As I was preparing the first in a series of posts about “digital ethics,” I realized that I needed to lay the groundwork for why I’m examining ethics in a digital world as a part of this blog.

First, while sometimes I’ll be looking at ethics from a more generic, philosophical perspective, my motivation is always driven by Christianity and the command of Christ to “get up and follow me.”  From the time Christ was here on earth, Christian society has continued to change and Christian principles have been applied in new and different ways.  Even Paul and the other New Testament writers were expanding and applying the Gospel in new and broader ways from the original teachings of Jesus.  Maybe it was because Jesus didn’t necessarily always have a black and white answer to things, but rather chose analogies and stories to illustrate his teachings.  I’m honestly not sure really why it has been this way from a scholarly perspective, but the reexamination and re-application seems to be a natural and necessary part of the Christian faith.  From Paul to Augustine to Luther to C.S. Lewis and on, this examination of ethics in the digital world is one more step in that refining process and it seems like a great time to rethink things.

In the grand scheme of things, our society is still very young in the digital world.  Our society has changed dramatically in the last half century with the advent of computers and even moreso in the last two to three decades with the advent of the personal computing.  Of course, connecting all those personal computers using the internet mixed up the puzzle pieces even further.  About every decade, computing continues to have huge shifts in innovation that further disrupt its relatively short past.  This road has obviously not been a simple straight path from the proverbial Point A to Point B, but rather an unpredictable, swerving wooden roller coaster ride always seeming to be just a moment from coming off the tracks.  Many discoveries, decisions and events have had unintended consequences in many different ways.  Many vital participants that shaped earlier waves are now extinct or tiny boats buffeted on a huge ocean of change.

There have also been many parallel, perpendicular, and skewed paths all advancing simultaneously.  For instance while Microsoft was preparing it’s ascent to conquer all of personal computing (if you hadn’t made the connection, that’s why Microsoft is synonymous with PC), the seeds of the open source movement were also sprouting.

In these conditions of complex, rapid and turbulent societal and economic change, it’s easy for morals and ethics to get lost in the shuffle.  What starts as harmless grows into a completely different end state.  It is hard to see or predict the repercussions of specific actions and decisions.  My purpose isn’t to place blame.  Rather,I want to take stock and hopefully help refine the current state of things.

So, we have a few decades under our belts and we’ve learned much and seen a lot of rapid change.  Let’s take a look back and reevaluate how the current state of computing stacks up from a moral, ethical and Christian standpoint so that as we accelerate further into the digital age, we as Christians can do so knowing we are doing our best to support Kingdom values.  Granted, I know my theology and scholarship aren’t on equal footing with the greats mentioned above and that this discussion *probably* won’t have the historical weight of the Reformation.  I’m just hoping to start what I believe is an important conversation and develop the environment so those more well suited for the task can join in as we seek to follow Christ.  I hope you’ll join me.

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Tags: Christian, culture, ethics, open source, theology

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 8th, 2010 at 10:07 pm and is filed under Philosophy, Ethics and Theology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.