Sermon

When the editors of TIME Magazine name a person of the year, they support the theory that history is primarily shaped by the work of singular characters with disproportionate influence. But this year TIME Magazine has taken a different approach. TIME named YOU person of the year. That’s right, YOU, and YOU, and YOU, and YOU, and ME too! Let’s give ourselves a hand!

By naming YOU as person of the year, TIME offers another perspective—history is shaped not just by larger-than-life figures; history is shaped by the billions of collective acts and decisions of each of us.

This is not a new concept, of course. Social collaboration is fundamental to the political notion of constitutional democracy. It’s essential to the economic notion of free and fair trade. But by naming YOU person of the year, now, TIME Magazine is highlighting the exponentially expanding collaborative relationship networking which, through the Internet, is changing our world.

The Internet has been around for decades. But in its recent growth to a critical mass, its increasing ease of use, and perhaps most importantly, its growing diversity of users, the Internet has evolved far beyond its origins as a medium of communication. Today it is not simply a pipeline through which ideas and information pass. It has developed from an irrigation channel into a new kind of soil—a soil in which ideas and interactions actually take root, grow, get pruned, grow some more, and send off countless seeds, including mutant seeds, which will themselves grow and decompose and create even more new soil for self-correcting and self-sustaining, expanding and largely uncontrollable virtual ecosystems—the shape of which we can hardly begin to imagine.

If YOU have your own video blog, or shop on Ebay…or even if you have done something as seemingly insignificant as a Google search[1], you have become more than an observer in this historical development. You have, even in your observing, changed the very landscape.

Personally, I am way behind the times when it comes to the newest aspects of virtual community. And this is unsettling since it seems like yesterday that I was reasonably tech-savvy. But every minute new worlds are emerging. My own computer spell checker doesn’t even recognize “blog,” “ebay,” “google,” and “wiki”—terms which now occur in the everyday conversation of hundreds of millions of people.

Since I don’t blog, and I don’t participate in online social networking beyond low-tech email lists, it may be time for you to get a new young minister who can speak the language of the future. I’m not entirely kidding. Social networking is an essential part of religious life. To find friends and community who will both support us and hold us accountable has always been a vital part of religious life. And over the centuries religious institutions have taken on many different forms in order to meet these demands. Some of today’s largest online social networking sites with tens of millions of subscribers (sites like MySpace and Facebook) are getting a lot of bad press as they work out their kinks. So the future will probably not look exactly like these early experiments for teenagers. Still, we would do well to acknowledge that virtual community will be a significant part of our future as individuals, and also for our liberal religious movement.

Before we go into specifics about the look of tomorrow’s church, there are some broad fundamental concepts which we should cover. Today let’s begin with the concept of “open source.” Open source is a method of software development in which anyone can tinker with the inner workings of a program. This is different from conventional commercial software which, even after you purchase a license to use it, you still can’t peek at the secret code that makes it go. Open source software, by contrast, offers free access to anyone to play with, change, expand, or improve-on the program. Open source development begins with a few bits of code, and is driven forward by volunteers excited by a project who take the source code and modify it to suit their needs. So from an initial kernel, amazingly sophisticated programs evolve.

As with biological evolution, most mutations of the source code lead to dead ends. But open source programming succeeds because it can spin off countless variations. Even if 99.9% of them die, it’s no biggie. Each modification is given freely back to the community. The ones that survive[2] will be massively reproduced or modified again and again until they become spectacularly useful.

The primary story in the world of open-source software development is that of Linux. Linux is an operating system initiated by Linus Torvalds, a hacker from Helsinki who didn’t get much sunshine. This was partly because there wasn’t much sunshine to be had in Helsinki, and partly because Linus’s idea of fun was to stay in his darkened room for weeks working out programming conundrums. So it was just for fun [that’s the subtitle of his autobiography—“Just For Fun”] when he used the internet to pass around the rough draft of an operating system he was working on. He gave permission to others to share it, duplicate it, and modify it in any way they chose, and he invited their feedback. Linux became a massive global collaborative obsession; it now rivals products developed by corporations with multi-billion dollar budgets.

Which view of history does this story support? Is this about Linus, an unusual character with unique abilities, or is it about the countless contributors around the globe who shared his passion for a better operating system, the countless nameless people seeking both community and an opportunity to author their own software, the myriad hackers who just wanted to stick it to the corporate giants?

One of the many emerging virtual communities through which any of us can walk around is Wikipedia. Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia edited by its users—who can be anyone. You may scoff at the idea of mob-rule over the encyclopedia, but you can’t deny the impact of a site that receives up to 14,000 hits per second.

Many websites are now wikis. Essentially a wiki is a website that allows users to easily add, remove, and edit the site’s content, thereby creating a forum for mass collaborative authoring. Wikipedia, operating in this mode, now has about 10 times more articles than Encyclopedia Britannica, it’s free, it’s accessible in 200 languages, and it’s incredibly up to date—with articles about significant historical events popping up almost as soon as they occur.

But, you might argue, with any yahoo editing the encyclopedia, how accurate can it be? The answer to that question is still evolving, but the wikipedians argue that by pooling their knowledge and developing their editing rules, their accuracy[3] compares favorably to Britannica.

Eric Raymond, a prominent advocate for open source programming, is a critic of Wikipedia. He says that the open source approach is applicable to software development because there is an objective standard: software works or it doesn’t. But you can’t do that with an encyclopedia, he says, because there is no such test for truth. Still, I find Wikipedia’s truthiness useful. And that’s what it is supposed to be: a work in progress. Surely we know by now that everything on the internet is to be judged skeptically.

I preached a couple of years ago about “The Wisdom of Crowds.” The general idea was that large groups are often smarter than the smartest individual in the group. Of course this depends on what you mean by smart, and even then crowds will be smart only under proper conditions. But that’s what collaborative networks are called to do: to create those conditions in which we can reasonably rely upon one another and benefit from our collective wisdom.

Wikipedia will never overcome the challenge of neutrality. Imagine trying to describe the Israeli-Palestinian conflict neutrally. So Wikipedia editors routinely receive death threats. But Wikipedia acknowledges its limits and relies on a voluntary cadre of editors who go out every day to beat back the vandals who exist in that community, as in any other. Along with vandals, virtual community also have their do-gooders. Wikipedia’s doo-gooders are known as “WikiGnomes”—they keep a low profile editing typos, poor grammar, and obscenities.

For many people this virtual collaboration seems messy, uncontrollable, unpredictable, and even frightening. I would say the same thing about biological evolution...and constitutional democracy...and free and fair trade. All of these are examples of massive collaboration, in which billions of individual choices shape the world, generally for the benefit of the whole.

In the economic sphere we have free and fair markets. I believe that trade within free and competitive markets generally lead to the good of all—because people engage in trade only when they have something to gain. But I also believe in thoughtful regulation; that’s what I mean when I say “fair” trade. Regulation is necessary because the universal gain can only occur in an open competitive marketplace. Therefore regulation is necessary to prevent cheating, to prevent the destruction of our common infrastructure and our common natural resources, and to thwart anything else that hinders fair, open competition.

Monopolies, of course, hinder competition. So Microsoft, acting to maximize its own interest, is not necessarily bad, but a community owes it to itself to prevent monopolistic behaviors. The open source community feels that they have an important role in keeping the world free from monopolies which do harm in at least two important ways: monopolies eliminate choices for consumers, and they destroy the electronic equivalent of biodiversity, which is essential for the long-term survival even of virtual ecosystems.

In the political sphere we have massive social collaboration in the form of constitutional democracy. Here again people acting for their own betterment individually create a structure that benefits them collectively. And here, just as in the economic arena, social collaboration is not a free-for-all or a winner take all system. You’ll notice my emphasis upon constitutional democracy. Because when it works (which is obviously not all of the time) constitutional protections limit the powers of the collective body, so as not to harm the individual.

Utilizing a wiki, MIT has recently initiated a project called “One Laptop per Child.” (www.laptop.org) This collaborative effort is determined to develop an extremely low-cost, energy independent, rugged portable computer, with wireless broadband connectivity, for delivery in large quantities to children in the world’s poorest and most remote regions. Its Linux-based operating system will be free, no matter how many laptops are distributed.

The wonder everyone sees in everyone else they see, and the wonders that fill each minute of time forever;

It is for you whoever you are—it is no farther from you than your hearing and sight are from you;

Will you seek afar off? You surely come back at last, in things best known to you,

SHARING OUR GIFTS

REFLECTIONS, Part III

I’m going to speak at a later date about the implications for religious institutions related to virtual collaborative networks. Today I will conclude with a few words about the religious implications for individuals.

One of the keys to success in open-source software development is the interplay around ego. Interestingly, it appears that contributing to this kind of community, as any other, involves some level of feeling good about oneself, seeking recognition, making a difference. So ego is an important element to recognize and appreciate.

At the same time egolessness is also important. People need to contribute and then let it go. When people are determined to get credit for their modification to a bit of software, things can degenerate. For example, they may be resentful if others take what they have contributed and change it again. (It would be a dull world if personality didn’t enter into even the most technical interpersonal negotiations.)

I’m not going to suggest that we try to create a world without ego. A sense of ownership can be a powerful and a positive thing. You’ve heard me preach about your ownership of this congregation, your ownership meaning both relative control and responsibility for its well-being. So let’s try to hold those two concepts—ego and egolessness—in some creative tension.

So how can we as individuals live most creatively in that tension? I think we need to begin where Linus did. OK, you may not believe that you have the luxury of doing everything you do “just for fun.” But here’s how Eric Raymond puts it: “To solve an interesting problem, start by finding a problem that is interesting to you.”

He adds: most people take pleasure in a task when it falls in a range, “an optimal-challenge zone, not so easy as to be boring, not too hard to achieve.” And so: “enjoyment predicts efficiency.”

I just finished a book called Mountains beyond Mountains. It’s a true story about an American medical student, Paul Farmer, who while still in med school, starts building clinic facilities in a most desolate area in Haiti. He constantly flies back and forth between his growing medical practice in Haiti and school in the United States. One can’t be sure where he’s getting the most important education.

Through years of collaboration with Americans and Haitians, Catholics and atheists, the very rich and the very poor...emerge extensive medical facilities served by hundreds of staff in several countries.

But potential donors often balked at contributing to the organization he has initiated (www.pih.org). Even though they consider the work impressive, they judge Farmer’s methods, his genius, and his incredible devotion to be impossible to reproduce on a large scale. I must admit that I found his priorities strange, even though I couldn’t argue with the results. You see, Farmer continued to make house calls. Or I should say, calls to people living in places one could barely call a house, by hiking for hours and hours through barely passable terrain. It seems an inefficient, even irresponsible method of care when one wants to heal the world.

But Paul Farmer has access to the source code of global health. He got to the source (and continues to renew his connection with it) by going to serve where no one else would go. Using what he learned from the source, he began to have a voice in the multi-billion dollar efforts of the global public health community. Still, Farmer always kept his heart with his patients and his practice in Haiti, constantly flying back from global conferences to make house calls.

Farmer insists that doing what might be called “scut work” is essential. He says that when you lose track of serving individuals, you also lose track of the big picture, and you get sloppy, and then diseases grow into epidemics because we’re not paying attention to their evolution on a local, individual patient level.

Farmer’s views are in synch with the ancient Greek Heraklietos, who said that whosoever wishes to know about the world must learn about it in its particular details.

So, whether you want to make the world laugh by sharing your funny videos on YouTube, or whether you want to keep the world informed by authoring articles for Wikipedia, or whether you want to touch the hand of a neighbor in need, and dwell in non-cyber reality while there still is such a thing, your life, lived close to the source, will be a life of meaning. And your life will have far more impact than you probably imagine.

If all of this sounds daunting, and it’s hard to know where to begin, I repeat Eric Raymond’s advice: “To solve an interesting problem, start by finding a problem that is interesting to YOU.”

POSTLUDE

Whosoever wishes to know about the world must learn about it in its particular details.

[1] Every time we go to a website or do a search we affect the search algorithm -- which is based in part on popularity and choices we make from the search page -- in this way our choices have microcosmic affects upon the next person’s search experience.

[2] In software development, there is even an advantage over biological evolution. Dinosaurs, for example, died out and we probably can’t get them back. But with software if everything dies off someone can go back to the kernel; start from scratch.

[3] “When confronted with evidence of errors or bias, Wikipedians invoke a favorite excuse: look how often the mainstream media, and the traditional encyclopedia, are wrong! As defenses go, this is the epistemological equivalent of ‘But Johnny jumped off the bridge first.’ Wikipedia, though, is only five years old. One day, it may grow up.” Stacy Schiff, The New Yorker, 7-31-06

January 7, 2006

Rev. Paul Beckel

First Universalist Unitarian Church ~ www.uuwausau.org

SHARING OUR GIFTS

REFLECTIONS, Part III

POSTLUDE