Eric Bailey's

I received an email a day ago from a guy named Rex Miller. Whenever an email shows up in my inbox from someone I don't know, I am immediately suspicious. Since there were no attachments I looked at the email and read an invitation to download his powerpoiont presentation that he gave at a Simulcast I attended at Redwood. His ideas were interesting and I had to think more about them. I guess I even blogged about it since he found me through my blog. If you go back to my January blogs you find one on the Simulcast and Rex has a comment and his website in the comment. You can go straight to his website by clicking on the link beside or on the title of this blog.

I am interested in a discussion on some of these ideas. The main idea Rex puts forth is that we are beyond post modern (post-post-modern?!?!) He looks at this through a mapping of some key ideas/values/forms and their perspectives on those ideas/values/forms.

Pre-modern relies on oral communication, there you find the concept of truth intricately tied to the messanger (Read Paul's defenses of himself). Modern relies on print communication, and in this view you find truth as abstract, logical, statements that can be dissected and proven. Post-modern then relies on broadcast for communication, like your tv. It doesn't matter (to a certain extent) who is receiving the news, it is still the same. The receiver does not impact the message, only receives it fast and from more sources. Because there are so many voices in broadcast, people pick and choose what they will listen to and what they will accept. In this truth then becomes experiencial, you can't tell me what I experience, what I know. Finally the current stage we are in Rex names after the form of communication, digital. It includes the instant of broadcast, but it is personalized. To find out about something we care about we look it up on the internet, we can tune into Big Brother all day on the internet instead of relying on the tv to bring us their slanted updates every couple of days. We can find a news story from across the world, but even better we can even email, or instant chat someone who is living through the event. Where in broadcast you could pick and choose which of the public stories to read, Digital you can interact with a person who is experiencing it, question, maybe even influence their actions in this crazy world, effecting the outcome of what would normally just be a news story. Digital is also interactive. Truth is found not in the abstract or in the individual, but it is also more than just my experience. Truth is found in community. My experience may be part of the truth, but as we share our lives together we see that truth is bigger than just me or you, but it is found in us.