(The following is the manuscript for episode nine of season one of the Breaking the Digital Spell podcast, which premiered on October 16th, 2018. Available wherever you get your podcasts, or you can listen online here.) When I originally set out to do this podcast back in May of this year, my initial vision of it was to focus specifically on social media. I wanted to do a podcast on how social media and theology intersect, and so I invested in some research material to help me get this podcast started. By the time I finished the first book in that stack – Neil Postman’s “Amusing Ourselves To Death” – I realized that focusing solely on social media, while not a bad idea in and of itself, wouldn’t be enough. Social media did not arise in a vacuum – it is the culmination of several difference strands of technology and media that collide into one of the most powerful – and most destructive – mediums ever created. Neil Postman passed away in October of 2003; two months before that, a collective of former employees from a digital marketing firm would take a risk on the creation of a brand new website called MySpace. Nobody, not even Postman himself, could conceive of how the humble beginnings of MySpace would soon give way to the most significant revolution of media since the Internet itself, and how drastically the world would change 15 years later because of it.
S1E9: Social Media's Content Waterfall
S1E9: Social Media's Content Waterfall
S1E9: Social Media's Content Waterfall
(The following is the manuscript for episode nine of season one of the Breaking the Digital Spell podcast, which premiered on October 16th, 2018. Available wherever you get your podcasts, or you can listen online here.) When I originally set out to do this podcast back in May of this year, my initial vision of it was to focus specifically on social media. I wanted to do a podcast on how social media and theology intersect, and so I invested in some research material to help me get this podcast started. By the time I finished the first book in that stack – Neil Postman’s “Amusing Ourselves To Death” – I realized that focusing solely on social media, while not a bad idea in and of itself, wouldn’t be enough. Social media did not arise in a vacuum – it is the culmination of several difference strands of technology and media that collide into one of the most powerful – and most destructive – mediums ever created. Neil Postman passed away in October of 2003; two months before that, a collective of former employees from a digital marketing firm would take a risk on the creation of a brand new website called MySpace. Nobody, not even Postman himself, could conceive of how the humble beginnings of MySpace would soon give way to the most significant revolution of media since the Internet itself, and how drastically the world would change 15 years later because of it.