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 Post subject: 1-800-FEAR NOT
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For your contemplation:
Is technology today with iPhones, iPods, lap top computers, Gameboys, etc. creating a new isolation between human beings? Is technology causing us to forget how to relate to one another? Jesus was fortunate in that during his time on Urantia, there were no cell phones (I mean, can you imagine how busy his cell phone would be? Calls coming in from his apostles, reminders about conferences and sermons, messages from Judas Iscariot saying, "I still can't believe you didn't help John. We need to talk about this when you have time." etc...but I'm digressing). Do our electronic wonders take people away from one another? In other words, people up until recently had the luxury of spending time together washing and drying dishes, making dinner and standing at the kitchen counter peeling apples to make homemade pie, etc. Do people do these activities together any more? Has the element (of survival) employing human connection been compromised? Is this gift of technology being utilized for the advancement of light and life as our celestial brothers and sisters intended or are we headed down a path of dehuminization and destruction?
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That's so negative....

I think cell phones, telephones, Iphones, webcams, anything that gives us the ability to contact another human being is incredibly wonderful, useful and enables us to have more contact than ever before.

Before all these ways to contact one another we had to wait days, weeks, months and sometimes years to have any kind of contact.

True, it is wonderful to have skin to skin (so to say) contact, but I have friends that lives 300 miles away that I have contact by cell phone every other day... if I didn't have that, I would have to wait maybe a year for vacation to see them...

So, Larry, you are being pretty "old-fashioned" in your thinking... people still do activities together... the activities may have changed but not any less meaningful or rewarding... I think technology is a help in finding new and better ways for people to communicate and relate to one another.

Don't forget, Judas was always trying to find something he could be revengeful about or resentful... is that what you are doing?

Go with the flow... let the new either replace the old or enhance it... don't inhibit growth.

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Steven...-....-.-.
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...- . .-. -.-- ..-. ..- -. -. -.--

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...permit the word of truth to strike down into the heart with living roots 177:5.2
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I hope youse guyse is havin' a good time. Makes perfect sense to me.

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Love the Morris Code! O:) Too funny!

I think the idea behind Larry's post is not so much to point fingers and appear 'negative.' It's a good thing to think about. To your point, Kreneep, technology is wonderful in that we do have the ability to talk to loved ones who are miles away, half way across the world, etc. I value that - since both of my sisters are in California. So, in that way - technology with iPhones, iPods, cell phones, etc. is a blessing.

I am revealing this not to mislead you in our parenting skills - this is just more or less an observation I made which was bewildering. A couple weeks ago, my husband and I took both his daughters and their good friend out for pizza. As we settling into the booth, the old foggies (me and hubby) reached for the menus and began persuing. I noticed, though, the other menus had not been picked up by the girls and it was awfully quiet. I peek over the menu and all three are delved into their cell phones an iPods texting away. I wanted to see how long this would last....and it lasted until the old foggies 'Ahem'd' and asked the girls to put down their phones and iPods and pick UP the menu.

So, there all five of us were together, but not really. See what I mean? I requested the girls put their technology away so we could all enjoy each others' company - which they were cool with. But, that small scenario said a lot to me.

In that respect - I don't think technology during a gathering is a polite or effective way of using personal time with one another.

But like with all things, you get the ying and the yang; the good and the bad. My husband and I have decided that we don't want technology around the dinner table, and require that phones and iPods be put away - not banned - just out of sight for 1/2 hour or so.

That's all.

Any other thoughts? I'm interested!
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 Post subject: Re: 1-800-FEAR NOT
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lwatkins wrote:
For your contemplation:
Is technology today with iPhones, iPods, lap top computers, Gameboys, etc. creating a new isolation between human beings?


While this thread seems a bit off-topic, it brought to mind
comments a friend of mine, the late Dr. Timothy Leary,
postulated in an article for the 20th Anniversary issue of
the Whole Earth Review in the Winter of 1988:

"By now, in 1988, most people in the industrial sectors are
extremely dependent upon digital thoughts and images presented
on screens. The average American household watches television
7.4 hours per day. Almost all business transactions are run by
software programs communicated on screens. Without conscious
choice or fanfare we have migrated from the "real" worlds of
voice, hand, machine into the digitized info-worlds variously
called hyperspace, cyberspace, or digital physics.

This migration across the screen into the digital info-world
marks the first phase of the post-industrial society. I suggest
that by 2008 A.D. most humans living in post-industrial habitats
will be spending as much time "jacked-in" to info-worlds on the
other side of the screen as they spend in the material world. In
20 years we will spend 7 hours a day actively (rather than
passively) navigating, exploring and colonizing the oceans and
continents of digital data. Interscreening -- creating mutual
digital-realities -- will be the most popular growthful form of
human communication.

Interscreening does not imply a derogation or neglect of
flesh-interactions. Intimacy at the digital level enriches
exchanges in the warm-skin levels. You do not lessen the
richness of your murmur-touch contact with your lover because
you can also communicate by phone, fax or hand-scrawled notes.
Warm-breath-interactions with your touch-friends will be more
elegant and pleasant with the digital reality option added."

Timothy Leary
Whole Earth Review, Page 65
Winter 1988
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Quote:
Love the Morris Code!


Well then, maybe you would like to know it is caled the Morse Code.

Quote:
the old foggies (me and hubby)


IMHO, that is the first clue of "separation"... your daughter apparently has no real report with you and your husband and has chosen her Iphone friends over you because they may offer her a more satisfying sense of adhesiveness to life.

Quote:
My husband and I have decided that we don't want technology around the dinner table, and require that phones and iPods be put away - not banned - just out of sight for 1/2 hour or so.


I am not a parent, but I believe that this is an excellent start to regaining that personal time and I would suggest that you might further that by using the dinner time for sharing your events of the day or something that will be a friendly conversation and interest between you and your daughter.

I am not saying that the current technologies can't be misused... but for all intents and purposes new outweighs the old means of contact by millions...

Who knows, maybe one day all we'll have to do is say "beam me up Scottie" and we will be whereever we would like to be in an instant!

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...permit the word of truth to strike down into the heart with living roots 177:5.2
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Quote:
Interscreening does not imply a derogation or neglect of
flesh-interactions. Intimacy at the digital level enriches
exchanges in the warm-skin levels. You do not lessen the
richness of your murmur-touch contact with your lover because
you can also communicate by phone, fax or hand-scrawled notes.
Warm-breath-interactions with your touch-friends will be more
elegant and pleasant with the digital reality option added."


Good that this man was intuitive enough to see this 20 years ago (???).

Not sure if that was a result of his LSD mind trips or if he was truly insightful without it.

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...permit the word of truth to strike down into the heart with living roots 177:5.2
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I think this is a very interesting question… is technology degrading the quality of communication between individuals?

I believe the answer is both yes and no.

As a parent I see my son, with his head buried into his phone, texting a mile a minute, unconscious of the world passing in front of his eyes. And there I say, yes, technology has degraded the quality of communication between us.

But then I see a young man who has a thousand and one friends, and can communicate at any time, with any number of others, about a million different topics and I see a revolution in human communication underway.

To all of us I say… Be patient! We are in the middle of an amazing epoch of change. Changes, both good and bad, are moving so fast by us that it is impossible to see the forest from the trees. It’s a good time to be alive!

Eventually things will shake out, and a net positive for humanity will be achieved, another brick in the long road to the age of light and life will be laid. And how will our current addiction to communication be remembered? Who can say.
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It was in response to a similar subject on another site that I wrote on what I have found re: Cyberspace communication.

"It has been only this year I have discovered Urantia and internet together. And immediately it was realized that a keyboard is not the same as a mouth, lips, and the body language that goes with tone, verve, or nuance. The screen is not the same as eyes and the 140 some odd muscles that go into a smile or frown, which combined... speak volumes."

Comparing discourse through the digital model and personal communing is like comparing roller skates and a Ferrari, or the heat from a match and that of the sun.

Tell you what, being the Techie that I am, the next time I have a child I'm going to make sure I set up a web cam and watch the birth over a computer from far away. Or better yet, I'll have a delivery nurse hold up a cell phone with a camera to properly document the event... that way I won't be hampered by holding my new born when I post all 300 of my friends to tell them what a real experience it was and all that it held for me. Oh, that's right, I would have had to touch another to sire offspring. Oops! wrong again.

Regarding the difference in substance one can draw off these UB sites and one's study group, this is all I have to say:

"Our study group, where it was once one-and-a-half hours is now three or more, primarily because we read together. It is in this spiritual atmosphere our personalities can become impassioned, and a spontaneous discourse occurs. It has never once become acrimonious!! Interesting, isn't it?"

Regarding having good friends, I would rather have three in the flesh than three-hundred on line-text-twitter-my spaced-facebooked-emailed-celled or digitally imaged!

Because the real issue is... with or without the benefits of technology... to insure I control it and it does not control me. In the long run the truth is... actual living experience has no Cosmic substitute.

In Service,

Steven

P.S. Touch someone today! Unless, of course, you would rather reach out and touch someone. After all, Personalities also have no cosmic substitute![quote][/quote]
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6/23/09
A Celestial text message ;
Bro Jesus 8) ; Please tell our Father , thanks
for all my birthday gifts today , i'll try to behave , but ,
... i often fall short .
later bro . call later . ok .
Oh , an about useing Dads name in vain the other day ,
uh , sorry it slipd , my bad.
Faith Son Coop


47:10.2
John the Revelator saw a vision of the arrival of a class of advancing mortals from the seventh mansion world to their first heaven, the glories of Jerusem.

He recorded: “And I saw as it were a sea of glass mingled with fire; and those who had gained the victory over the beast that was originally in them and over the image that persisted through the mansion worlds and finally over the last mark and trace, standing on the sea of glass, having the HARPS OF GOD , and singing the song of deliverance from mortal fear and death.

”(Perfected space communication is to be had on all these worlds; and your anywhere reception of such communications is made possible by carrying the “ THE HARP OF GOD, ”

a morontia contrivance compensating for the inability to directly adjust the immature morontia sensory mechanism to the reception of space communications.) :wink:

The Harp of GOD IS the ultimate ... Cell phone !

Can you hear me Now ?

As above , so it is as below . also , eh .

... An also theirs ... Reflectivity .

And ... ?

The many Circuits ...

http://www.truthbook.com/search/UBParag ... Result.cfm

Faith son Coop

Image


Last edited by coop on Wed Jun 24, 2009 7:12 am +0000, edited 2 times in total.

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The many Circuits ...

http://www.google.com/custom?domains=tr ... thbook.com
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Larry,
Great topic. Here's my response.

90% of all people will simply use technology for superficial or pleasurable reasons. Just like the internet is a fantastic tool, still, people tend to gravitate towards a debased use of it because people are intellectually lazy or only think of entertaining the brain, not so much in using it to increase knowledge or philosophy.

That being said, for the 10% of us who use technology to enlighted our view of the world, it more than makes up for the 90% who misuse technology.

As we evolve (and technology will help us), the use of this technology will evolve - to the betterment of mankind.

I read somewhere that half of the Urantia Book's sold since 1955 were sold in the last ten years (about 300,000 books). I have to believe that the internet and all of the gadgets we have at our disposal are quickening knowledge (for those who use it correctly). Truths can spread much quicker and reach more people and that is exactly what's going on.

And, as in the case in Iran, are making it harder and harder for despots to control the masses.

Yes I hate the porn, the violent games, the mindless myspace web sites, etc. but this is to be expected when children get new toys. Eventually, we will learn use these devices to improve our minds, not just occupy them with thoughtless and superficial activity.

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Jim Watkins
SW Florida
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a couple o' thoughts . . .

alise, hope you did not go away ~

and

"love the one you're with" comes to mind
as
when we are in physical presence of another some tend toward being equally entwined via technological device
ergo
confusion about who/what/when/how to communicate

to learn the art of living is of utmost importance, imho

thanks, larry, for bringing this up as it is something we on the relationShip are challenged w/ daily

in love,
susan
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