(This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in
Liturgy, 28 (3): 7–16, 2013 on April 22, 2013, available online:
http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/0458063X.2013.774881)
LET ME PUT IT ANOTHER WAY:
DIGITAL MEDIA AND THE FUTURE OF THE LITURGY
James F. Caccamo
December 4, 2013 marks a significant day in the modern history of Christian
worship: the fiftieth anniversary of the promulgation of The Second Vatican
Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy. While building upon existing
liturgical movements, Sacrosanctum Concilium inaugurated a period of official
liturgical change that thoroughly transformed Roman Catholic public
worship. In doing so, it remade the way that Catholics experience the
presence of God and community as mediated in linguistic, physical, and
social realities. Roman Catholic liturgy would never be the same.
The period of dramatic liturgical change following Vatican II has had
only one equal, namely the period following the Council of Trent. The two
sets of changes ran in rather different directions, with Trent inaugurating a
restoration and regularization of the liturgy while Vatican II dismantled and
rebuilt it.1 Yet, despite the different trajectories they described, the councils
share a fundamental commonality in originating as responses to transitional
phases in the history of Western culture. The Council of Trent was called
amidst the wars of religion, the Protestant Reformation, and the transition
from the Renaissance to the early-modern period in Europe. Vatican II was
called in the aftermath of two world wars, an explosion of science and
technology, the advent of youth culture, growing awareness of the
developing world and as—some would put it—the Roman Catholic Church
finally decided to deal with the enlightenment and modernism. In response
to major cultural changes, the liturgy was twice transformed.
If we keep digging, though, it is possible to discern another important
commonality in the forces that drove these liturgical changes. In both cases,
the social changes that drove the councils were themselves rooted in seismic
shifts in the means of communication. It is generally recognized that the
advent of movable type—what is sometimes called the “first wave” of media
change—was the necessary precondition for the many cultural changes in
European culture to which Trent responded by enabling widespread and
unprecedented access to texts and education, diversity of interpretation, the
centralization of political and intellectual authority, and standardization.2
In contrast, scholars and pastors generally overlook the fact that Vatican
II was also called on the heels of a period of profound development in
communication technology. The period between the 1830s and 1920s—often
v 7 v
Liturgy, 28 (3): 7–16, 2013 Copyright © The Liturgical Conference ISSN: 0458-063X
DOI: 10.1080/0458063X.2013.774881
referred to as the “second wave” of media change—gave birth to electric and
electronic media, including the telegraph, phonograph, radio, film, telephone,
and television. These technologies were no less powerful than moveable type,
bringing instantaneous communication, connection to immense audiences,
an explosion of visual and musical culture, and for the first time the ability to
bring an entire nation together in a single, live media experience. Over time,
these technologies became the foundation of entertainment media, enabling
it to take center stage in the American household, reconfiguring physical
spaces and changing patterns of interaction. As Pope John XXIII considered
convening Vatican II, he was greatly concerned about all this new media.3
It surely was no accident that the bishops at the Second Vatican Council
chose December 4, 1963 to release their first documents.4 As the four hundredth anniversary of the closing of the Council of Trent, the bishops used
the date to signal their view of the Council as the latest chapter in the Catholic Church’s ongoing transformation in dialogue with culture, a dialogue
seen clearly in the new liturgy. Yet, while Sacrosanctum Concilium is often
remembered as the first document from Vatican II, it actually shares the
honor with another document: the Decree on the Media of Social
Communications, Inter Mirifica. While this timing was essentially an accident,
their promulgation together is poetic and even symbolic. The Councils of
Trent and Vatican II show us not merely that cultural change and liturgical
change go hand in hand, but also that media change can instigate both.
It is certainly important that ministers, liturgists, and theologians continue to consider the relationship between liturgy and contemporary media,
especially in light of the social dominance of entertainment culture borne by
the second wave of media change. However, it is also incumbent upon us to
turn our minds forward to begin to think more fully about the changes that
lie ahead of us. We are, after all, living in the midst of the third wave of media change: the advent of digital information and communication technologies (ICTs). We are far enough into the digital revolution to begin to see some
fundamental cultural shifts occurring as digital media transform ways in
which people socialize, learn, work, understand, and entertain themselves.
Indeed, while traditional categories of entertainment still exist, we are moving into a media landscape in which these are no longer distinct. With the
advent of “gamification”—giving digital “achievement” rewards for
completing even the most humble tasks—work, play, relationships, education, and entertainment live increasingly in the same space.5
Fifty years down the road, we have a good sense of how the second wave
of media has affected culture. As a result we can respond in our congregations, retranslating the liturgy to use what is enlivening and resist what is
destructive. In contrast, we are just beginning to perceive the trends of third
wave media. The relational, spiritual, physical, and spatial landscape is still
developing, and our understanding of how this will impact liturgy will be
evolving for some time. At the same time, it is possible to begin to discern
some ways in which digital media are transforming some of our basic sensibilities. If history is any guide, these changes will require that we retranslate
the medium that is liturgy so that it maintains its ability to mediate the
experience of God. “Full, conscious, and active participation”—be it in
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liturgy or life—will remain paramount, but they may very well mean something new as we move deeper into the transformations of the digital revolution.6
Curation and Active Participation
One factor that is emerging as a primary element in the digital media
revolution is curation. Curation is the use of human or machine intelligence to
filter information, symbols, and experiences in order to focus attention on
items that are most relevant for a particular audience or audience member.
Curation is an old and likely familiar idea that has always played a large part
in media. The first wave of media change transformed the world by reducing
the time and costs associated with printing, increasing accessibility of texts,
from Bibles to broadsides. The second wave of media change further expanded access to information and communication with the addition of television and radio. The catch to all this access, however, was a high level of curation. In the print and electronic media worlds, curation effectively constricted
what was published: publishers had catalog limitations, newspapers had
page limits, television shows had limited time slots, and all were beholden to
advertisers. In practice, this often meant that opportunities for critical and
opposing viewpoints could be quite limited.
In response to the limiting role of curation in the first and second wave of
media change, the rhetoric of the early days of the digital revolution portrayed curation as a critical problem that technology would finally solve. As
Stuart Brand put it, the cost of making ideas public is becoming so low that
“information wants to be free.”7 We can now know whatever we want,
whenever we want. With the need for curators out of the way, all voices can
be heard in the new democracy of information.
Unfortunately, this only turned out to be partially true. With this explosion of content came a new problem: information overload. We are overrun
with news, blogs, YouTube videos, Facebook walls, photo streams,
independent music, social networking, email, news, indie films, books, correspondence, and websites. As a result, we are returning to curation as a basic
survival skill. Rather than wade through absolutely everything, we set up
systems so that all we see is what we want to know about. We choose news
portals and Twitter feeds. We subscribe to email alerts. We choose social networking sites to keep up with our friends and trending topics. We have become accustomed to—if not dependent upon—these modern curators, and in
the process, accustomed to the way that the world is shaped by them.
Notably, curation is also central to liturgy. The lectionary, after all, is the
Bible curated to emphasize particular parts of salvation history and God’s
revelation. The ordo and sacramentary curate prayer styles, creating a normative set of practices for valid Catholic worship. Prerequisites for ordination
and ministerial training curate the community by barring some people from
ministry, shaping our experience power and authority. Like all curation,
these practices shape our conceptual horizons and spiritual practices. As a
result, its power is immense.
Increased level of comfort with and dependence upon curation practices
among American Christians is likely to have a significant impact on the levels
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to which they choose to participate actively in liturgy. This impact runs
along a number of lines, but centers on the continuing question of whether or
not liturgy will remain a primary curator of meaning and mediation in the
Christian life.
One important factor in liturgy’s ability to act as a curator involves people’s desire to play an active role in the selection and creation of curation
mechanisms. These days, we choose particular shows to download rather
than take what the networks give us. We set up our own RSS feeds and
email updates rather than let others filter information. This stands in contrast
to traditional liturgical traditions in the U.S., where people have little opportunity for meaningful contribution to the focus of worship. In a Catholic parish I attended in El Salvador in the early 1990s, nearly half of the ninety minute long homily was comprised of comments offered by members of the
congregation. But here in the U.S., liturgical curation tends to follow the
popular parenting phrase, “you get what you get and you don’t get upset.”
This approach will become increasingly unfamiliar to people as the third
wave of media change progresses.
Another important factor to contend with is increased competition
among institutions that want to act as curators. There was a time when there
were not a lot of curators of worldviews. There were churches, governments,
news agencies, and educational institutions. Now, curators are innumerable.
Television networks, film-makers, politicians, preachers, bloggers, corporations, and celebrities vie to shape the way we think and act, and many are
more compelling than your average parish. Even within Christianity there is
immense competition, with voices loud and soft ranging from mainstream to
the fringe and everywhere in-between. It is easy to lose sight of the local
community as a locus for active engagement amidst all the hew and cry.
A third factor that affects liturgy’s influence as a primary curator is the
centrality of trust in the choice of curators. Legal scholar Daniel Solove’s
work suggests that the trust relationship is emerging as the central dynamic
in contemporary connective lives.8 As with personal information, people select curators that provide good information and engaging connections, that
provide value for cost, and most importantly have demonstrated that they
have people’s best interests at heart. In short, people choose curators they
trust. Trust, however, is a complicated matter. The opacity of many purveyors of media and information leads people to trust organizations that really
don’t merit it. Unfortunately, trustworthiness is not always in abundant supply in churches today. Within my own Catholic tradition, the confidence of
longtime parishoners has been shaken by painful decisions to close schools
and parishes as well as high profile news items like the recent convictions of
Msgr. William Lynn in Philadelphia and Bishop Robert Finn on various
charges relating to clergy sexual abuse.9 Along the way, trust has eroded.
The growth in personal curation as a pervasive factor in peoples’ media
saturated lives suggests that there are challenges ahead for churches that
want to establish—or re-establish—liturgy as a primary curator. Given the
intense competition and the complexity of trust, we should expect people to
turn to curators other than churches. People see YouTube, Facebook, and
Twitter as adding significant value by filtering reality. Yet, it also suggests
that such a trend is not a foregone conclusion. People want to actively engage
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with information and media that entertains and informs them. They are
seeking good curators who they can trust to provide it to them. We know
that liturgy possesses a great power to act as a master curator by establishing
a primary framework for interpreting human experience. There is no reason
that churches cannot do what Fulton Sheen, Billy Graham, and Mother
Angelica did during the second wave of media change, namely use today’s
media to engage people in the death and resurrection of Jesus. If we can do
that, liturgy will continue to have a place in the curated life.
Constant Connection and Full Participation
A second factor emerging as a constituent element in the digital media
revolution is what we might call constant connection. Constant connection is
the practice of maintaining engagement with media and social networks
throughout one’s waking hours. Some of our connection time involves
maintaining close relationships. For instance, as of the third quarter of 2011,
teens between the ages of 12 and 17 sent and received an average of 167 texts
a day.10 Other connection time is taken up with the diversion of broad social
networks. As of the summer of 2011, Facebook users spent more than 700
billion minutes per month on the site; that’s an average of 933 minutes per
month, per person.11 But a great deal of our connection time still involves
traditional entertainment media. In 2011, American adults spent an average
of 11 hours and 33 minutes per day with major media, often multi-tasking.
We spent 4:34 hours with television and video, 2:47 hours with traditional
media via the internet, 1:34 hours with radio, and 1:05 hours using media on
mobile devices.12 No question: we are plugged in all the time.
In broad outlines, constant connection will be another familiar idea to
Christians, not merely as a media reality, but as a theological one as well.
The Christian vision of the human person is founded not in isolation, but in
the fundamentally social nature of human beings. Love and commitment,
friendship and relationality, and finding one’s place within community are
necessary components of the full human life, one marked by integral human
development. To me, this is part of the genius of the local community,
especially as it is expressed in the parish model of my spiritual home, Roman
Catholicism. Rather than favor an ecclesial structure that encouraged a
voluntarist stance toward church choice, Catholicism chose a geographical
approach. You worship where you live with the people you live with. The
people next to you in the pew are the same people you see at the store, or at
the beauty salon, and the schoolyard. The faith community exists not just on
Sunday, but every day.
This close connection between family, social circle, neighborhood, and
Church is becoming more of a historical artifact every day. As we’ve become
more mobile, our neighborhoods have become more diverse. You are
unlikely to find the Norwegian Lutheran town or the urban neighborhood
full of Italian Catholics. The people we see on the block are not necessarily
the people we see on Sunday. We can no longer rely on geography alone for
connection, so we have developed a variety of connection strategies to fill our
lives with people and information, many of which depend upon our gadgets.
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Undoubtedly, our practices of constant connection will impact the ways
in which Christians participate in liturgical worship. For instance, it seems
likely that worshippers will expect liturgies to facilitate much more robust
personal connections. To be clear here, I am not suggesting some kind of
desire for cheap sentimentality and crass emotionality—ways of mimicking
experience without really experiencing anything. Rather, as constant
connection becomes normative, people will increasingly expect full and
authentic engagement in liturgy that befits the social nature of the human
person. Theologically, this makes sense: liturgy and sacrament aim to heal
the rift between the person and God. Ultimately, they are about grace, about
union with God in the midst of the assembled Body of Christ. For those who
are constantly connected, liturgies with generic sermons, shallow music, rote
recitation of prayers, cheap and easy connections to popular culture, and
people nodding off or doing personal devotions can be a profoundly
disconnected place.
Additionally, it also seems likely that worshippers will want fuller
connections between the Sunday liturgy and the many moments of love,
sacrament, and sacrifice throughout their lives. Part of what made parishes
healthy in the heyday of American Catholicism was the perpetual contact
that threw people together inside and outside of church. In the late twentieth
century, Americans lost some of that connectedness. As digital technologies
are making the biggest city feel like a small town, people are beginning to
expect it again. To use the categories of Karl Rahner, people will want to
experience the connections between the “the Mass of the church” and the
“Mass of life.”13 There is a great opportunity here to reweave the tapestry of
parish life if we are willing to rearticulate the structure of what that looks in
ways that draw upon the strengths of ICTs.
At the same time, we need to be realistic: it is entirely likely that people
will also find it increasingly difficult to do their part in connecting in the
liturgy. Constant connection through technology is forming many people in
what some refer to as “continuous partial attention”: the inability to fully
focus on anything fully for very long.14 We see this every week when people
check their cell phone during Sunday worship. Many people’s technology
practices militate against the kind of deep and sustained attention and
engagement that the liturgy requires. Ministers can be too quick to blame
congregants when poor liturgy is greeted with poor participation, yet asking
people to pay attention for an entire hour is asking a lot these days. We are
becoming used to connections, but haven’t necessarily developed the habits
needed to maintain deep ones. All the liturgical retranslating in the world
won’t help people join together in authentic worship if we are unable to
authentically attend to one another and God.
Self-Instrumentalization and Conscious Participation
A third factor that is emerging as a primary element in the digital media
revolution is what we might call normatization of consenting instrumentalization
of the human person, or self-instrumentalization for short. In May 2012, the business world saw the Initial Public Offering of one of the most influential
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software companies in the world: Facebook. With its social media site,
Facebook could be said to be in the business of connecting people. That
would, however, be using the term “business” quite loosely. IPOs are about
providing shareholder value, not friendship. In those terms, Facebook is in
the business of selling advertisements. More specifically, Facebook is in the
business of selling that are tailored specifically for users based on
information that they have freely disclosed: demographic information, group
affiliations, likes and dislikes, and online activity when connected to the
system.
The crux of the matter, however, is not that Facebook has advertisements.
Ads are nothing new. What sets Facebook (and companies like it) apart from
other software companies is that the users are not the customers. Facebook
makes it money not from people using the site, but by providing your data to
advertisers. All that social networking stuff is merely the machinery that
manufactures information for their real customers: ad buyers. You are not the
customer. You are the raw material; the natural resource consumed in the ad
production process.
The emergence in the tech world of business models grounded in the
instrumentalization of the human person has led virtual reality pioneer Jaron
Lanier to exclaim, “you are not a gadget!”15 This puts him in good company,
historically speaking. Immanuel Kant rejected the same idea in one of his formulations of the categorical imperative. Karl Marx called attention to it in his
labor theory of value. And it sits very uneasily with the ethic of Jesus. Treating people as means rather than ends necessarily impinges upon their dignity
as human persons, rending authentic relationality and transforming the other
from subject to object. It is for these reasons that Christians have worked for
the rights of objectified and marginalized people around the world.
Unfortunately, Lanier is a lone voice in the tech world. Selfinstrumentalization has become widely accepted as part of the cost of
participation in the digital world. In large measure, this is the result of what
seems to be a skewed perception of the relationship between the cost of
disclosing personal information and the benefits of technology.16 People are
willing to act as natural resources because they fear living without constant
connection. Indeed, we are so comfortable with self-instrumentalization that
we are not even conscious that we are doing it.
Its probably fair to say that we have been heading in this direction for
years. Self-instrumentalization has been a staple of the entertainment
industry at least since explosion of “reality television” in the early 1990s.
People’s lives, intimate interactions, fears, hopes, and crushing defeats are
commodities to be exchanged for a moment of notoriety as television
companies count profits from the sidelines. And as Jaques Ellul and Peter
Berger warned decades ago, the further we move into a technological
productive system, the more difficult it becomes to think about ourselves or
the world in any way that does not have instrumental reason as its core.17
Instrumental reason may have been crowned during the industrial
revolution, but technology has brought it home in the form of tiny, daily
practices that seem insignificant, yet have huge ramifications.
This increasing comfort with self-instrumentalization will transform
participation in liturgical worship in a number of ways, but perhaps most
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strongly by challenging the underlying rationality schemes at the heart of the
liturgy itself. In part, adopting a primarily instrumental understanding of
the value of the human person affects the subject pole of the liturgical event,
the person involved in liturgical prayer. By understanding the human
person as raw material to be exchanged for benefits, we run the risk of
forfeiting the anthropological undergirding of the liturgy: namely that we are
beings imbued with dignity, uniqueness, and lovability who, simultaneously,
are in need of reconciliation.
The liturgy is set deeply within an
understanding of a God who desires relation with humankind not as an
event of production, but as an event of love and gift. To lose conscious
connection to love and gift risks rendering the liturgy un-relatable by
divorcing it from the Paschal Mystery.
Adopting a primarily instrumental understanding of human value also
affects the object pole of the liturgical event, namely the liturgy itself. In a
context pervaded by self-instrumentalization, it is not a huge leap in logic to
begin to understand liturgy not as some sort of authentic response,
sacramental encounter, or just recompense to God, but rather as a kind of
technology itself. With its controlled forms, limited variations, modular
structure, and bureaucratic oversight, there is a strong family resemblance.
Liturgy is a regular, standardized, and repeatable procedure that reliably
produces particular outcomes given the correct inputs. In effect, liturgy can
appear to be a machine for the production of grace. Certainly, this
profoundly misses the point of liturgy. It is also unlikely to be a compelling
model to draw people into ongoing participation in the life of the Church.
Conclusion: How Can I Put It?
In his novel Echo, Jack McDevitt makes the observation that “truth comes
in two formats: insights, and collisions with reality.”18 For many people, the
third wave of media change certainly feels more like the latter than the former.
This essay has sought to identify some initial dynamics that Christian churches
are colliding with as digital technologies powerfully reshape American life.
The practically-minded among you have likely noticed the major topic
that is absent from this essay, namely specific recommendations for liturgical
reforms that should be made in response to the digital media revolution.
Such recommendations are absent not due to some accident or a lack of
thoughts on the subject. Rather, they are absent because it is not clear to me
that we know enough yet about the emerging changes to make significant
revisions to the liturgy in a responsible manner. Some churches have
explored the use of digital technologies as part of their ministries like parish
websites, prayer emails, and digital tithing, but few have deeply engaged
broader questions of transformation of meaning structures and identity. The
same goes for scholars, who—with several notable exceptions—tend to
ignore new media or reject it out of hand.19 To understand the way in which
liturgy will be pushed, pulled, twisted, and reshaped, we need to understand
the ways in which human beings are being pushed, pulled, twisted, and
reshaped by digital media much more deeply than we do. We all have a lot
of work to do.
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Importantly, an understanding of digital media culture is vital not just
for liturgy, but for the broader world as well. Christianity has a role to play
in helping people develop life-giving habits of media use: habits of asking
questions and looking beyond the trending stories, of authentic connection
with the self and others, of paying attention for extended periods of time, of
recognizing the inherent dignity of all, of silence amidst distraction, and of
solidarity with those pushed to the technological margins. Indeed, the
Church has a good deal to say about full, conscious, and active participation
in life, not just the liturgy. Ultimately, we may find that what lies at the heart
of contemporary information and communication technology is a failed and
faulty vision of the world. In either case, Christian churches need to offer a
compelling and powerful imagination to provide the center of life that
technology does not afford. Such a vision can only emerge from the heart of
worship and can only be apprehended by those who know the language. The
bottom line is that, like it or not, these technologies have found a home in our
culture because people find value in them. It is left up to today’s keepers of
the liturgical traditions to do as the bishops at Trent and Vatican II did:
rephrase the liturgy for our new context.20
James F. Caccamo is an associate professor of Theology at Saint Joseph’s
University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is coauthor of the
multimedia resource Living Worship: A Multimedia Resource for
Students and Leaders
Notes
1. James White, Roman Catholic Liturgy: Trent to Today (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2003), 99.
2. Media theorist Clay Shirky puts it well when he says that movable type did not cause the
Protestant Reformation, but that the Reformation was not possible without it. See Here Comes
Everybody (New York: Penguin Press, 2008).
3. For an example of this concern, see Pope John XXIII’s 1959 Apostolic Letter Boni Pastoris,
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_xxiii/motu_proprio/documents/hf_j-xxiii_motu-proprio_
22021959_boni-pastoris_en.html (Accessed July 10, 2012).
4. White, Roman Catholic Liturgy, xiii.
5. On gamification as a way of life, see Jane McGonigal, Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better
and How They Can Change the World (New York: Penguin Press, 2011).
6 . Second Vatican Council, Sacrosanctum Concilium, 1963. http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_
councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19631204_sacrosanctum-concilium_en.html
(Accessed July 28, 2012), 12. The text as quoted is the generally accepted way in which the original
Latin text should translated. It is notable, however, that the Vatican’s current official English
translation reads “fully conscious, and active participation.”
7. Stuart Brand, “Discussion from the Hacker’s Conference, November 1984,” Whole Earth Review, 46
(May 1985); 49.
8. Daniel Solove. The Future of Reputation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007).
9. John P. Martin and Joseph A. Slobodzian, “Jury Convicts Lynn of One Count, Deadlocks on
Brennan,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, June 24, 2012, http://articles.philly.com/2012-06-24/news/32382871_
1_priests-cardinal-anthony-j-bevilacqua-district-attorney-seth-williams (Accessed September 13, 2012).
Mark Morris and Judy L. Thomas, “Bishop Finn Is Found Guilty of Failing to Report Child Abuse
Suspicions,” The Kansas City Star, September 6, 2012. http://www.kansascity.com/2012/09/06/
3800269/bishop-finn-verdict-guilty.html (Accessed September 13, 2012).
10. Amanda Lenhart, Teens, Smartphones & Texting, Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life
Project, March 19, 2012, 12. Http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2012/Teens-and-smartphones.aspx
(Accessed June 18, 2012).
11. Facebook. Http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics (Accessed August 26, 2011).
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12 . eMarketer Digital Intelligence, TV, Mobile See Gains in Viewing Time, December 12, 2011.
Http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1008728 (Accessed May 18, 2012).
13. Karl Rahner, The Christian Commitment, trans. by Cecily Hastings (New York: Sheed and
Ward,1963), 146f.
14. S. Craig Watson, The Young and the Digital (Boston: Beacon Press, 2009), 168. On related issues, see
also Howard Rheingold, Net Smart (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012), 44-49.
15. Jaron Lanier. You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010).
16. On the complex relationship between privacy concern and self-disclosure online, see Adam N.
Joinson, Ulf-Dietrich Reips, Tom Buchanan, and Carina B. Paine Schofield, “Privacy, Trust, and SelfDisclosure Online,” Human–Computer Interaction 25 (2010): 1–24.
17. Peter Berger, Brigitte Berger, and Hansfried Kellner, The Homeless Mind (New York: Vintage Books,
1973) and Jaques Ellul, The Technological Society (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965).
18. Jack McDevitt, Echo, Kindle E-Pub Edition (New York: Berkely Publishing Group/Penguin, 2010),
chapter 19, page 1.
19 . Several compelling exceptions that deserve wider attention include Richard Gaillardetz’s
exploration of mediated relationships in Transforming Our Days: Spirituality, Community, and Liturgy in
a Technological Culture (New York: Crossroad, 2000); Vincent Miller’s exploration of consumerism and
gadgets in “The iPod, the Cell Phone, and the Church: Discipleship, Consumer Culture, and a
Globalized World,” Getting On Message (Boston: Beacon Press, 2006), 173-191; and Albert
Borgmann’s reflections on technologies and focal practices in Technology and the Character of
Contemporary Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984).
20. This article was developed with the generous support of the Louisville Institute and their
Sabbatical Grant for Researchers program.
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