Broadband and Communications vs. the Digital Economy

Why Senator Conroy’s mandatory internet filter is the greatest danger that exists to Australia’s internet…

The world wide web is an open-format, mostly unregulated medium, brimming with a heady mix of information, pornography, community, copyrighted material, predators and market-busting paradigm-shattering freedom. And we like it that way.

Some vested interests, however, find this liberating new medium less than enthralling. Where some of us see new opportunities, they see only competition. Where we find freedom to choose, they see ways for their customers to escape their own olipoly. Where some of us encounter a wider range of opinions and information than we’ve ever found through any other medium, the powers that be see new avenues of communication to be either controlled or shut down. Market-busting is a threat to existing markets, and paradigm-shattering is abhorrent to the powers-that-be.

It’s with this background in mind that Senator Conroy and his Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy operate. That’s a grandiose-sounding name with a correspondingly vital portfolio. In the 21st century, broadband, communications and the digital economy are conceivably the most important policy areas for any country to get right. And this is why some recent developments in this area are particularly disquieting.

In recent weeks, it has been announced that Australian free-to-air channels will have their license fees reduced by a combined $A250million.
http://news.theage.com.au/breaking-news-national/250m-for-tv-networks-was-bribe-abbott-20100216-o5ox.html A rationale that has been put forward for this is the transition over coming years to digital television. The free-to-air channels, it is argued, have increasing difficulty in maintaining their viewerships/advertising revenue, in the face of competition from static media (DVDs etc) and commercial (cable or satellite) providers. With the addition of a burgeoning internet market for TV, soon to be turbocharged by Labor’s superfast national broadband network, it is thought that the free-to-air channels need help if they are to continue to create and distribute Australian content.

The push to get Australian TV broadcasters and viewers to switch to digital has any number of positive outcomes. Apart from anything else, it will free up spectrum that the government will then be able to license to new applications, ushering in a new era of mobile broadband over bandwidths currently distributing television. This is a new digital world that I’m excited to be alive to see arrive.

What I’m less sanguine about is Senator Conroy’s intransigent charge to introduce mandatory ISP-level internet filtering to Australia’s online market. Others have cogently argued the many negative outcomes of this piece of legislation and I won’t revisit those here. What I have not seen widely discussed, however, is what seems possibly the most dangerous outcome of the filter, should it go ahead. The danger is that it gives the government a methodology by which it can enforce market control and thus close the liberating doors to the global economy that are swinging wide open at the moment.

Let’s take an example. Say you’re a fan of a US television show – say Lost, for example. Season six is currently screening in the US and episodes become available on iTunes not long after. Season six is slated to begin in Australia on free-to-air television soon, but won’t be available here for purchase for a significant period of time. Currently, you can make an account on iTunes and download the episodes you’re interested in. This is a bad outcome for channel seven, but a good one for you the viewer, a good one for Apple which takes its cut of the sale price, and good for the maker of the show who gets your hard-earned. The only real loser in this scenario is the local TV channel which loses your eyeballs.

The filter gives the government, and through them the free-to-air channels, a way to close this back-channel. Lost season six hasn’t yet been through the OFLC? Block it. If it’s currently not classified, it is therefore not legal to sell within Australia. (Actually, Lost is a poor example as it’s a global property, and it is currently classified for viewing in Australia.)

The banning of sales of Lost might seem a little far-fetched, as the proposed filter can’t selectively block content; it only blocks whole sites. So you can only block Lost by blocking online sites that sell the episodes. Of course, these are the same sites that are also selling (R-rated) Rome and Spartacus: Blood and Sand and Tell Me You Love Me and… Some of these titles may not be able to get into Australia past the OFLC without adjustments. It hardly matters that the same retailer will be selling The Simpsons and Seinfeld. The point is that it it’s not about specific titles, it’s about the channel.

It’s not just television. Movies are currently staggered in release; Australia often receives prints of films for cinema use months or even years after other parts of the world have seen them. Sometimes the movie can be available to own on DVD before it gets onto screens here. Movie studios and cinemas naturally want to prevent Australians from buying and importing the latest Bruce Willis vehicle. Music CDs and print books cost far more in Australia at retail than they do when bought overseas and imported – even including exchange rates and delivery costs. Computer software is regionalised. This is fine – the OFLC has a job to do and the debate about an R-rating for computer games is entirely outside of the scope of this discussion. But if the game in question is not marketed in Australia, it won’t necessarily be seen by the OFLC.

There’s a whole world of media content which is produced in the United States, Europe or Asia, both online and on DVD, and Australian audiences are becoming progressively more knowledgeable and more capable of sourcing this content without it coming through standard Australian retail outlets. It is this burgeoning marketplace that is under threat from mandatory filtering. In a world where US culture is immediate and urgent, where teenagers are downloading episodes of their favourite shows half an hour after they’ve screened on CBS, where the latest Hollywood blockbuster can be on the weekly shelves in US video stores before receiving a cinema release here, this kind of parochialism cannot be acceptable if Australia wants to remain a vital player in world culture.

The control of the international market of media may not be a stated aim of Conroy’s proposed filter. It does not take long, however, for any program or system to be subverted, if such subversion is possible. To me, the mandatory internet filter is just too dangerous to go ahead. The whole point of the digital economy is that it exists without borders. If the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy cannot get to grips with this idea, they are doing the Australian people a disservice. So far, it looks like Senator Conroy is more concerned for the interests of the old economy than the Digital one, and is willing to sacrifice the freedom of Broadband Communications to the altar of commerce.

An offer they can’t refuse

As 2009 draws to a close, commentators across the world will be writing articles about “Milestones of the past decade”. There will be some consensus between such lists. I’d be surprised if many such lists were published without Barak Obama featuring. In Australia, naturally, the defeat of John Howard’s coalition and the election of Kevin Rudd’s Labor will also rank highly.

One development which might not be so commonly heralded, but no less significant to those within some circles, will be the recent and unprecedented offer by the Roman Catholic Church for disaffected Anglican priests and congregations to rejoin their communion. This offer, allowing the Anglicans to maintain their current practices and most of their beliefs, has been perhaps the most significant and historic event of 2009. It has yet to be seen how many congregations will take the Pope up on his offer, but at the very least this change paves the way for an influx of new blood and new attitudes (not to mention a new cadre of priests showing the rising generations that ordination and marriage can coexist) to the Catholic church, which has been famously intransigent since the rise of Benedict.

At issue was not the basis of Christian faith – Catholic and Protestant churches share much in common when it comes to doctrine, even if their approach and emphasis differs in the specifics. However, specific issues of practice – particularly the ordination of homosexual bishops, although there are other similar points of contention – made it difficult for some Anglican priests and congregants to accept the decisions made by the church as a whole.

It’s debateable whether this development will have immediate or overt effect on the Anglican communion. At a worst-case scenario where dozens of priests and congregations “cross the floor” and desert their ancestral denomination, the most likely outcome for the Anglican church is a continued push to reform and modernisation, having cast off a lot of the more recidivist elements which until now were leavening the mix. For decades, the Anglican hierarchy has been negotiating with and taking into account the attitudes of all its stakeholder groups, and this has arguably held the church back from developments and decisions it might otherwise have been inclined to take. With the reins loosened, we may see the Anglican church develop in a direction that would otherwise have been moderated.

For those Anglican churches that step in the direction of Rome, change, at least at first, is likely to be slight. Many of these churches are regarded as being “Catholic-lite” at the outset. The differences between the two traditions are largely in the area of liturgy and these have now been mitigated by the Pope’s agreement that the absconding Anglican churches can maintain their existing practices. (There are some strings to the Pope’s offer that I suspect are holding some priests and congregations back from making the move. Another constraint is that, like a franchisee deciding to go its own way, making the move may involve for many churches leaving behind its bank balance and its church property – not an insubstantial sacrifice to be called to make.) 

On the other hand, if the exodus is slight – and I’ve not seen report of huge swathes making for the exit door – then the two churches might continue along much as before. The offer from the Pope might be seen as a nice back-door, but not something to be run at except as a last resort. The initial weight of commentary at the time the offer was made seems to doubt this outcome, but it remains to be seen for certain.

Apart from the bridge from Anglican to Roman Catholic, one other development that might make any top ten list of changes in the noughties, although it’s one that didn’t come with a start date or a press release, is the change in scientific and public attitudes towards anthropic global warming. Despite the persistent messages of lobby groups, fossil fuel megacorporations and other climate change skeptics, the world has become largely united in both the understanding that ongoing climate change is being caused and perpetuated by human activity, and an acceptance of responsibility to do something about it.

Despite the change in world, political, scientific and public opinion on this topic, however, there are still some groups who are desperately clinging to any bit of bad science that might disprove or explain away human-caused climate change. Amongst these groups is a large portion of the Australian Coalition political party. Anybody who’s paid half an ear to political reporting in Australia over the past month cannot help but be in awe at the current meltdown of the main opposition party in this country, a group that only two short years ago was the governing party and considered by some to be undefeatable. Now, to the naked eye they appear as a fractured rabble, rife with infighting and unable to pull together anything resembling a cogent policy position. Their leader, Malcolm Turnbull, seen by some as a potential match for the Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and an upcoming saviour of the Liberal party, is now regarded by most as being on borrowed time.

When he was elected to the leadership of the Liberal party and thus the coalition, Turnbull was an ace in the hole. With business experience, gravitas and a high degree of intelligence, he had the necessary attributes to garner respect from the rank and file of the party. With moderate views on policy, he had the ability to be circumspect about Liberal doctrine and not frighten off the electorate. And as the Environment Minister in Howard’s government, he had the qualifications, experience, and most importantly the commitment, to defuse the growing threat to the Coalition’s position that was Australia’s response to climate change.

How the mighty have fallen!

In many ways it’s a real shame that Turnbull has been so undone by his own party. Any government needs a strong and disciplined Opposition. Whatever you might feel about the beliefs and positions of the parties, the Australian people are not served by any party that can go to any extremes without being called to account. Whether the extremes are the excesses of capitalism and an impassable income gap, or of large government and untrammelled public debt, excesses can only be moderated by having an opposing group to draw attention and generate political threat. Whilst the Liberal party is in such a shambles as it currently appears, the checks and balances are off the current government, and this can never be a good thing.

The way out for the Coalition is not so clear. They are a party divided. Whilst both Labor and Liberal have become more centrist over the past decade – in many cases Labor policy is largely indistinguishable from Liberal – there are some specific points of disagreement, and it is here that Turnbull and maybe a minority of Liberal politicians diverge from the main of their party. In these areas, they are perhaps closer to Labor’s beliefs and policies than to their own party.

It just remains to be seen whether Turnbull is marking time before his eventual, inevitable demise as leader of the Liberal party – perhaps as soon as this Monday; or whether he and other AGW believers in the party will have to button their lip and accept the feeling of their party even as it goes against their better judgement. In a way, Turnbull and his supporters are like the Anglican priests who can’t stomach what their denomination has accepted as policy, but are just looking for a way out.

Does anybody else see the precedent here?

Kevin Rudd should make Malcolm Turnbull an offer he can’t refuse. Offer him a front bench position in the Labor party, with an undertaking to keep him close to the decision-making power of Labor, and potentially a shot down the line at the leadership.

Sounds foolish, perhaps? But think about it. Turnbull’s attitudes on many issues differ from Labor policy – but then, so do a lot of Labor politicians’. Turnbull has the personal disciple to be able to toe the line publicly, but be a moderating voice of reason behind closed doors. He has a lot of respect from some of the voting public, which he would bring with him in the form of goodwill. In the immediate term, it would be a vicious – perhaps deadly – coup for Labor against the Liberal party, and open up a vacuum at the top of the coalition that would be filled by a more conservative Liberal. In the long run, it might actually help the Liberal party to pick a stance and stay there.

And as for Turnbull himself, what does he have to lose from such an offer? His leadership is dead in the water. The best he can hope for is a graceful retirement from politics. Instead, he could continue as preeminent figure in Australian politics, and aim to become the first man in history to be leader of both the Liberal and Labor parties in Australia.

Now wouldn’t that be historic?

More equal than others

The anonymity of the internet seems to encourage the emergence of a certain kind of group of people. These online communities are united in holding fervent and eagerly-espoused concepts, and in becoming mortally offended at those who so much as disagree. Their opinions may be based on well-considered logical arguments or on illogical and biased premises, but their arguments almost always end up as ad hominem attacks on their detractors. Amongst these groups might be numbered Apple Mac fans; militant atheists; and filesharers.

It is the latter group that recently caught my attention.  Starting with a partisan opinion piece published in the Age and continuing in a lengthy string of comments, a discussion on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement has several times brought up the commonly-argued concept that “digital piracy is not theft”. This is based on the premise that the theft of a physical object deprives the original owner of its possession and use, whereas copying of a piece of media leaves the original intact for use and sale as it had been previously. This argument is erroneous, but it is also understandable. The premise is both encouraged and invalidated by a dichotomy in our understanding of democracy and capitalism.

Western culture holds two fundamentally disparate and mutually exclusive ideas both to be true. They cannot both be true, and it is from the clash between them that much confusion and disagreement springs.

Fundamental truth #1: All people are equal.

This truth is so fundamental that it features heavily in the Holy Bible (see for instance Galatians 3:28, James 2:1, Romans 3:23), the writings of such luminary philosophers as Aristotle, and later the American Declaration of Independence. The principle of democracy is based on the idea of equal involvement and weight of opinion of all the people. Of course, the strength of this fundamental truth has varied over the centuries through redefinition of the term “people”. For millennia, such minority groups as slaves, negroes, foreigners and women were excluded from the protection of statements of equality. We are finally, over the last fifty years or so, coming to a place in society where “people” actually means “human beings”.

Having laid to rest the debate over who constitutes “people”, the arguments have returned to definition of the term “equal”. According to current understanding, “equal” actually means “certain minimum rights for all”. Outside of these basic human rights, which are themselves subject to much disagreement and discussion, much disparity in conditions of life and in treatment is permissible. Paupers, the homeless, and the mentally ill, for instance, have certain indispensible human rights. But these rights do not include the right to similar treatment in all circumstances.

Looked at from a certain direction, of course, the concept that “all men/women are equal” is laughable. People are not born equal. We might have common rights and privileges, and society might enforce a common set of values and rules upon us, but every person has a unique set of thought processes, reactions to stimuli, personal ethics and values, and lifetime financial potential.

Fundamentally, though, very few seriously disagree that human beings should be regarded as equal – that one life is not worth more than any other, and that all people should be given equal conditions and opportunities to succeed, grow and thrive.

Working against this fundamental truth is truth #2.

Fundamental truth #2: individual efforts justify individual rewards.

This, in a nutshell, is capitalism. Capitalism insists that everything has a value and a price. “Everything” includes the worker’s time and skills, their knowledge, and their labour; it includes physical goods, services, infrastructure and real estate; it includes, even, each person’s lifetime financial potential. Taken together, all these factors of value add up to create a market. It is through the constant evolution of the market, the ongoing transfer of value from one person to another and from one location to another, that capitalism exists.

Which is to say that capitalism can be summed up in one fundamental sentence: “All people are not, and cannot be, equal”. Capitalism works by placing a price on every aspect of life, and that price is dictated by value. Value is dictated by the balance of demand and availability. In order for something to have a demand, by definition, it must have limited supply.

Under the terms of modern capitalism, there are – there must be – winners and losers. Those who are successful in capitalism are those who have what they want or need. They own the cars, the televisions, the real estate, the businesses. In order for capitalism to continue to work, there must be demand; there must be people who do not have these things and aspire to have them.

Society acts to place constraints upon capitalism. It indicates that there are certain products and services that are outside of the normal have/not have marketplace, things that are deemed mandatory for all persons. In Australia, our well-developed social support systems forcibly raise the ‘have nots’ above their market-dictated station. But these persons – the homeless and dispossessed, the unemployed, and the mentally impaired – cannot be regarded as equal.

So how does this reflect on online piracy?

Those who argue that downloading a movie over BitTorrent is not stealing, inasmuch as it does not deprive anybody of ownership, ignores the current methodologies of capitalism. Capitalism places a value on that movie. This value dictates the level of the bar, above which the ‘haves’ can access the media, and the ‘have nots’ cannot, until they devote sufficient resources (value) to its acquisition. Stealing is not actually defined by the transfer of possession of a physical good. Rather, it is the abrogation of the capitalist contract – the acquisition of value without a corresponding payment of another kind of value. If I steal a CD from a store, I am not likely to be depriving the store of a sale; in most instances there will be plenty to spare, and if I take the last one the store can simply order more stock. Rather, I deprive the store (and the manufacturer/distributor/artist) of my return of value in exchange for that CD and the value it represents.

Those who argue that “information should be free” and that online sharing of media is justified are actually arguing either that the media has no value – a position that would have dire consequences for the significant amounts of investment required for the ongoing operation of media industries such as music and movies – or that the current system of “exchange of value” is abrogated on the internet. In a way, it could be argued that online piracy is not only theft. It could feasibly argued that online piracy is a form of revolutionary activity. Now whether or not it is worth attempting to overthrow the current capitalist system is an argument for another day, but it must be accepted that democratic capitalism has the popular support of ‘society’.

I recently came across this quote:

In the state of nature…all men are born equal, but they cannot continue in this equality. Society makes them lose it, and they recover it only by the protection of the law. — Charles de Montesquieu

de Montesquieu might have been writing in the 1700s, but his words still hold true. There’s one other quote that seems to fit in this discussion. From Orwell’s Animal Farm: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

Gaming the democracy system.

Why should the travails of a Queensland opposition MP be of interest to a non-partisan, non-political voter in Melbourne?

Peter Dutton, currently a liberal MP in the seat of Dickson, QLD, has been making news of late with his bid to move to another seat, and having failed to win preselection in the safe Liberal seat of McPherson, his ultimatum that the party find him a seat in which he won’t have to fight other candidates.

Mr Dutton’s intent has been shaped by a determination to vacate his current seat in Dickson, which after a redistribution has become “notionally Labor”. Dutton is unwilling to contest the seat, tried once to oust a local Liberal candidate in another seat, and now demands that he be given a free run in another safe seat without having to face down an incumbent.

Am I the only person in Australia who has problems with this?

Mr Dutton won Dickson from high-profile Labor MP Cheryl Kernot in 2001. Now I have no political training and have never quite understood the vicissitudes of electoral redistribution, but according to the Electoral Commission Queensland, the committee responsible for the recent redistribution is independent and impartial. Redistribution is an integral and regular component of our electoral system. Redistribution is enacted to ensure that electorates are of relatively equal impact on the outcome of any election – to make sure that each vote in any electorate has equal influence on the election of one candidate. In this instance, the seat of Dickson (which Dutton won by a mere 217 votes at the last election, after an 8% swing back to Labor) has lost some rural areas and gained some other areas that include a higher proportion of Labor voters. On the basis of the current boundaries, Dutton calculates that the seat would be very hard to win. He’d rather not take the chance of losing. Dickson is a seat that has chewed up several high profile politicians already and (understandably) Dutton doesn’t want to lose the seat.

But what does it mean that the seat is “nominally Labor”? What assumptions underlie that description? Are they fair assumptions, what do they say about the state of democracy in Australia, and how should politicians and voters respond?

“Nominally Labor” means that, based on previous election results and a basic understanding of the kinds of profiles of voters that lead to Liberal and Labor votes, it can be calculated that more voters in this seat will vote for Labor than Liberal. Sounds simple. It makes the assumptions:

• A large proportion of voters will support the same party that they did last election.
• Rural/metro profile, demographics and growth profile of an area can be used to predict voter intention.
• The number of voters for whom issues like party and candidate policy, local interest and involvement of the candidate, past policies and campaign promises, and the ability to protest vote, will not affect the predicted outcome.
• The results at the next election for any electorate can be reliably predicted.

What this says about the state of democracy in Australia is that it’s not really the voters who have the power in this arrangement. It’s the powerbrokers who say which politicians can stand in which seats; it’s the party financiers who decide which candidates should be supported and where losses should be cut; it’s the various commissions and boards responsible for electoral boundary definitions; and it’s the media pundits and commentators who do the sums to work out whether your electorate is a safe seat for either party or whether your politician ought to move to another seat.

The problem with gaming the system, of course, is that the system can still surprise you. People can get their sums wrong. Voters move between electorates and bring their predispositions with them. And voters may take unkindly to having a candidate imported from elsewhere on the assumption that the party elders know how you’re going to vote. Last election, Dickson was expected to be a shoe-in for Dutton; the huge swing against him, almost unseating him, took most commentators by surprise.

It appears that, at least in this instance, along with yourself as a voter, the candidates have little say as well. Recent branch stacking controversies in Victorian State government seats suggest that this kind of behaviour and attempt to subvert the democratic will of the people is endemic. In other words, where there is a system and incentive to win, people will try to game the system. We can only hope that in a populace becoming progressively more discerning about politics, that these attempts will be seen for what they are and rejected by the voters as cynical attempts to make your vote not count.

MAPping a path to change

I recently was able to read the Mission Action Plan for a local Anglican church. What struck me upon reviewing the dot point list of their priorities for the immediate future was the amount of overlap with the outcomes of my home church’s Unfreeze program of five years ago. Whilst five years might seem like a long time in today’s hectic world, it’s well recognised that time within Church circles travels much more slowly, so it’s perhaps not surprising that the issues raised then are still very much current and still in need of resolution.

My church is currently discussing the future of ministry, mission and the church through a series of small in-home meetings. If my church, which is a reasonably affluent and semi-traditional protestant congregation in the middle-upper class south-east, can be challenged to think about change and the possibility of a future in which the Sunday 10am service does not loom pre-eminent, then just about any church may be similarly challenged. And it does seem that every churchman and his dog is talking about emergent ministry, the future of church and mission, and the place of faith and religion in a post-Christendom world. It forms the basis of classes in theology and ministry at bible colleges across Australia, it is the subject of dozens of books over the past decade, and it’s being discussed by church boards and vestries. It seems unfortunate that emergent ministry is being discussed primarily in terms of a response to a challenge, rather than as a source of new opportunities, but at least it is now being talked about.

Churches and church leaders are having to face a challenging future. Church rolls, church/life surveys, and a preponderance of anecdotal evidence points to the fact that the demographic of the church reflects the demographic of society. We are, apparently, in the midst of a crisis of talent, as the populace ages and tired (and, eventually, retires). In the modern business environment, policymakers and politicians are stressing about having more, older and frailer people to support and fewer able-bodied workers/taxpayers to pay for it. In the church, as in the workplace, there are not as many young people to take up the baton as there are seniors they will replace. For the church to continue as it has been, it must find a way to retain the involvement of its youth and shape them into the church leaders of tomorrow. For a long time tomorrow has been a ways off, but it is now looming large.

The crisis in church leadership and support is aggravated by the fact that for many young Christians today, the church as it stands holds little relevance to their sense of Christian identity. In a post-modern world of rationality and science, Christianity stands out as being perhaps too concrete. As much as – perhaps more than – ever, people today are searching for spiritual meaning and a deeper understanding of the universe. People are ready and willing to accept and embrace that there is more to the world than meets the naked eye.

In this environment, Christianity insists upon personalising the concept of “God” into Christ the man. Whilst understanding the trinity might have been the stumbling block of previous generations, these days I suspect that seeking youth might have fewer difficulties with the ideas of God the Father (distant, omnipotent being) and Holy Spirit (omnipresent ghostly force) than with accepting the divinity of Jesus Christ (historical figure and fully human). For many people seeking spiritual understanding, perhaps Jesus is not spiritual enough.

Even amongst those in younger generations who accept the idea of Christianity, however, the church is doubly hampered by changing attitudes to faith and to church. I count these separately, although they are of course related. In fact, I suspect that a lot of the problems facing today’s church come down to the distinction between faith and religion, and the fact that for many decades now there has been an unhealthy blurring of the lines. For many in our culture today, the ideas of “church” – probably as represented by Hollywood renditions of Catholic masses – and Christianity are inextricably intertwined. This confusion manifests itself in all sorts of ways. It leads to dissonance when people see Christian bikie gangs, surprise when an avowedly Christian workmate swears, drinks or smokes, and difficulty in understanding the concept of pub churches. It leads to besmirchment of Christians – and Christ Himself – when a church holds large amounts of wealth, or when a priest is convicted of misbehaviour, or when a charity spends most of its money on wages for its staff.

The current discussions of emergent church are nothing less than an attempt to correct this longstanding conception that faith in Christ must equal membership in a church organisation.

The Anglican church in Melbourne this past Sunday held “Back to Church Sunday”. In the congregation I attended – and, it is probably safe to assume, many others across the city – it was boldly stated that you couldn’t be a good Christian without engaging in a church. I will tentatively accept that membership in a faith community is always going to be helpful for one’s faith – but it seems quite clear to me that this community does not have to be a steepled church building on a Sunday morning.

There has been much talk of what makes a faith community. What are the bedrock standards that distinguish a faith group from a social activity? In the recent church discussions I attended, we agreed some general standards – an acceptance of the concept of God and the pre-eminence of Christ, a component of teaching and learning about theology, and an element of worship. After these, however, debate reigned. How do the sacraments fit into a non-liturgical practice? Can you even be a Christian congregation without engaging in Communion/Mass and baptism? There is so much variety already within the established Christian churches that we’re not likely to come to agreement any time soon on what makes a non-Church faith community.

So churches will continue to hold their Mission Action Planning meetings. They will continue to come up with lists of dot points of priorities for accepting, supporting and hopefully co-opting emergent faith groups. And whilst they are discussing, Christians will keep meeting outside of the walls of the established church. Whilst nobody can confidently predict what the Christianity of the future will look like, the one thing that seems certain is that it will be very different to what we have now. The current Church can only hold on for the ride – and stand ready to accept whatever changes may come.

Getting onboard the evolution

When I was undertaking my degree in information management – all of ten years ago now, come to think of it – the whole idea of a blog was still off in the distance. Newsgroups were the in thing, and along with Netscape Navigator they represented the cutting edge of the Web for Real People.

Eight years and three information-related occupations later, and I returned to RMIT to complete my Masters degree. Somewhere in that decade, the Masters of Information Management met its demise, and despite my best intentions and efforts I eventually gained the long-avoided IT degree instead. My major, if such it can be called, was in the field of knowledge management – the study of the capture, storage, indexing, retrieval and dissemination of institutional awareness and memory.

I recall writing a paper – the closest I ever got to a thesis – arguing the benefits of blogging for the purposes of team-building, internal skills training, and across-team awareness. An effective large-organisation method of sharing experience across campuses, across business units and across organisational silos would require key people in each area to blog their day-to-day problems and solutions as narratives within a centralised blog store. This methodology would also require an effective method of indexing and retrieving blog postings (this was writing in the days when blogs were still fairly new, and subject tags still to come into common use) and appropriate incentives for blog writers to contribute and other employees to use the resulting stories.

To my knowledge, we’re still waiting for such a system to be widely implemented and practiced. (If your organisation has integrated internal blogs into its practice and KM systems, I’d be fascinated to hear.)

So why has it taken me so long to start a blog of any description?

Partly, I have long felt that weblogs are a fad and likely to disappear over time. I still feel this, to some extent. I avoided MySpace as I couldn’t see its longevity, and whilst I maintain a Facebook account I think its lifespan also is limited. Rather than dying, however, I think Facebook will evolve, over time, in conjunction with other offerings. The way of internet applications of the future is synergy, and I suspect Facebook now has enough momentum to be a part of that future.

More than anything else, the delay has been about time and commitment. It takes time to write a good post. It takes commitment to write with enough frequency to maintain interest. And it takes experience and expertise to have something worth saying that stands out from the crowd in a blog-saturated online world. Blogs are easy to set up, free, and possess a kind of mystique, a promise of self-realisation that comes from being a “published author”. At this moment there are almost 150 thousand bloggers on WordPress. Perhaps fortunately, there’s no ability to sort these by number of posts. I have to wonder how many blogs are started and end up with only one or two posts before being abandoned… it’s hard to find statistics but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was high. It’s entirely possible that this new blog will take the same path.

So Random Pariah begins, with no expectations of standing out or gaining an audience. Covering an eclectic range of topics, it may occasionally pop up on a Google search but I claim no particular expertise. And without even a clear understanding of purpose, this blog will likely itself evolve, eventually to take on a shape of its own. What that shape will be, who can tell? Certainly not me. But I look forward to the ride.

For the sake of interest, this blog is being written using Microsoft Live Writer, on a Wind U100, for a WordPress blog. Like everything else, this is subject to change.