Shane Hipps on blogging

March 23, 2007 · 3 comments

One of the books I am reading for my senior paper is Shane Hipps' The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture: How Media Shapes Faith, the Gospel, and Church. This afternoon I came across an interesting passage about blogging:

Blogs... present a related problem. They allow us to participate in organic dialogue. However, they also have a remarkably addictive tendency to tickle our intellects, secluding us into a Pandora's box of perpetual links, people, and ideas. The result is that we are drawn wider but rarely deeper. This is true both in terms of the ideas we explore and the relationships we build. The great wonder of blogging is found in its dynamic speed. We are exposed to many more ideas than previously possible, we are given a chance to dialogue about them in near real-time settings. However, the medium of blogging, regardless of content, has a natural bias toward confusion rather than clarity. It prefers careless language patterns, slack logic, and superficial relationships. This is at the expense of intellectual precision, thoughtful language, and meaningful connection with those in close proximity.

What are your thoughts?

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  • http://polyspline.com/blog Ryan Tow

    Its an interesting assessment. It does, of course, presume, for example, that if you were to encounter me in person as opposed to in blogform, that I would actually be deeper in person. This may not be the case.

    Might be a case of WYSIWYG with the blog. I think there’s also something to be said for the possibility that blogs are a reflection of our culture – in that much of life is now lacking in depth.

    Over the last few decades, formal letters begat long-distance phone calls, phone calls begat email, email begat instant messages, IM begat txting. Those are my thoughts on an allergic-haze-confused monday morning.

  • Mom

    I’m wondering if you had any offers,yet, on your domain name this year??

  • http://compassioninpolitics.wordpress.com Nathan Ketsdever

    Interesting post. I tend to agree with the message at the top, however the last couple of sentences seem to be a hasty generalization:

    It prefers careless language patterns, slack logic, and superficial relationships. This is at the expense of intellectual precision, thoughtful language, and meaningful connection with those in close proximity.

    Hipps seems to ignore that blogs can provide an exploration of the grays between the extremes (even if in practice this doesn’t always play out).

    Does he provide hope? Can blogs be helpful in any cases?