Two months ago, the Princeton sociologist Janet Vertesi tested the limits of digital privacy: she attempted to conceal her pregnancy from the Internet. She told her family and friends not to post about it on social media, used the untraceable Internet browser Tor and set up a new email account on a separate server.
The first website was established in 1991. The world has changed dramatically in just 23 years.
On Monday in the Amphitheater, Jeffrey Rosen examined the right to privacy through a constitutional frame, exploring both historic and hypothetical cases in which privacy clashed with security or freedom of speech, or was conflated with property rights.
Cybersecurity is not just an issue for the IT crowd.
When the Institution’s gates opened last week and Chautauquans began pouring onto the grounds, many were busy filling their schedules with lectures, shows and performances. What most didn’t pencil into their calendars was a two-hour chunk of time spent on the phone, arguing with Time Warner Cable as they tried to revive their Internet capabilities.
“We need to be active, and involved and informed agents shaping the use of technology around us today,” Verity A. Jones said Thursday during the 2 p.m. Interfaith Lecture.
In the Hall of Philosophy, Jones continued the Week Six theme of “The Life of Faith and the Digital Age,” with a lecture titled “Thinking Theologically about New Media.”
Jones is project director of the New Media Project at Union Theological Seminary, and former editor of DisciplesWorld. The New Media Project is a research-based project that helps religious leaders understand social media from a theological perspective. The project does not instruct religious leaders in the basics of using social media, but it explores the theological questions the new digital age inspires.
“There is no demarcation of public and private space,” asserted Anne Foerst at her Wednesday 2 p.m. Interfaith Lecture. Her topic was “Social Media and the Church.”
“I went to a conference, and people were constantly texting. They seemed to think it was a waste of time to meet new people,” she said. “That takes away the joy of going to a conference.”
Foerst is associate professor for computer science at St. Bonaventure University, and she has worked in the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“Have you seen people texting in church or at a funeral?” Foerst asked.
Humans are physical, communal beings, and the universal presence of social media is changing how people interact.
Have you ever owned a 78, 45 or 33? Have you called an audio device a HiFi or a record player? Have you owned an 8-track? Have you mailed a letter, or looked up a phone number in the phonebook? Have you been to the library — for books?
If you answered yes to any of those questions, then you are an analog immigrant, the Rev. Otis Moss III told his audience during Tuesday’s 2 p.m. Interfaith Lecture in the Hall of Philosophy.
In this week’s second religious lecture on the Week Six theme, “The Life of Faith and the Digital Age,” Moss discussed the societal clash of the “analog immigrants” and the “digital natives” in a lecture titled “God, Google and iPods: Digital Faith and Analog Religion.” He argued that our religious society is separated by an understanding of technology — there are the digital natives, who were born in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, and who live in a world in which technology is based on the binary codes — and the analog immigrants, people born earlier who are accustomed to wave technology and stationary forms of technology.
When the Rev. Paul Raushenbush’s partner’s mother’s health worsened last year, events progressed rapidly. While the two were by her side in the hospital, they learned she had about two to three hours to live. Using his smartphone, Raushenbush connected to the Internet and found prayers for the dying. They said a prayer as she died, and one after she passed away.
That would not have been possible without Raushenbush’s cellphone or the wealth of religious information available online. The advent and progression of the Internet and digital technology are changing the way people in our world experience life, particularly the study and practice of religion.
On Monday, Raushenbush, senior religion editor at The Huffington Post, opened the Week Six religion theme, “The Life of Faith and the Digital Age,” with a lecture titled “Behold, I Set before You a Blessing and a Curse — The Power of the Internet in Our Spiritual Lives.” In his lecture, Raushenbush focused on the Internet’s positive and negative impacts on religion, and he also discussed how religious leaders and practitioners can transform it into a positive place for faith and spirituality.
The Chautauquan Daily 