Involved in a number of conversations this past week, there’s been this sense that there are two types of people involved within IT: those people who are after information, and then those people whom are about meaning. We see a similar break in life when we think about theology and hear that some topics are better discussed in seminary settings, or that the local church is more about applied theological leanings. Is this respect, I wonder if we do more damage than good because meaning then becomes constrained than enabled.

Or, at least that’s been the line of thinking that I had come thru my mind when reading Information is Cheap, Meaning is Expensive from The European:

The European: Which brings us to the question of what it means to be alive. Biology, philosophy or religion might answer that question in very different ways.

Dyson: That is a huge and unanswered question that we are unlikely to agree on. Life is whatever you define it to be. There are some clear examples of intelligent life: A kitten is clearly alive, and a human being is clearly an intelligent living being. But very quickly you get into murky areas where the answers are much less clear.

The European: Do we have to embrace the uncertainty?

Dyson: It becomes a question of judgment. Barricelli pushed for a very broad definition of life. In the 1950s, we were just beginning to travel out into space and perhaps discover an answer to whether there might be life and intelligence outside of our planet. Barricelli was concerned that we might not recognize life or intelligence when we saw it, because our definitions of what it takes to be alive or intelligent were so narrow.

There’s more, and I’d encourage you to read and consider some of the propositions put forth in that piece. Specifically, look at your mobile ministry activities, or even your social media and other broadcasting-type activities, where are you simply pushing forward information, but leaving meaning to be narrowly defined, or even alternately defined, by aspects of technology and culture.

Then again, is such kind of thinking and activity even a part of your/your organization’s methods of pushing things forward? Many of those I’ve spoken to are in such a frame of thought and life that they literally don’t think like the other streams of life do around them. For you to think and then do something that’s not be done “quite that way” before is indeed advancing thought and activity beyond certain paradigms isn’t normal. Franky, its painful. So in your moments where you aren’t “making a living” are you stepping into a meaning of life that build on what was known (information) but infuses into life something different?

Yea, its expensive to do such a trip. Am learning that one…