The Internet of Things Will Thrive by 2025

Many experts say the rise of embedded and wearable computing will bring the next revolution in digital technology.

By Janna Anderson and Lee Rainie

About This Report

This report is the latest research report in a sustained effort throughout 2014 by the Pew Research Center Internet Project to mark the 25^th anniversary of the creation of the World Wide Web by Sir Tim Berners-Lee (The Web at 25).

A February 2014 report from Pew Internet Project tied to the Web’s anniversary looked at the strikingly fast adoption of the Internet. It also looked at the generally positive attitudes users have about its role in their social environment.   Continue at Pew Research

Peril and Promise in the Digital Kingdom - Al Mohler

The digital age is upon us. In the span of less than three decades, we have redefined the way humans communicate, entertain, inform, research, create and connect — and what we know now is only a hint of what is to come. However, the greatest concern of the church is not a technological imperative, but a gospel imperative. The digital world did not exist a generation ago, and now it is a fundamental fact of life. The world spawned by the personal computer, the Internet, social media and the smart phone now constitutes the greatest arena of public discussion and debate the world has ever known.

Leaders who talk about the “real world” as opposed to the “digital world” are making a mistake, a category error. While we are right to prioritize real face-to-face conversations and to find comfort and grounding in stable authorities like the printed book, the digital world is itself a real world, just real in a different way.

Real communication is happening in the digital world, on the Web and on the smartphone in your pocket or business case. Real information is being shared and globally disseminated, faster than ever before. Real conversations are taking place, through voice and words and images, connecting people and conversations all over the world.

If the leader is not leading in the digital world, his leadership is, by definition, limited to those who also ignore or neglect that world, and that population is shrinking every minute. The clock is ticking.

Peril and Promise in the Digital Kingdom

The digital world is driven by its entrepreneurial and ideological pioneers and cheerleaders, and they are a multitude. The numbers are staggering. The World Wide Web is, for all practical purposes, less than 20 years old. It now reaches every continent and country, linking over two billion people.   Continue at Al Mohler

Modern Healthcare: Are we Playing God?

There has always been a wide range of opinion and practice among Christians on the matter of medical technology. Soon after his conversion, my physician husband was taken aback when a woman in his congregation explained she was not going to visit a doctor to treat a thigh abscess, but was instead going to pray according to the instructions of James:

Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise. Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. (Jas 5:13-15)

She was waiting for God to heal her. Likewise, a friend of mine was devastated when a well-intentioned group of parishioners visited her to pray for her chronic back pain, and then accused her of having inadequate faith when she did not immediately improve.

There has always been a level of suspicion or unease among some Christians about medical technology, and it is not getting any easier. Healthcare is changing rapidly. The escalation in the number of ways we can manipulate the unborn human is regularly creating ethical dilemmas that we have never had to confront before. The developing scientific environment will demand a constant shift of focus and approach to the moral challenges, and new situations will require us to keep re-examining the subject. Rote answers won’t be enough.   Continue at Megan Best

Vacating the Internet

They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder. That may be true as it pertains to friends and family, but it was not my experience this summer when I abandoned the Internet and digital technologies for a week. In early August we headed south and spent a week holed up in a cabin in a Virginia state park (Lake Anna, if you need to know). As we did two summers ago, we decided to declare this a digital-free vacation, leaving all computers and iPads and iPods and other gear out of the equation. The only electronic gear we allowed was Kindles, since that is the primary means through which Aileen and the kids read books, and a GPS, since I’ve forgotten how to read a map. I can’t say that I missed much of what we left behind.

Now let’s be clear—there are certain ways in which I’ve learned to put boundaries on my use of electronic and Internet-connected devices. If I learned anything from writing The Next Story it’s that our technologies are always threatening to form us in their image; if we do not take them captive, they will take us captive. With varying degrees of success, I’ve found ways of taking my devices and technologies under my control. Still, I often grow lazy and complacent and in such times I find myself checking email a hundred times a day or haphazardly googling any little question that may come to mind. In such times I use my devices without reflection or restriction and I use them at the expense of other things that ought to maintain a higher priority.  Continue at Tim Challies

This Unique Moment - The Changing of the Guard and What It Means For Christians Today

We are living, I believe, in a unique cultural moment. Every generation, I know, imagines that it is unique. And most generations, unfortunately, believe that their uniqueness lies in their superiority over all that lies in the past. Mark Twain once observed that when he was a boy he was embarrassed because of his father, who appeared to know so little, but when the younger Twain was a few years older, he was amazed at how much his father had learned in so short a period of time! Every generation tries to get airborne on the plastic wings of this kind of conceit, and in this atmosphere it is almost inevitable that we become breathless about the present and begin to say and do foolish things, as did the pastor whose morning prayer in church began: "O Lord, have you seen the New York Times today?"

I nevertheless believe this is a unique cultural moment. First, I want to lay out my reasons for saying this. Second, I want to elaborate on some of the consequences of this for the Church. Third, I want to underline what, in a Christian context, needs to be done next.

This Unique Moment-The Emerging World Culture

 

I believe this moment is unique culturally for two reasons. First, this is the first time that we have seen emerging a world culture. There have always been those who have nurtured dreams of world domination like Napoleon and Hitler, but that is not what I have in mind here. I am speaking instead of the emergence of a culture, voluntarily brought about, that looks about the same whether it is encountered in Boston or Paris, London or Bombay, Sydney or Cairo.

What is unique about this is that up until now cultures have always been local and never global. That is, what any society comes to think of as being normal in matters of belief or behavior has always been determined by that people's history, its traditions, certainly its religion, its ethnicity, and perhaps its geography. Thus, it is that we differentiate Russian culture from Indian, African culture from European, Hispanic from Chinese. Cultures have always been local, but today we are seeing the birth of a culture which is global, which owes little or nothing to anyone in particular, and therefore can belong to everyone in general. However, to stretch so far, to incorporate so many otherwise diverse people in its embrace, modern culture must necessarily be very thin, no more than skin deep. It must be stripped of the values which actually give depth and meaning to life.   Continue at David F. Wells

See also: Is Google Making Us Stupid?