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Communication is undergoing a revolution. This will impact our conversations about religion, politics, and society. IP PBX and Satelite Internet are making our world a closer knit place. I am interested in what you guys think the impact will be on religious conversation. Will these changes in communication polarize our preferences as people are able to find people who 'think like' them. Or will increased communication broaden our tolerance? What do you guys think?

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Comment by Joe Fulton on December 29, 2009 at 11:21pm: Behaviors online mimic those in the physical world, and each person will act according to their own nature. What I see happening is that the boundaries between what we observe and can prove, and what we believe are gradually closing their gap. There will always be fundamentalists of every camp, and the reactions will be very mixed. One thing that concerns me greatly is the tendency among many who are radicalized to violence (seems to be mostly Muslims) and want to carry a useless battle based on ignorance and superstition that should have ended centuries ago. Somehow, aside from the Sufis, they forgot to have a Reformation and afford reason its rightful place. I am afraid the result will be something horrible beyond all human belief. The response may end up being based on "immunology". It hurts to say that, but from what I see, it is a real possibility.

A really good book on how technological change is taking place in many, many ways is the recent compilation by John Brockman, "This Will Change Everything: Ideas That Will Shape the Future". There are over 100 short essays by many prominent people in the scientific / philosophical field and their words are well worth reading.

BTW, nice observation in your next-to-last paragraph, Katinka.

Comment by Katinka Hesselink on December 23, 2009 at 8:41am: From a sociological perspective globalisation and regionalisation go hand in hand. In other words: the very awareness of differences makes people retreat into their own communities more.

Applied to religion: religious fundamentalism USES the new technologies as much as religiously tolerant people do. Re: Saddam Hussein videos etc. I'm not just talking Islam fundamentalism, but also Christian fundamentalism, Buddhist fundamentalism and even Blavatskyan fundamentalism.

Which means that fighting for tolerance is just as important and difficult as it always was. Only the way it's done changes.

Comment by K. Paul Johnson on December 23, 2009 at 5:56am: Hi Cindy, and welcome. I was an early adopter of the www, starting in late 1993 to participate in various online fora devoted to different religious traditions. As best I can tell based on 16 years of observation, some people are open to new ideas and others are not, and online fora are either spiritual oases or battlegrounds (normally both) depending on the openmindedness of participants.