This past weekend in the Guardian Weekend section there was an article about how the web is both a part of and shaping the way we socially interact. It gives me no end of amusement for example, to write this instalment of my blog, knowing that I’m participating in this process as much as I am observing it. A moment of amusement which flows neatly into my starting point.

Over the past six months or more, I’ve been interested in ways in which new technology can be, or already are being used for the enjoyment of spiritual communities. My own community has had a web page for a few years now, and to our amazement it receives on average 1100 hits a month! For many years there have been OC/IC chat groups and news lists which have both brought people together, and made me think that sometimes, all we Independents do is eat our own young. More recently it has been possible to do so much more – video conferencing via SKYPE, uploading MP3s of talks, interviews, music, liturgies, video blogging, video clips on your web site, or on more dedicated sites like YouTube. All of these “new” possibilities offer wonderful and creative opportunities to connect people all over the place. They also mean that news lists and emails on their own are becoming, well, a bit boring – the web has truly gone multimedia and it does not take much to get started. Though, I’ll be the first to confess that the endless possibilities are still a bit overwhelming to me. What really interests me, however, is to see how these neo-tech possibilities will affect spiritual communities that are structurally historically low tech, and conservative (in their mechanics not necessarily in the thinking reflecting their particular tradition).

One point that I’ve seen raised in a number of articles is that until a piece of technology is no longer conceptualised by users as “technology” – and therefore treated as something alien, and even fleeting, its use is seen as dubious, and treated with no small degree of caution. The Guardian article uses the wheel and the book as examples. Both are extremely important pieces of technology, but I doubt any of us would have immediately considered them as such, nor consciously recalled their revolutionary effect on society, merely because we all take them for granted – both items are ubiquitous. In another article produced by the Anglican Society of St. Justus, uses the car and the telephone as more modern examples; pointing out that we do not consciously consider the means by which we accomplish the connection with others, and so the phone and the car are almost “invisible” and are not barriers between people. A perfect example of this can be seen in any European city where mobile phone use reaches 90% and higher. Ride the public transport here in London and you will find no shortage of people conducting conversations via mobile as though the other party were sitting immediately next to them – it is even more unnerving (or annoying depending on the volume level and the nature of the conversation, which to date I’ve heard everything from sex to firing the other party, to conducting “delicate” and one would assume, confidential, business negotiations) when the observed individual is wearing a blue-tooth headset (Borg implant I call them) and at first sight, appear to be talking to no one in particular, or themselves. The technology of the mobile phone, is I think more interesting because we are already comfortable with the “idea” of a phone, and so have none of the wariness about a mobile phone we might have with say conducting a church service via video conference over the net.

Our OC/IC community is diverse, which allows for a wide range of experience and approach to new technology. It is the approach that I’m interested in. How does new technology affect our theology; or do we simply attempt to fit it into existing theological models? How, for example, can our historically low tech communities, which rely on in person face to face interaction to conduct meaningful events like liturgy, ordination, and other prayer and worship type services take full advantage of new technology and maintain the integrity of the moment? What I mean by this is, how, for example, is something that is so integral to our identity as OC/IC folk like a sacrament, affected, if at all, by say being conducted in real time, via video-chat? Would this mean we need to re-conceptualise “sacrament”? Would it be necessary to define – perhaps clearly for the first time in some instances – what constitutes the efficaciousness of sacrament, of “church”?

The Guardian article that spawned this instalment of my blog referred to the changes in the way we use the internet of the past five years as “Web 2.0”. It grabbed my attention because for the past nine months or so, in conversations within my own community, I’ve been wondering how new technology, and the social changes it has brought in the past five years, is affecting our low tech, conservative, conceptualisation of spiritual community. As I’ve mentioned on my community’s web site a number of times over the past year, 60% or more of internet users use it for religious and spiritual purposes (the next highest statistic is that 90% or more are using it for porn! Hmmm. . . . draw that Venn diagram!) this is a huge audience. Already we’ve seen how chat rooms and sites like Blogger, YouTube, Fliker, and now virtual reality sites that let you have an alternate personality, and “live” and move in a virtual online community, have revolutionised the way we interact with and meet people, how we bring people together. At the same time, traditional, low tech communities, like parish churches, are . . . well. . . .mausoleums to a dead age of localised community. I have a natural bias that the OC/IC community, with all of our foibles, is the vanguard of the future of the Christian tradition, but I cannot help but wonder, if the small personalised networks of laity, and clergy that we’ve enjoyed for the past 75 years, and which for the past 20 years have relied heavily on new technologies to find and interact with one another might not now, with the emergence of neo-tech community be at the forefront of “Ekklesia 2.0”?