Working on my grad essay

After seven years I am almost finished my grad program. If everything goes right I should be done by Christmas because I only have 2 things left to do: 60 page grad essay and a correspondance course on Mennonite history.

Since we pushed back leaving for Belize a couple weeks I have been spending some time in the library cranking out my grad essay. Thankfully I've written about 60 pages in just over a week. Mind you I've been doing research for over a year and just needed to pull it all together.

I've attached a very draft version of the final summary

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Research Question: How does the primary purpose of the World Wide Web reveal how it can most effectively be used for the website of a local church?

Answer: People use the web because they are looking for answers. The web is more than just information however but it is the interaction of people represented as their writtings posted and then interlinked with the writtings of others. For the church the web is a place to have a voice where people can come and ask it questions.

Conclusion (this is taken from page 65 (obviously there is more detail above) (unedited):

In order for computers to help people find the answers they need the data has to be organized. The Semantic Web and Information Commons argue that the greatest weakness of the web is that it is not organized in a fashion that a computer can best help find answers. If Licklider and Englebart’s vision is to be realized the web has to be restructured in order to make sense. In the second part of this paper it was proposed that the church needs to design its site to use XML (Extensible Markup Language). When this happens then computers will be able to recognize which items are events, photos, news, sermons, addresses and be able to interpret what that item is about and then use it to make new systems. Nelson called this transclusion, which is the ability to take bits and pieces from other works and combine them together to make a new work. His hypertext model allows the church to break its information down into small parts but the current implementation on the web does not allow those bits to be put back together logically. By moving towards a more structured web elements that are found in the Web 2.0 movement such as mashing up content from one page with a tool from another now become possible. In addition the church web page is no longer stuck on the churches site but can be mixed into personal calendars, mapping software, feed readers, iPods and accessed from cell-phones, palm computers and whatever new medium is yet to be invented.

Although the above concentrates on how to communicate information the goal of the web is not only on the information but on the people who read and write that information. Like other communication mediums, the web gives people a voice and allows them to interact with others. Howard Rheingold argues that the web creates virtual communities and the individual postings and responses garnered on the web are actual social interactions. In light of this every posting on the web is posted by a person and every link on the web represents the link between the sayings of one person and another. Thus the web is a representation of the interactions of people and not just data. By extension the church web site is a representation of the collective voice and interaction of the people of God in a local settings and not just raw data about the church. Considering that Bernes-Lee dream is that the web is a place to “Enquire within” that means that people come to the church web page in order to find answers. Licklider’s and Englebart adds that the primary role of the computer is to augement peoples abilty to find their answers. With all these concepts combined the purpose of the web for the local church is to be the church’s voice to the people who go online to find answers to their questions about the church.

The church does not need to worry about answering every question but only the questions people are asking about it and the questions people will ask online. The church still needs a method to answer questions offline since not everyone has access to the web nor will everyone use the web to find their anwers. The web is only one voice of the church but it is an important one. The task for the church is to determine which questions it should answer online and what is the best way to answer those questions. In order to do this the church must follow five steps:

1. Determine the questions that the users are asking

2. Prioritize the questions in light of the mission of the church

3. Determine what unique data this church can add to that question

4. Determine how does this data relate to other components

5. Leverage the web’s uniqueness to best answer the question

Although it may be nice to have a cookie-cutter approach to making a web page the reality is that no two church web sites can really be the same. Each web site is an expression of the voice of all the saints in the church striving to accomplish the mission they believe God has given them. Since each church is made up of a different combination of saints and are called to reach out in a different location to different people then the voice will look different on the web depending on the people asking and the people answering the questions. The church web site however does not stand alone but is part of the greater collection of voices tied together through hyperlink into a tapestry called the web. The next step for church web pages is to find ways to tie its voice back into the greater web. This will require the church to not see its page as an end destination but a small piece that contributes its voice into a larger pool of answers. Practically this means the church will need to start a pages like theology statements but then send the user to other sites like the denominational headquarters to attain more pieces to the question that puzzles them. Likewise when the church writes about news it should send the reader to pages with more information. The church should also draw information from other sources such as members photo galleries, blogs and profile pages. This information can be transcluded onto the church web page and take on new forms that advance the mission of the church. For instance if a the church’s mission includes enhancing fellowship it could blend together the photos its members post on other sites and deliver then as a new compilation on the church site. Likewise the members and other sites can take the information on the church site and blend it with information from other sites so it appears in their calendars or desktop of their computer.