Showing posts with label Technology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Technology. Show all posts

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Dreamspark

Microsoft announced Tuesday the launch of a new student software giveaway program called Dreamspark. Here is an article form the Washington Post article covering this new program. The new program mostly differs from their other similar programs like MSDN academic alliance in student scope. Dreamspark is available to all students regardless of the major being pursued. What caught my interest in the article were a few snippets injected by the journalist about Microsoft’s motive. It made me wonder if a company like Microsoft could do anything without their motives being criticized? I’m not making a judgment, just asking a question. If they did something truly benevolent would anyone ever know, or would we always assume that there is some hidden agenda? And is it even worth them trying? Have we created an environment where it is not even worth being benevolent?

Thursday, January 31, 2008

Efficiency

Reading some articles recently about the use of technology in the Church has prompted me to ponder what effect technology is having on the Church and the Gospel. The Gospel itself is timeless; its relevance extends through eternity. Technology should not change what we teach and what we practice. We teach and practice the same gospel Jesus taught two thousand years ago even if we read scriptures in Sunday school off a PowerPoint presentation. So if the gospel stays unchanged by technology, what effect is it having on the Church as we continue to embrace it?

The great benefit of technology in the Church is the ability for each Church member to be more efficient in the work they do. We know that there is an overabundance of work to be done in the Kingdom of God and with technology each member is able to get more done. For example, the Church is developing a new Genealogy index and hopefully releasing it this year. In the past, a great deal of effort has been repeated and therefore wasted. The new index will allow patrons to connect themselves to the work already done so that there are not multiple versions of the same person because there were multiple submissions. This is only one example, but technology is allowing us to do more work with less effort.