Tag Archives: Culture

Apr 29 2010

Is Facebook Taking Over the Web?

The interwebs are constantly shifting as new companies, ideas, and technologies come on the scene and old ones fade into obscurity.

Over the last five years social networking websites have gone from a hobby for technophiles to the most visited sites on the internet. As of April ’09 American’s spent a combined 40,000 years of time each month on the top 10 social networks. This was a more than two fold increase from 1 year ago, so you can only imagine where that number stands today. Continue reading →

Apr 21 2010

The Evil of Getting and Not Giving?

Every once in a while you see some social commentator’s article on the evils of consuming too much cultural goods. These goods—everything from radio shows to clothing purchased on amazon.com—are somehow offensive when any individual just gets or digests “too much.” Many Christians are opposed to cultural indulgence as well. We tend to see it as a form of idolatry or obsession that distracts us from our relationship with God.

Television was a cultural evil that I heard a lot about growing up in the nineties. People watched too much of it, some would say. Statistics showed the average American watched an average of more than four hours of TV each day. This is an overwhelming amount for any single individual when you think about it. When do you find time to live your life when you spend so much time watching others live their’s on the tube? Continue reading →

Mar 19 2010

Pivot: A New Way to View Massive Amounts of Data

Culture is a complex subject matter, and one where many writers and theorists cannot concretely know much. This usually lends itself to the idea of “information overload.” Our puny brains simply cannot process trends—both widespread and among the few—so we throw up our arms and give up making sense of this world.

I think of this as laziness, personally. We’re all lazy to an extent. When we cannot wrap our minds around huge amounts of information, I say that we have given up the potential to know things. We can know if we just find a way that works to rightly judge information (granted, through some standard, point of reference). It is work, though, and that is why we lazily give up the process of truly knowing what’s happening around us.

If you don’t know much about it, the TED conference is a good mixed bag of thinkers that come up with sometimes helpful and sometimes liberal wisdom. It’s a consistent event and they usually turn out content that’s just as interesting as the last. I keep up with their events but have never attended. You can find many videos from their conference online at TED.com.

Feb 26 2010

There’s Room for Every Book and Tablet

Christians collect ways to read the Word of God. We have family Bibles, pocket Bibles, and personal Bibles. When we’re on a trip, we read from the smallest Bible we can carry that’s legible. When we’re in the comfort of home and have ample room to spare, we have family devotions from the family heirloom edition. When we’re in church, we read along with the preacher from our average-sized personal edition—not too weighty and not too small.

This is true of all books. We have many shaped and sized editions of all our favorite literary works. This is now happening to our computing device options. Continue reading →

Feb 18 2010

Resisting Culture is Futile

Many a reclusive and well-meaning individual has attempted to evade culture as much as possible. There are some that simply want to escape civil government; those that want to be far away from religion; yet others that simply can’t stand the stupidity of the human race. For whatever people’s reasons, there are these that simply aren’t happy with the state of the world with what man has made of it. Continue reading →

Feb 9 2010

Transforming Culture by the Guide Book

There are people in the world that want to go against the grain of culture-making to accomplish their God-given drives. Man wants to fulfill for himself what God meant man to do for Him. When man wants to better the world, whether he be an atheist, buddhist, or mormon, he steals the fundamentals that make the world a better place from God’s own style expressed in the Bible and twists them for his own brand of right and wrong. (Man defies God—what else is knew?)

Any deviation from the path in God’s Word is driven by self-fulfillment, but the sense of accomplishment that we—man—have for doing some good in this world is only genuinely comprehended in mortal men when we are in line with the Holy Spirit; bettering the world the way God intended. In an ironic way, God made man to make the world just what He always wanted…. In so doing, man finds that when he pleases God most, he is most satisfied with this life and the culture man is able to produce.

To transform culture, mankind must understand that God is the Master Culture Director. As Creator, Lord, and all the other things He is, He defines culture and the limits we have to make culture of our own. We are gardeners tending His creation. Man brings the order about in God’s universe that God meant us to establish. To transform culture at its best means to refine culture into the ideals God wants for the world.

Feb 8 2010

Medieval Help Desk – Comical Short

With every advancement of culture-making (in this case of this video, the invention of the book), people have to learn something new to be equipped with the new conveniences of cultural tools. This is a curve that many older people don’t keep up with, and each new generation adapts to their own generation of cultural improvements with natural ease.

And, of course, this happens with today’s cultural advancements as well as those of medieval times. This video will relate to our generation of new tablet users and their need for expert assistance. Sad, but it is true; people want to be shown how to do everything. Few want to learn things on their own.

The better we assist the young and old to adapt to our culture-making improvements, the more likely culture will adopt our cultural advancements.

Jan 28 2010

The New Tablet – iPad

A little over a year ago, people saw on the market new portable devices dedicated to reading books and the news. The Kindle stirred up the reading media market. Soon, Sony and altogether new brands joined the market for reading devices.

Apple was still going strong with their advances in iPod technologies — the iPod rubbing backs with the iPhone. Essentially, by January of 2009, the iPod Touch was an iPhone without the phone. So the Touch and iPhone were capable of joining the e-book reading and mobile news selection of devices. There are more than 140,000 apps in Apple’s App Store to date. You can do practically anything with the devices that a laptop can achieve; maybe not as well, but you can do practically anything with these devices. Continue reading →

Jan 5 2010

Condemning Culture – The Culture Vacuum

Growing up in a conservative Christian home, it was easy to assume the role as a critic of society. Don’t get me wrong. My family was able to find plenty good in culture that our family could enjoy. I played video games early on, watched movies in the theaters, went out on social engagements to theme parks with friends, etc. I had a taste of most arenas in culture — even as a homeschooler. Really. Continue reading →

Jul 22 2009

Defining Morality in Art

Most of my readers know that I am a Christian, and I like to think about the ramifications of Biblical worldview in the arts. It’s not easy to compete with the various worldviews in art and culture since what’s culturally acceptable is so influential. Popularity usually supersedes morality for patrons of the arts. If the majority of people enjoy something  good or bad, the negative peer pressure throughout culture will excuse anyone to enjoy the morally bankrupt movies, books, music . . . and so forth. Continue reading →