Heaven forbid!

Can you say dystopia? Alas, there is truth in there.

Mendalla

AWE-SOME!

the sermons will also be rated via something like Yelp

(and/or some kind of social currency/gaming)

and the sermonizer could do the sermon via telepresence

something like this

(and was how edward snowden was able to give a TED Vancouver talk recently...look it up on youtube...)

heck, imagine a ceremony where not only the officiant is telepresencing but also the audience :3

plus, people could have multiple telepresence robots...

and eventually our intelligent agents (think siri but much better) will, by paying attention to us, learning our behaviours, will be able to act in our stead, write messages, buy groceries, etc etc

(the internet has an elephant's memory, so everyone will be able to access what anyone has said on the 'net...)

eventually, everything is going to be connected to the 'net...there are already whole foods signs with face recognition software...a bookstore that, using sound, can make it sound like a voice is talking INSIDE YOUR HEAD...

imagine having to consult your tie because it says it is time to clean it

then again, we can have awesome scenes eventually like one of my favourite scenes from an X Man comic.  at a funeral for an x-man, xavier links up everyone's minds and they all experience the sermon collectively...

there is this phrase/meme going around called 'the internet of things'

also, imagine real time updates in our visual fields during the sermons in a kind of hypertext way (midrash) where we will be able to access the internet when we want to know aboot any words or phrases or whatnot that the officiant is using...we can compare other sermons...we could use a vr interface and choose a 'theme' that would be overlain on the ceremony...like your sacristy could become like a place in Palestine...or everyone could be floating in space looking down on our galaxy...imagine how this could be used to teach and explore?

people could take on the roles of the disciples of Jesus, with this overlay, and 'talk' to 'him' in real time...

"Scientists Find a Way to Read Minds

Scientists have used brain scanners to detect and reconstruct the faces that people are thinking of, according to a a study accepted for publication this month in the journal NeuroImage.

In the study, scientists hooked participants up to an fMRI brain scanner -- which determines activity in different parts of the brain by measuring blood flow -- and showed them images of faces. Then, using only the brain scans, the scientists were able to create images of the faces the people were looking at."

from here http://news.discovery.com/human/psychology/scientists-find-a-way-to-read...

Imagine that technology made smaller and cheaper, so that you or I could use it.

Now imagine a church service using that technology...brings new meaning to the term communion :3

Heck, maybe some churches could use it as a Loyalty Tester ;3

Rating sermons via Yelp!? Oh, come on. If you ever wanted to dumb down religion, that's the way to do it. Make it another online popularity contest. I can see it now. The preachers who preach softball, feel-good sermons get 5 stars while the hardball prophetic sermons (who are the real 5 star sermons IMO) get marked down because they are "downers".

Sorry, Innana, there are some good things that can come out of technologizing services (e.g. having a copy of the sermon, the minster's slide deck, and relevant readings sent immediately to your tablet) but using the kind of social rating schemes for sermons that are used for products? Can't see real value in it. I'm not even totally comfortable with RateMyMD and RateMyProfessor type services.

Mendalla

As funny as this post is - how many UC are so out of touch with reality........not to even think about these things......

On a cautionary note:

George

damn, i remember when i used to be frightened of the borg...then they made them so soft n cuddly...

here's greg bear, yakking aboot some of this stuff

what will happen will happen, what wont happen wont happen, those who try to control what will happen will be called 'statists', those who try to let things happen will be called 'right wing' or 'darwinists'...

and so it goes...

oh yeah, some awesomely fun Tom Scott (audience note:  these HAVEN'T HAPPENED...they are just Tom Scott riffing on possibilities...)

And here's a vid i found particularly fun & gorgeous