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Collective Notebook for Conference Discussion

Published onNov 14, 2019
Collective Notebook for Conference Discussion

This pub is meant to collect thought for the concluding discussion of our conference at the end of Saturday.

Please leave here your thoughts about:

  • topics that we touched upon but should revisit

  • connections that emerged between the different papers and sessions that merit discussion

  • meta-observations

  • new ideas

  • inspirations for future collaborations, projects, discussions…

  • feedback to the organizers on any aspect of the conference

  • ..

Comments
7
Frederike van Oorschot:

Erics remarks in the final discussion:

  • what does it mean to do theology in the digital?

  • technology is reveiling and reconstituting

  • social imaginaries and their digital embodiment

  • what does technologies say about us? Are we scared of that?

  • different knowledges

  • authorities - freedom: decenter authorities, reinterduce unheard voices, practises and freedom

  • institutions and authority: “aura”

  • faith and freedom: how to introduce freedom instead of fear? Seeking for faith, hope and love against claims of finality

Michael Hemenway:

In this last session, we talked about terms such as veil, responsibility, proximity, and ethics. I wonder whether some exploration of Emmanuel Levinas’s philosophy of the face might offer some interesting contact points.

Frederike van Oorschot:

I would love to follow up on the question of “reality”, we just touched today in Daniels inspiring lecture. It is a very basic category in both theology and the digital and therefore relates to many topics we touched in our discussions.

Kate Ott:

Collective resonances for Session 2:

Themes - Ethical response from data protection to data soverienty

“onlife” no distiction between on/off line

Tipping point related to plurality (meaning what) : what role does autonomy and self-determination play?

What ethical responses are needed to technological or data determinism? - one avenue is a technological fix - data trustees (a new business model); what are political models; community competence and literacy models?

Themes - Worldmaking Knowledge

Why does technological language often rely on theological metaphors or narratives? How can the histories of these theological languages help us ask better questions about technology?

If someone/thing knows everything about you, how does that affect your freedom? - intelligent machines, data determinism ~~ divine providence

Not only duplicates the reality, but reconstitutes it - knowledge is not a representation of things, but power is at play in the world-making nature of knowledge. Reality is the effect, not the cause of God’s knowledge.

How do we match up “counter factuals” related to God’s omniscience with predictive analytics?-multiple possibles of peter; this “type”/predictive peter

**need greater literacies about data so we can better understand data protection, this is not an individual approach (church role?)

Can predictive analytics further both responsorial and forensic imaginations?

Themes - FLOSS

Benedict’s paper - Perhaps this paper is an example of what Hanna says about the theological as a counter imagination/memory? And what Peter proposes as a need for community competence and literacy models (especially for the church leaning into a sense of itself-priesthood of all believers—that already exists).

There seems to be an acceptance of and also a push back on the general positive link between metaphors of protestant reformation/priesthood of all believers and FLOSS, what unseen people and system are present and unrecognized or hidden in the mapping of these two together (doctrine versus historical experience)? How might we think of hacking rather than egalitarian collaborative open source practices - hiding/veiling/resisting? Are these practices of the self — meta world making processes interacting with small world-making activities (momentary making of justice)?

?
Gotlind Ulshoefer:

I would like to think more about the technological utopia, especially concerning the imaginative power they might release for gender roles and how to structure our societies

Frederike van Oorschot:

as I mentioned related to Benedicts paper: I see a kind of “practical turn” in most of the papers - is this due to a shift in theological thinking or to our topic - or both? Just an observation along the way, but it bothers me somehow (and maybe it bothers some of you, too).

One distinction to think about (citing Florian Höhne): One thought from theories of social practice is particularly important here, because it shifts the focus from digital technologies to cultures of digital technology use.