What’s your view? What’s the expanse?
How big is your horizon?
This big?
This big?
Or this big?
Technology brings us a lot: entertainment, news, opinions, amazing photos, videos, music, information about stuff, places, and people we’d otherwise never know.
Just remember this: the online world merely represents the real one. You can research rocks online, or you can go outside and pick one up. A real one.
There’s a word my Pastor used to bring up in talking about our relationship with God and God’s knowledge of us. It’s a Greek word, ginosko, and it means knowledge, but not just any knowledge.
Experiential knowledge.
(I’ll use his example to explain it.) Like this: you’re inside. You look out the window. It starts raining. You say, “Oh, look, it’s raining.” You know it’s raining. That’s knowledge.
Here’s ginosko: you’re outside. You’re taking a walk, enjoying the breeze, when the clouds roll in. A crack of thunder and suddenly it’s pouring. You’re drenched, soaked, dripping from head to toe. You don’t say something inane like, “Oh, look, it’s raining.” There’s no need. You know it’s raining. You know the rain. That’s experiential knowledge.
What happens with the Internet is that it’s so media-rich and information-soaked that it seems like a real experience. We can chat, send photos, use webcams, listen to music, watch videos, share our lives via any number of online portals.
It’s so easy, so convenient, so accessible, and so close to real.
So we have to ask ourselves a few questions, just to make sure we don’t miss out on the experience.
What’s more important: uploading a video of your little girl singing, or having her sweet chubby arms wrapped around your neck?
What’s better: texting your best friend, or sitting down for a face-to-face at your favorite restaurant?
It’s not always an either-or situation. But when it is, do we make the right choice?
What’s easier and more convenient often replaces what’s better and more important. Watch out for that. Use the Internet. Use technology. Text when you don’t have time to talk, grab a video and post it for the grandparents to see, take a photo, read a blog. Just don’t let what happens online replace what should be happening off-line, in the real world,
in front of an endless horizon.
Images: PROJECT 365 #013 Me & My iPhone. by emjaydavies, Chrome Cr-48 netbook by æâ å»Â¾, and Wide sweeping landscape by net_efekt.