Late to the game, like always.--Megan

When I was reading the first two chapters of the textbook, I really started wondering if any of these issues were actually new--and a few of the things that were "issues" actually kind of scared me a little, like how people having more access to non-canonized texts is/was considered a "danger" to religion by some groups. This is exactly the same way the church felt about people having bibles in their homes for the first time--unless I'm mistaken. I think that more access to information and commentary can only advance religion's causes--if the religion is worth it's weight, at least. If people are so scared of people having more information, it begs to question what's IN the information that's going make someone look bad? And if that is the case, shouldn't we know it sooner rather than later? It's the same with companies hiding their tax forms--some non-profit unable to provide a paper trail and then ends up totally cheating people out of donations. By hiding information, my first gut reaction is always that something is fishy. If more people having more access to more religious writings is "bad," then why?

Also, I wonder if the way this book looks at technology can be expanded to anything a community develops around. There are so many real life subcultures around that have allure to many people--Comic-Cons, Star Wars/Trek, Dungeons and Dragons,--not that I know a single thing about any of those things--but it can even expand to artistic/creative communities or even bands people like. (I know a lot of crazy band fans.) Those people all play out narratives and form close-knit bonds and travel together. Things that a lot of people find in church people have been finding elsewhere for a long time. There are religious underpinnings in all of those communities. Story formation, for example--taking a story and making it interactive or changing it until it becomes your own. This is a big point of the book but story-role play has existed outside of video games for a long time. And people find real identity in these things and invest great amounts of themselves in them. I don't see the difference between that becoming some sort of religious space and video games becoming that. And these things have been happening forever. I wonder if this is all a new, high-tech spin on an older situation. Not sure if this makes any sense, but I was just thinking about this the whole time I was reading.