We've been told that much of what makes Web 2.0 so '2.0' is the aspect of interactivity. The word itself implies an 'action between' - which implies two actors. Web 2.0 typically is defined by a layer of new technologies that are intended to make this interactivity easier. But like many things that claim interactivity for the sake of marketing, there often are not really 'two actors' and if we experience it as interactive it is because we are being cleverly hoodwinked.

The idea of something being 'interactive' arises originally (it would seem) with being able to act on the thing that is acting on you. For instance, a video game compares to a movie sometimes only in this way: the video game is an interactive movie. The watcher is now a 'player' and may act within or on the game itself. Sometimes however, when advertising and marketing gets out ahead of reason, it might be claimed that the consumer's ability to change channels on the television makes it 'interactive'. I think this is sloppy use of our language, and that anything which is by its nature a push medium - in particular any mass medium is by default - does not pass the sniff test for interactivity. Lets put it this way - in order for something to be interactive you need two parties, and both need to be active - during movies and television (and even when in the grocery store) most of us are passive. If someone tells you otherwise obviously they are selling you something.

Then video games, which are a mass medium, must do something over-and-above mere button pushing to achieve interactivity. We could call them interactive because the player does not merely act on the device (the game system) but on the content itself: the story or action in the game.

By degrees, the vaunted interactivity of Web 2.0 is supposed to be not just interactivity but human interactivity. That is to say, it is supposed to mean that no longer is the web merely man reading information across the world or man interacting with machine, but man interacting with man via the web. Of course, this idea of 'social media' being new is apparent nonsense given the long history of usenet and forums, and by-in-large Web 2.0 seems more like a set of technologies which open up human interactivity on the web to a larger audience. For usenet, IRC and forums certain barriers existed (though each presents less) to participation. The Blog however, is less of a technology and more of a doctrine or form. It risks perverting human interactivity with the mass popularity of journalism, but at the same time 'makes sense' to people both old and young, a delicate balance that is daily being straddled more or less successfully across the internet.

Even further though, we could say that Web 2.0 actually consists more of a doctrine about how to develop on the web than any kind of technologies. The trouble we have defining it is that we find the need to represent something very important as a technological advance, when Web 2.0 is a change of perspective that if looked at very soberly, will not meet the criterion for 'advance' or 'innovation' that we typically look for. Social Media has existed long before, but it is in the doctrine of the human interactive web (Web 2.0) that you find it has equal importance with traditional media such as press releases, brochures, company listings, journals and periodicals, research data and so on. Naming it '2.0' is quasi-technical jargon and in all likelihood anyone who has actually versioned things - a programmer for instance - would never have named it thus.

Even with the lower barrier of entry still many people prefer the phone over email or Facebook or chat. Is this old-fashioned, interacting voice to voice? Or is there something deeper going on? For one, I think that Web 2.0's new criteria of human interaction clashes with the internet's main strength: anonymous information sharing. But in human interaction, the less anonymity the better (or the worse, depending on whom you are interacting with.) On this count, the phone wins: email and chat are fast, but the medium is thick. By this I mean that the normal flow of a conversation is constrained very much by both: emotion and tone are not present and thus the invention of the emoticon. On this count, we can tell that even the phone is inferior to real interaction, and it is possible that even video-chat and voice-chat over long distances will fail because of simple delay. Video chat even more because the presentation is bandwidth-heavy and only approximates seeing the person. The phone system is more direct than TCP/IP and streaming services often randomly lag. Phone service cutting out is bad enough, but the foibles of voice over IP are countless. I think we can agree that the older technology is more perfected: phones are better for human interaction.

What does this mean for the web (by which I mean web sites, the world of the http://www) and its future based on the new doctrine of Web 2.0? It may mean that the web itself becomes less influential, but without a restoration of influence to traditional mass media such as newspapers, television, radio, etc. Web 2.0 points away from itself: The web is by in large a way to cheaply present the same information to numerous people in disparate locations. Now we are trying to use this vehicle to instead display different information to each of those people, automatically. In this case, the phone already does this: you get exactly what you're looking for - the other person.

The web is currently the best way to cheaply present identical information to numerous people in disparate locations. Radio, newspapers and television do this as well: the web is destined for superiority. But what if people finally recognize human interactivity over the web as the chimera it really is? Only so many can be popular, and personal security is an issue in less lawful areas. The new doctrine of human interactivity on the web is an uneasy fit, but it need not be. Perhaps though, the website is the wrong vehicle for it.

Christ is Risen!

Not that you'll be terribly surprised, but as it would happen I'm going to be writing a series of essays. The most difficult thing about blogging for me is to 'find a voice' - not in the sense of having nothing to say (as if!) but in the sense of trying to restrict the scope of my rambling. I've become partial to more structured forms, just because it impresses upon me some kind of discipline. There's something to be said along the same vein about writing a title beforehand.

The subject will be the spiritual analogies, both purposeful and accidental, contrived and natural, within video games. (This is including both computer games and console games, plus a peppering of arcade games where required.) I'm more interested in what people do by accident to make a game work than what they contrive to do to be specifically 'pedagogical' - morally, ethically, etc.

The format is to consider a dimension of ascesis, classical spirituality or wisdom, explain how it is expressed within the context of games, and then discuss a specific game or games that exemplifies it with particular clarity.

Specific subjects may include 'Place and Wandering', 'The Desert', 'Masks and Faces', 'The Soul Triptych', 'Rhetorical Plots', 'Divine Ascent', 'Unseen Warfare', 'Paradise and Dys', 'Free Will and Choice', 'Mercy and Judgment' and some others.

Listening to the Bridegroom Matins services, I've got an impression I've got Monday a bit wrong. But first, I wanted to note the apocalyptic character of Holy Week - there is a sense in which the Revelation of John maps to Holy Week, which is sensible when we think of the same Father's comments in his general letter: 'Surely the end times are here because there are many anti-Christs among us.' The 'dichronic' (twofold or two-dimensional) time has to be taken into account when looking at his Revelation, and with Holy Week.

I've been informed by Father Tom that the verses which come between the Entry into Jerusalem and the Last Supper are sometimes called the 'Apocalyptic Verses.' From what I can tell this is partly because there is a lot of talk of the Last Judgment - but also these passages are read during Holy Week specifically and even the ones which do not directly reference the Apocalypse (such as the 'call no man Father' one) only make sense within this framework.

Anyway, there's a lot that is coursing through my mind about those verses (I had trouble paying attention during the service because connections were firing off) I wanted to offer a few thoughts on these first three days.

First, I think it is clear that Holy Week represents the 'time when no man may work' - which is represented variously, but the Revelational images are also strong in this regard - thus Holy Week anticipates, through Christ's actual life, four 'ends' (as Fr. Tom has said) death, the end of human history, the end of Jerusalem and its Temple, and the end of the world. Taking dichronically, they are both things which have already happened for the Christian, but also have yet to happen. Our own death in some sense represents always the end of all things - (like a 'game over' in a video game, right?) since whatever happens, it's not for us. But also it is always the case that Christ will come soon, yes, even this generation will not taste death until they see him in his Glory. This is simply to say, in our dying we pass ahead unto the finality of all things; though we no longer believe (as perhaps some of the first Christians did and others still often do) that time itself will end for all within this generation, nonetheless the scripture is always true; our death brings about for us, a meeting of the Lord.

I don't think the Church has specifically painted symbolism into each of these first three days; partly because she in her wisdom has employed artisans to elaborate as needed. There is a lot to work with.

I think however, that before, my work was weakened in that I chose to anchor my forward reading of the seals and trumps as starting with Palm Sunday: rather, they begin with the nights - whereas the reverse ones begin with the days. In terms of the world in which morning marks the beginning of the day, this would work out, but since liturgically the evening begins the day, this little shift pushes the forward reading ahead a day. The 'conquerer' (first horseman) while being certainly emblematic of Christ's entry, is the dream of the night of the first apocalyptic day. The second, war, and the third, famine, come at each night, and at last, death, on the night of Judas' agreement to betray Christ. To ourselves as dreamers, the nights would be seen as days and the days nights; much as Lewis describes outer space as 'alive' and the planets 'dead' for the dwellers therein.

I've written some verses in which I imagine the domes of heaven crashing down - Moon, Mars, Mercury - which represent human affections, imaginations and desires - moods and muses. I think it is possible to interpret the Revelation in this way, and that we start with the moon (for Monday) which represents virtue or discernment, is very apropos. And on that following night, to herald Tuesday, we find the unwise virgins struggling against the wise virgins - but having no ability to purchase or bargain for more oil. Many Fathers see the connection between the oil and almsgiving - a quintessential act of virtue (and perhaps the root of active virtue altogether) in that 'having mercy' in greek 'eleison' is like the act of applying healing ointment or oil. What they have sought to collect before now is theirs, but with no 'moon', there is nothing left to get; there is only to keep the lamps trimmed and burning. The cosmic disturbance from the worldly perspective (stick with me here) is from the 6th seal. True night begins and the moon is gone (turned to blood.) Christ is really 'unleashed' here upon the worldly, and although he arrives on a white horse, (as a brightly countenanced conquerer) things are going to change. But the important commemoration is the cursing of the barren fig tree: It's lack of virtues is 'sealed' with a curse.

Tuesday for Mars we see Christ harrowing (for he is riding the red horse here if you will) the Pharisees and others for their stunted understanding and selfishness. But after that time, no one tried to engage him in war; war himself is undone. The severity of his answers reminds me of a doctor amputating a limb or the use of an executioner's blade (usually a two-handed greatsword of some kind.) The corresponding worldly perspective sees the Martyrs crying out and being given their robes; I'm recalling Christ's upbraiding the Jews of the time who said 'we would not have slain the prophets' (isn't that us? We would 'not have persecuted the confessors'!) - this is part of his harrowing. The world sees the ihidaya (the pure and chaste and virginal) as being given to unfairly and allowed to rest while the rest suffer. With worldly eyes when we read these passages this is what we feel. How come they get white robes? We wouldn't have persecuted them... The important commemoration here is of the wise and unwise virgins. No struggle will grant the unwise virgins oil from the wise.

Here on Wednesday from the world's perspective, Hades has been released; that is, with the fall of Mercury we are 'shut up and cannot come forth' - on the other hand, we see from Christ the metaphor of the grain of wheat falling to the earth and dying. There is even some kind of spiritual famine here; as those who believe in him do not confess it. This marks the 'passing point' - the famine which comes can be spiritually thought of as the drying up of fleshly things, with the sinful woman repenting of her harlotry - the very expensive spices are poured out. The human reserves are totally spent; and yet, we continue. The scales remind me of the balance we're presented between the woman who is a sinner becoming justified in her faith, while Judas who is a partaker of the ministry throwing it away for 'some bread' (money is sometimes called 'bread' in slang.) Looking at Revelations 8 (for the Third trumpet going forward, and the Fourth going backward) I see Mercury falling into the rivers (tis a smaller planet, see:) and makes the waters bitter. This is to say, from the spiritual perspective, gossip and bad report are done for (as they are when Christ's reaving from the day before are finished) and the demons die trying to consume the waters (people) who are chastened in tongue to the point of bitter repentance. I think from the worldly perspective the sun, moon and stars are representative of all varieties of important worldly lights - priests, wise men, generals, kings, etc, being shut up. This is from the 4th trump. The important commemoration is of the sinful woman repenting with tears and the breaking of her jar of ointment.

Apologies if these thoughts are a bit unorganized. An appendix is as follows:

Monday: Moon representing discernment, or active virtue, the peak of which we see variously as solitude, true individuality, uniqueness, purity, virginity. The verses for the night leading up to it are Matt. 21:18-43 (reading from Sunday's Bridegroom Matins), the synaxarion reading is a short comparison between the barren fig tree and St. Joseph the All-comely, who was in contrast a great bearer of grain for his brothers. I have borrowed Revelation 6 and 8-9: Looking the Paschal direction the First Seal and Trump, and for the daytime, looking in the Worldly direction the Sixth Seal and Trump.

Tuesday: Mars representing warfare and struggle, or violent action, for often when we cannot obtain things by work we take them by force. The verses for the night leading up to it are 22:15 - 23:39 and the synaxarion reading recalls the ten wise and unwise virgins who must keep their lamps burning lest they miss out entering the kingdom. I have borrowed Revelation 6 and 8-9: Looking in the Paschal direction the Second Seal and Trump, and for the daytime, looking in the worldly direction the Fifth Seal and Trump.

Wednesday: Mercury representing secrets, news, worldly knowledge and gossip. The verses for the night leading up to it are John 12:17-50 and the synaxarion reading recalls the woman who anointed Christ with expensive spices, weeping bitterly for her sins. I have borrowed Revelation 6 and 8: Looking in the Paschal direction the Third Seal and Trump, and for the daytime, looking in the Worldly direction the Fourth Seal and Trump.

Thanks to everyone who commented on my 'Thoughts in No Particular Order' - which in case it was not obvious, was my 'lenten feature.' Instead of my normal rambling posts, I tried to limit myself to a single thought, and only if that thought was something that I had some certainty that I could comment on. Now that Lent is over (Holy Week is here...) I've stopped that 'feature', but it is unlikely I will go back to my usual posting just yet.

A few thoughts that came to me when thinking about this post were, is Holy Week part of Great Lent? Now, in some sense it is, in that the fast continues until Pascha (Easter for the occidentals) but in another sense, Great Lent is 40 days. Since it shares in the symbolism and typology of all of the 40's (40 days of rain, 40 years of wandering, 40 days of Christ's fast) I tend to consider it strictly 40 days, despite some counts making it continue until Pascha. Given this, it creates an interesting situation as to what the post-Lent / pre-Pascha period might mean. If you count literally, 6 weeks is 42 days; therefore to get 40 days you drop 2 days. This easy; Cheesefare Sunday is dropped on one end, and Lazarus Saturday on the other. To my mind, this makes eight separate feastdays following Lent (A week of feasts!), which are as follows: Lazarus Saturday, Palm Sunday, Great (and Holy) Monday, Great Tuesday, Great Wednesday, Great Thursday, Great Friday and Great and Holy Sabbath. Pascha is not a feast-day, as Christmas really is not a feast-day: it is a series of festivities which all together compose the 'feast' itself. Now, Pascha is obviously also a feast-day, since it has a specific day, like Christmas, on which it is celebrated; but it cannot be limited to only its 'day.'

Another way to look at it is to see 'day' as not a 24-hour period or the time from when the sun goes up to when it goes down, but rather to see day as a period which may be identified with those terms. In layman's terms that is, A square is a rectangle but a rectangle is not a square. Thus in the sense of '24-hour period' we may say 'Pascha is not a 24 hour period.' but we cannot say, 'Pascha is not a feast-day.' Rather, Pascha is itself reinterpreting the meaning of day, like Christmas does as well but in a less pronounced way.

We may ask if it was planned this way - if the ancients predicted our misunderstanding of day - ? I think this is a bit of a limiting view. Human language is always vague (consider the word 'east' - in Greek, 'anatolia' is rooted simply in the sunrise) so to consider poetically that two different things may mean the same thing in an unusual way, or that accidental differences in words may come to have a deeper significance is not strange at all. I would go so far as to interpret our own body and say our right hand represents our right or planned actions, and the left our accidents or mistakes. Thus it is inherent to man's experience that he makes mistakes, even mistakes which are non-problematic: this is how I learned to improvise on the piano.

Having laid this foundation, I think it makes sense for us to be able to look at things which were accidental and say that there is indeed some meaning in them, whether we believe that God ordained them providentially or if meaning lies nascent in many things awaiting a man to speak for it.

The curious thing that happened to me last night, in the evening matins, was that I thought - was convinced in my imagination anyway - that if Pascha is the dawn of the mystical day, then Holy Week is it's twilight. Matins, like Vespers, is a twilight service, which is to say it occurs (ideally) intersecting with the time in which the sun is under the horizon but still lighting up the sky. This is called 'the magic hour' sometimes, and occurs in both the evening and morning. It provides a period which is 'identical' in some way in both the morning and evening.

I think twilight is significant in this sense; it is a period which is 'night' (after sunset) but not night, as there is still light in the sky (and on land.) It represents what I would call the class of 'ordinary paradox': things which are 'both/and' and not 'either/or' in ordinary experience. Twilight is emblematic of the current state of the world, night is coming when no man may work, but also the radiant dawn of the day of the Lord. The only time in which one may wake and be uncertain whether day or night is coming is twilight.

Returning to Holy Week, it starts by having a Matins service in the evening: it turns the order of services upside down. There are many things we could say about this, and many have said them better than I. What I would like to say is that Holy Week turns the world right-side up, or, it reveals to the Christian that what the worldly consider as the twilight of morning (Matins) is really the last light before night. Puts an interesting twist on the Platonic utterance many a lifelong hedonist will make: "He/she is going to a better place." Really?

Monday is the sphere of the moon; perhaps on Holy Monday we can meditate on what is the meaning of the twilights of all Mondays? The dividing of the waters - or the tides - perhaps they cease? We look to John's Revelation:

I looked when He opened the sixth seal, and behold, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became like blood.

And the stars of heaven fell to the earth, as a fig tree drops its late figs when it is shaken by a mighty wind.

Then the sky receded as a scroll when it is rolled up, and every mountain and island was moved out of its place.

And the kings of the earth, the great men, the rich men, the commanders, the mighty men, every slave and every free man, hid themselves in the caves and in the rocks of the mountains,

and said to the mountains and rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of Him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb!

For the great day of His wrath has come, and who is able to stand?”

I selected the sixth seal here, since it refers to the moon, and conveniently, with Holy Week being backwards and all (much the way the shadow of something is backwards) we might proceed *backwards* through the seals instead of forwards. The seventh seal only occurs after much interpolation, as though perhaps the whole year proceeding is the 'Great and Holy Sunday' before Holy Week.

Then again, we might take another route and read forwards: Palm Sunday is the First Seal: The conqueror. (The Entrance into Jerusalem.) This puts us on the Second Seal: The sending of War. Again, if we do the upside down / rightside up comparison, we come to the conclusion that both are happening, one spiritually and the other soulishly. Proceeding towards Pascha we read:

When He opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature saying, “Come and see.”

Another horse, fiery red, went out. And it was granted to the one who sat on it to take peace from the earth, and that people should kill one another; and there was given to him a great sword.

The Psalmist notes:

"In his days shall the righteous flourish; and abundance of peace so long as the moon endureth"

Isaiah:

"The stars of heaven and their constellations will not show their light. The rising sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light."

Jeremiah:

"They will be exposed to the sun and the moon and all the stars of the heavens, which they have loved and served and which they have followed and consulted and worshiped. They will not be gathered up or buried, but will be like refuse lying on the ground."

Ezekiel:

"When I snuff you out, I will cover the heavens and darken their stars; I will cover the sun with a cloud, and the moon will not give its light."

Joel:

"The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD." (there are several of these in Joel.)

The Lord:

""Immediately after the distress of those days " 'the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.'"

For a further elaboration on this see: This passage from Revelation 9.

And following our pattern of upside-down/rightside-up we can look at the second trump:

Then the second angel sounded: And something like a great mountain burning with fire was thrown into the sea, and a third of the sea became blood.

And a third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed.

Keeping in mind always that Revelation is liturgical, symbolic and mystical: The moon may refer to the Moon (Luna) but also may refer to the moon symbolically. To figure out what these things mean you would have to look at the prophets and the psalms, and also poetry in general. My sincere conviction is that the 'lady with the moon under her feet' of Revelation is no less symbolic than the moon which turns to sack-cloth. Given this, I want to wax mystical a moment and guess what Holy Monday might mean.

Holy Monday represents the end (the very end) of human righteousness. The moon is symbolic of virtue - discernment, courage, justice and even temperance - in the perspective of the world, it looks like catastrophes and the end of the future and of hope. But in the Paschal direction, it is a harrowing of the worldly - of the demons (in the mystical reading of the psalms, we sometimes interpret 'men' and 'nations' as being the leagues of demons) destroying one another. It is now impossible for them to sustain war against us, since their internal struggle occupies them. In terms of the trumpets, we see a similar image: But the red horseman is instead a meteor; and a third of the sea of life is turned to blood - perhaps the water is being turned into wine for us in preparation - and the ships and living creatures may represent thoughts and evil imaginations (constructs) being obliterated.

These are a few thoughts that come to mind - I seem to recall a verse or poem in which one of the acts of God prior to the end of the age is to shatter the moon asunder, but I cannot find the verse. Lewis references it in his That Hideous Strength but I can't figure out where the allusion comes from.

PS - in Revelation 9: how many times have you played a video game where a boss has his 'power' in his mouth or tail? I don't have the time to go into now to figure out the symbolism of that passage, but its pretty cool.

The questions of science fiction generally center around 'what is man?' and very often are about 'can man create or destroy man?' It is obvious man can kill man, but this does not necessarily destroy him. About creating man, if we view man as micro-cosmos, it becomes a question actually of 'can man create?' as opposed to being a mere arranger or constructor. Can man from 'nothing' as it were, create a new micro-cosmos? This is the true question of Artificial Intelligence; can we through artifice re-create what man has by nature, that is, his intelligence? But in reality, man both already in some sense creates his intelligence and his life; but the method is not by our own choosing, that is, procreation and development. So to the question, can man create a man, I think we have a tentative yes, since we already do this. However, the act is synergistic: the trouble is that we do not do it alone. What many want to know, even though they have lost the words and faith to ask the question is: will God grant a soul to a man-made man? I do not know the answer to that.

Not that I have much to recommend me on this account, but I believe there to be a misconception about goodness. We conceive a moral person as one who follows a moral code. But a saint does not follow a moral code. We conceive an ethical person as one who follows a code of ethics. But a saint does not follow a code of ethics. We conceive a virtuous person as one who trains hard and achieves excellence. But a saint does not train hard for excellence. And yet, a saint is moral, ethical and virtuous. I think the confusion then, is between the quality and the source. One may attain the quality through work, but attaining the source is itself the fulfillment of the works.

One of the troubles in relationships, is that because we are very familiar with what the other person has thought, we begin to be able to some extent predict their acts. But really we begin to treat our predictions as though they were us actually reading the other person's mind, when no matter how often we're right it doesn't mean we know what the other person is actually thinking. Over time, our own suspicions may tend to take precedence over our observations; and thus, 'familiarity breeds contempt.'

Being told what to do is perhaps the most liberating thing, when we are not told how we are to do it. At times we may say we are doing the same thing as someone else, because the 'what' and though not the 'how' is identical. We may lose the 'how' out of forgetfulness, but let us never forget the 'what' - this is what enslaves us.

From what I can tell, 'do not pry into things too lofty for you' refers to attempts to philosophically understand the nature of God. The thought that arises is that when you make a seal (as when a signet ring is pressed in wax) you get an image of the seal, which may be very clear and identifiable, but as far as the ring is concerned, you do not know the nature of the ring without seeing the ring itself. And so it is with God.

One of the most basic things to do is turn time into heat. Microwaves happen to be one of the more precise methods of doing this.