software, though I think I have prompted a friend and fellow colleague on the AOIR ethics committee Mark Johns to expand his own work on Facebook to look into religious construction of identity there. Also attended an interesting panel in the final afternoon on Blog research methodology and ethics. The Indiana University group still appear to be leaders in this are with Lois Ann Scheidt at the helm of doing interesting work on youth and blogs. All being well I plan to make it to AOIR 9.0 to be held in Copenhagen, especially since I have been elected to the executive committee of the Association!

The Muslim IPod

I figured if there were Jewish Ipod applications, there must be a Muslim version as well and my suspicions were correct. The PenMan IQRA'A could very well be called the Muslim IPod. It is the latest in Muslim specific digital technology. Described as a Quran Digital book" it is part digital library part MP3 and video player. It comes a preloaded series of Muslim resources including a recording of the entire Quran, recorded Hadith translations, a Quilba (Mecca) indicator and other Muslim related resources. So you can keep on time to prayers, study the Quran and jam to your fav Muslim Hip Hop artist (BTW--I am currently listening to Outlandish) all with the help of a small hand held device.

Intern at Intel & look at spirituality and technology

This announcement just got posted on the Association of Internet Researchers email list, which is an interesting opportunity to explore spirituality and technology at Intel.

As part of Domestic Designs and Technologies Research - the ethnographic and design research team within the Digital Home Group - you will work within a multidisciplinary team of anthropologists, design researchers and documentary film makers to explore and research 'love and spirituality' and its intersection with computers and technology, in and around the home. DDTR is a driving force within the Digital Home Group (DHG): our charter is to develop a clear & actionable understanding of daily life all over the world, identify opportunities for our platforms to enable experiences that consumers value, merge original insights with technology, market, platform and planning intelligence to define usage models & platform requirements, and seed future research & platform opportunities. DHG's vision is to make Intel the trusted foundation of your digital home. To that end, the Digital Home Group develops computing and communications oriented platforms that anticipate and satisfy the needs of consumers world-wide.

We will be offering 3 month paid internships starting in October '07 and, for graduate students in anthropology, design research or relatedsocial sciences. Interns must re-locate to the Portland, Oregon area to work closely with the research team during the entire length of the internship, and be eligible to work in the US.

We are looking for individuals with experience in designing andconducting both qualitative and/or quantitative user or design research studies, including analysis of the resulting data. Candidates should prepare a concise yet thorough 3-5 page proposal to explore some aspect of love and spirituality and its intersection with computers andtechnology in and around the home; inclusion of how the proposed research fits with the candidate's own research interests (broadly defined) is a plus. Exact responsibilities of the position will be defined with the successful applicant based on the proposal you submit.

Please submit your proposal (3-5 pages, including bibliographic references) describing the research you'd like to do in this area over the course of your internship to http://uk.f272.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=francoise.bourdonnec@intel.com&YY=28575&y5beta=yes&y5beta=yes&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=a&head=b.Applications (CV + proposal) must be received by July 31st for the October start date.

PodBible: An experiment in MP3ing the Good Book

Tonight I got to meet Tim Bulkeley face-to-face. He is organizing a virtual theology colloquium while I am here in NZ on religion and authority which I am really looking forward. While chatting and getting acquainted I heard the story behind one of his many interesting projects, in this case the 'PodBible' project. In 2005 Tim gathered some 300 Kiwi volunteers who read portions of the Bible in shifts and over a weekend and provided a live streaming web cast of the whole Bible. The readings were also recorded and became the basis of the PodBible. The number of people downloading this recording continues to increase with the most frequent downloads coming from first the USA, then China and thirdly New Zealand. From antecedents he has been able to learn that reason for some of the Chinese downloads is due to users using the recordings to practice their English.

The PodBible recording is now being broken down into chapter segments, each being followed by recorded reflective "Think", "Share" & "Do" questions. The intentions is to provide a way for people to listen to the Bible over a year period through these podcasts.