analogthink

So, lately, I find myself wondering if I really have what it takes to get through a PhD program. I am not sure I can devote the next 5+ years, while working full time as well, to get this degree. Why? I barely have time and energy for everything else in life, let alone this extra degree.

I am intrigued by the subject and the research, but I am just not sure this is for me. I have no idea for sure, but today I feel extremely discouraged, unmotivated, tired, and I realize I will not be able to do this completely with the life I have now. What must be sacrificed?

So today, when I was out for coffee with my friend Josh, he challenged me to only use the term "information superhighway" when speaking of the internet. So, for the next week, whenever I am supposed to use the forbidden term, I will instead say "information superhighway."

So there, take that Al Gore.

phil

Zoe and Addy

Here is another recent video with our two older girls Zoe and Addy in it. It was used in church to promote our upcoming "Vision" for reaching out/serving/helping to single moms and their children in our area.

Enjoy

phil

So this week I have been reading through "The Disappearance of Childhood." This book is very interesting and does a great job of summarizing the transition to print through the printing press, and then moving back toward a more visual culture and "electric communication" as both he and McLuhan would call it. It is very interesting that when communication began to move faster than human travel, it changed the way we communicated dramatically, removing the personality from it, and subjecting it to a more mass audience.

I will probably detail some of this in my paper for the current tutorial I am taking on how new media is effecting culture. Some of this sort thing will probably go into the historical section. The detailing of both of the above mentioned transitions will help me to see insight into new media and the furthering of electric communication.

Phil

Yesterday I started back to auditing classes as part of my tutorial I am taking this quarter. I am taking two classes that directly related to New Media and their impact on culture. One is taught by my mentor Ryan Bolger, and the other by Barry Taylor, who is also on my Doctoral committee.

One thing I was struck by yesterday from Ryan's lecture, was that of the idea of where the Emerging Church emerged from. He talked about how as he did his initial research about 8-10 years ago, they discovered many groups "emerging" (before they were actually called emerging/emergent church). The typical type of leader in these groups were someone who had a story something like this: They had been a youth pastor for 8-10 years, and had been a part of a large church. They were often judged on their effectiveness by the number of people in their youth group, and they commonly wondered if there must be more to church and ministry than that. Often, they left the church dissatisfied and felt that they had "fallen away". Many times they were in fact still very interested in Jesus, but not the institutional church. After leaving a church, they started to hang out with friends to have a Bible study and it eventually turned into something of a small gathering or house church, in which the elements were given, etc.

Over time, the leaders of these gatherings began to realize that there were others feeling the same way, and eventually this "movement" was given a name: Emergent/Emerging Church.

I found this origin story very interesting. I know numerous people that feel this way, some identifying themeselves with the Emerging movement, and some not. Some of them may not even know much about it at all, and yet feel this way. One of the interesting things about all of this to me is that the people who feel this way and leave (or want to leave) their churches, are not necessarily disgruntled people, but people who just feel that there is perhaps a better (or at least different) way to live out faith in Jesus.

Perhaps they are right.

In Taylor's class we discussed a lot of the influence of media throughout the years, and even went into McLuhan a bit. Oh McLuhan, I am sure I will talk about him more in the future, but he was an incredible, if not also quirky, thinker and writer. I am inspired by his writings and perspectives on media and culture. He brought forth the phrase, "The Medium is the Message" which is so influential of a perspective in media studies still.

OK, enough for one day.

Phil

So, I had for a while decided to stop blogging on this site, and only blog on my conversantlife.com blog, but have since changed my mind. I am now back in school, and so I am going to be posting reflections on some of the stuff I am working through in my program.

I also thought I would post two videos today. The first is from almost 3 years ago. A good friend of mine named Theo filmed and edited this video of my amazing daughter Zoe feeding the homeless.

The second video is well, a remix of the first with my friend Bill. I will leave it at that. They did this one for my birthday a couple years ago.

Needless to say, when Zoe saw the second video she cried while everyone else laughed. She now thinks it is funnier however.

Phil

So, I think I might just end this blog. Blogging is coming to an end on this blog and it no longer serves the purpose it once did for me, so this may be the last entry. My wife keeps people updated on family affairs on her blog, and I blog on media related stuff my other blog on conversantlife.com here.

At any rate, I will probably be re-doing the analogthink site at some point to be a site that has my homestudio recordings on it, as well as some other stuff on it, but this blog will likely go away. Thanks for reading in the meantime.

Phil