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By Nic Paton:

Being a hermeneutically-inclined generalist, I am always fascinated by the potential of discovering even a tiny grain of meaning. Now as you may know hermeneutics is the art and craft of interpretation, generally between languages or contexts, or as in the question to hand, the (relatively) new blogging medium.

The new media
I grew up with pre-millennial categories of communication: telephones for talking, telegraphs for fast writing, “snail” mail for slower writing, faxing for instant written transmission, books at the long wave end of the written spectrum, 33 rpm albums for big musical ideas, and 45 rpm for silly ditties, radio for broadcast music, Walkmans for personal music, cinema for serious visual art, television for popular visual broadcast, Oxford Dictionary and World Book for looking stuff up, and a guitar (just to “punish my ma”).

Now of course, its email, Skype, cell phones, iPod, Xbox, DVDs, mp3, Facebook, YouTube, Google, Amazon, Imax, wiki, and Ableton Live, in addition to some hardy survivors from the last century. But it’s not only the media which have changed; it’s the job descriptions too.

My medium of choice over the last two years has been Blogging. After 50,000 hits and copious contributions to people’s blogs, I consider myself in a position to do some hermeneutics on my praxis.

A new vocation
As a blogger, who am I? Who have I done out of a “job”, and what vocations have I been part in creating?

Firstly, I am an author, wrestling with ideas and words. But also a journalist, writing for “immediate release”. Oh yes I’m also my own scribe and secretary, layout artist, and publisher. I deal in fonts, illustrations, proofreading, footnotes, and references. I research, investigate, connect, edit, and crosscheck. For starters.

Many a time I have felt like a pastor, dealing with questions of theology, community, and spirit. Or therapist, fielding peoples intimate questions, or their unprocessed “stuff”. At times, conversations have got quite heated, entertainingly so, and I feel like a talk show host. Curating and facilitating the threads of culture in the making, I run both casual and structured polls. [Geek alert] It’s helped to have worked with programming languages and computer technologies, because I want weird_picture_2.bmp to open in a new browser, but this hyperlink to trigger some client side script. [End geek alert]

Very occasionally, I get to offer an expert opinion. I can pontificate on music, database technologies, and some theology. But it’s really not about me; the buzz comes from being part of something infinitely larger than my own big world. I probably should concentrate more on my art: Composing, Recording, and VJ projects, but there is too much going on, a lot of conversations to be part of. Or so I tell myself.

Guttenberg ++
Blogging is a fascinating conglomeration of ideas. It draws on multiple earlier technologies and practices, but results in something distinctly different. In my opinion, it is a good realisation of what is referred to in SciFi and Sociology as “the groupmind”.

Blogging is conversational, yet written rather than spoken. It is conversational, yet recorded and retained, unlike the spoken which is transient. A place between music and painting, performance and the plastic arts, in words. It is written, yet instantly published. It is more mediated than a voice conversation, yet less mediated than a letter to the editor (and weirdly, although it is written, it is easily forgotten). It supports multiple media and hyperlinks to relevant (or not) ideas.

A good example of the new conception of a traditional concept is the Open Source Sermon, organised by Rob Brink. For a postmortem, see his retrospective. Ikon, of course, have to take it one further in their Open Source Community.

A new Gospel?
The 21st century has brought with it a revolution in communications. That is precisely why I am fascinated with the Gospel and hermeneutics at this juncture. Most of our classic issues as Christians are being deconstructed and re-imagined.

In the history of the written word, we have moved from the single immutable authoritative source (The Hebrew scribe tradition), through a world of diverse epistles (The New Testament), through the subsequent canonization of the Bible (Between 150 and 420 A.D.) in a written orthodoxy, the dissemination and popularisation of that canon (The reformation), through an exponential curve of cross-cultural translation, to now: a multi-source, multimedia, pluralistic, constantly changing river of ideas.

I am struck between the interplay of the Hebraic Dabhar (Word), and the Greek Logos (written, timeless?) and Rhema (spoken, revealed?) notions. Upon examination it appears that very few usages of the phrase “Word of God” refer exclusively to the written scripture. The usual expression of the Word is breathed, spoken, or enacted.

I wonder if post enlightenment overemphasis of Logos (as the written) has not resulted in the Modern inability to appreciate conversation, mystery and metaphor, and ultimately grace? And whether blogging is not an expression of a need to return to some of the pre-modern ideas of “The Word”.

So engage, if you will, brave new emergent tribe, these questions:

What limitations with the written are not overcome by the blogging paradigm? Are we repeating our mistakes?

If the gospel is both message (content) and medium (form), how is it “incarnating” into socially networked online culture? Is it in fact possible to “become flesh” in a virtual, non-physical environment?

What might distinguish the Christian message from any other message out there? How must that message adapt in the saturated, online, multimedia, world?

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Nic Paton—Postmodern Liturgist, multi-instrumentalist, VJ, and scullery theologian—lives in Cape Town, South Africa, and contributes to Emerging Africa.

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