The Internet in Mission and Ecumenism ... - Reformiert online

gap between sender and receiver is reduced 24 . In this interactive culture there is a high speed
sending, sharing, and transfer of information and data to each other. This interactivity encourages
people to participate and to interact with each other in an easy manner and enables them to
establish a new democratic and equal relationship 25 .
c. Convergence and hypertext
The digital convergent technology brings together many other analogical media operations
into a digital language and is enabled, thereby, to converge the applications. For example this
digital technology is useful in bringing together audio-visual, written and 3-D texts and in linking up
the operations of a radio, video and short message service. Digital Technology is able to transcend
some of the limitations of previous technologies. “In cyberspace we can construct worlds that have
no connection with physical reality 26 ”. Because of the availability of hypertext the exploration is
made possible according to one’s own interest. Communication is not simply making sense but
being there to recognise and accept the other being present in the net. In the net culture there is a
choice for the users to continue to search as they wish through hypertexts. There is no ‘start’ and
‘end’ point in one’s search. The person becomes a ‘wandering self’ in the wilderness of
information.
d. Digital world and Virtual Self
The Internet provides a self-identity for many users. It helps the individuals to form their real
and virtual self with an interaction through and with the net. The Internet provides a multiplicity of
the self – by projecting oneself into a web and seeing a self without reflecting the self itself 27
[Turkle 1997]. At times there is a gap between the projected self and the real self - highlighting the
diversity of the character of the person. The Internet not only provides a space for social relations
to occur, but provides the tools needed to enter that space [Jones 1995]. The net creates a desire
for more interaction and information about anything and everything, virtual community and virtual
presence. Digital technology removes us from the physical experience of the other and from
contact with the physical reality. There is an absence of physical language 28 . On the net, one surfs.
This passage from one point to the other on the net is reflected sometimes, in this style of life, as
the passage from one experience to another, but in its more positive and mature form it is
experienced as a culture of separation, of non-affiliation to something specific. It favours the spirit
of search. It is a culture that offers and is generous, although it can also be a place of abuse and
embezzlement 29 . The user often tends to float the ‘self’ with strange identities and establish
relationship within what he or she has created about herself or himself. Elizabeth M. Reid
describes “the formation of a new society out of Internet Relay Chat (IRC)” 30 . The users of IRC
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This new technology is directing communities towards a new type of society where they become principle
organisers [Kellner 1995:2]. The Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs) provide unlimited access to anything on the
Net – converging the texts into audio-visual-written- graphic multimedia texts. There is an open access to
anyone to create his or her own website. Information is fragmented [Heather Campbell, Cultural Implications
of the Internet & Postmodernity, pp39-47, in Interactions: Theology Meets Film,TV and the Internet. Edited
by Heidi Campbell and Jolyon Mitchell Edinburgh: CTPI, 1999].
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"We are seeing a revitalization of society. The frameworks are being redesigned from the bottom up. A
new more democratic world is becoming possible. ... The Net seems to open a new lease on life for people.
Social connections which were never before possible, or which were relatively hard to achieve, are now
facilitated by the Net. Geography and time are no longer boundaries. Social limitations and conventions no
longer prevent potential friendships or partnerships. In this manner netizens are meeting other netizens from
far-away and close by that they might never have met without the Net."
Stanely Hauerwas, A Community of Character, (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame, 1981), 44.
26
David Lochhead, Shifting Realities: Information Technology and the Church. Geneva: WCC, 1997, p.68.
27
Turkle,S. Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet, London: Phoenix-Orion Books,Ltd 1997.
28
David Lochhead, Shifting Realities: Information Technology and the Church. Geneva: WCC, 1997.
29
Jones, S ed Cybersociety, London: Sage 1995.
30
Reid, Electropolis: Communication and Community on the Internet Relay Chat, 1991. For more valuable
reading on cultural issues in cyberspace, see Elizabeth M. Reid, Cultural Formations in Text-Based Virtual
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