I have a very different attitude to video conferencing. My current experience involves communicating with my daughter, son in law & most importantly my 6 month old grandchild who live on the other side of the world. Certainly the contact is hugely inferior to the actual contact we had a few months ago & I ache to hold them. I sometimes find myself reaching out to the screen as if to touch their faces. But surely this contact is an order of magnitude better than a phone call, which itself would be another order of magnitude better than letters. Perhaps without the previous relationships already established, the effects you describe might be an issue. I remember when I was working, it always was a great boost to meet colleagues with whom I had previously had only phone, email or letter communication. There is something about being physically together that enhances relationships (which is your point) but for me, this video contact is way better than the other options currently available.
I understand what you’re getting at, but would perhaps quibble on the letters front ““ one cannot keep Zoom calls or phone calls, but one can fondly re-read letters many years from now. In fact, as someone born in 1974, I often lament the fact that my cache of letters more or less dries up circa 1998-ish.
Jeremy Stone
4 years ago
I tried to respond to this thoughtful piece yesterday, but my words seem to have vanished into the ether. I very much doubt if Walter Benjamin would have liked Zoom. But suspect that his reason would not have been dilution of the aura. There is a kind of problem in the philosophy of mind that video conferencing forces upon us, by placing us on that screen along with the other participants. When we address them, we see this homuncular version of ourselves, somehow escaped from the interior and playing a part on the video stage. Who is this person? Our interiority has been violated, and with it our personality. We are obliged to respond to our own changes of facial expression, in an implicitly infinite corridor of mirrors. No wonder it is exhausting. By an historical fluke, none of this applies to the telephone, where (unless there is bad feedback on the line) the voice we hear is what we are used to hearing in everyday life. No problems with the soul there.
ripsawridge
3 years ago
The greatest struggle of my life to date has been the struggle to come awake to each day, to each person before me, and to really be there and breathe in and with that moment.
Technology is abstraction, which provides power at the expense of depth. It is distraction, which fills your consciousness with the exotic and the far away, leaving you too drained to clearly see the close, humble and mundane.
I am a programmer. I build these systems and I began as their biggest fan — you mean I can be well paid for working on these cool machines and not talking to people? Sign me up! I wish I could go back to that young fella and take him on a walk. I would encourage him to take a hammer to that wall he was beginning to build against first the dangerous feelings of others, and then finally his own.
Now, we all pour our energies into screens. I would ask a challenging question: if you wonder what we are fussing about, with our talk of auras, of souls, of shared spaces with some kind of magic in them… If you don’t see the difference between your co-worker beside you and his 320×200 pixel representation on a screen, maybe you, like me, have only barely felt the Real World.
Excellent comment. Very nicely said. I’ve trodden the same road, and I now wake up every day and commit myself to being HERE, and focusing my energy on my life and surroundings, and not out THERE. It makes a huge difference.
ajstidwill
3 years ago
Maybe this is simplistic, but could it be the fact that you can be instantly “switched off” at any moment if you do or say something the other people taking part in the video conference don’t like that makes it rather sinister? In a real life flesh-and-blood encounter neither you nor the people you’re talking to can be just disappeared in this way. (You can walk out of the room of course, but that isn’t quite the same thing).
Andrew Lale
3 years ago
There is something forever 1974 about Giles Fraser. He is like one of those unfortunate little bugs that get stuck in some tree resin and for the next three thousand years remain in exactly the same position and attitude. That’s not all bad, you understand, but it has the staleness of something which just doesn’t change. The world of the Giles Fraser is gone, the world of the trendy vicar with his staunch commitment to Marx and distinct lack of interest in Jesus, and his belief that only through the destruction of our society, traditions and mores can we ever reach our earthly paradise. I thank God every day that the Giles Fraser world is now as dead as a dodo.
Hosias Kermode
4 years ago
Not sure about this. I’m finding I am seeing more of family with FaceTime than I ever was when I could jump on a train for a half hour journey. And the medium is forcing us to be creative about how we interact. I played Top Trumps with my 5 year old grandson last night, with his father holding my hand of cards, but me making the calls. Grandson loved it. So did I. We’ll finish the game tonight. I make terrible cakes, which I show him, so he can have a good laugh at crazy granny. Then I post him the recipe and cookie cutters so he can have a go at baking himself and eventually show me. I think love overcomes technology. The soul is stronger. Maybe the church needs to rethink distant eucharists on that same basis.
Michael in Chicago
4 years ago
I’ve been using online meeting technology for years for business as well as for education and socializing. It’s a godsend. Of course, one should have people contact in their lives, but Zoom expands one’s horizons immeasurably. The pandemic takes away a piece of our soul, not Zoom.
Arnold Fishman
4 years ago
Zoom is a problem but not for the reason you elaborate on. I would contend that the technology does help and provides comfort”but with every tool there are downsides and Zoom is worrisome because it is potentially connected to China and their survelillance.
Regarding vanity…If a person wants to be vain on camera, so be it”its human nature to be vain. when life returns to a level of normalcy, there are hundreds of other ways people express their vanity everyday from their locations of their homes, to the clothes they wear and how much skin they are showing, boasting about their cars or vacations or their education attainments, the list is endless.
what destroys peoples souls that we should be concerned about is sin and the turning away from God and the Marxism that you are so warmly speaking of. Socialism removes men from the laws that God laid down for life and liberty. Socialism is the root ideology that directly leads to 150 million innocent men, women and children killed in the last 100 years in Russia, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, and is the same ideology that created and unleashed the Wuhan virus.
A potential downside to Zoom will be in the future where we might find that the words said on Zoom are recorded and will be used against us when the time comes and then we will know the true evil of the technologies we have created.
Zoom gives me a similar feeling of unease. I have used it for practical reasons because of Covid 19. I’ve even done a theatrical performance wherein we were all remote using Zoom. But the Zoom happy hours give me more if a feeling of isolation that being solitary doesn’t. I’ve not participated as a result, I find the concept of socializing in the two dimensional world just very disquieting. I need touch, real contact, and yes, the method of interaction in conversation that the article references which is not replaceable by videoconferencing. It’s terribly artificial, not quite the emperor’s new clothes, but almost as emotionally empty and unsatisfactory.
Jeremy Stone
4 years ago
The sensation of one’s consciousness being drained out of one is palpable. I attribute it to three aspects of these conferencing platforms. First, and perhaps capable of elimination, the quality of the visual and auditory contact is so variable. Sound is often quite poor, sub-telephonic. Second, we suffer from the absence of normal interplay between different senses, and of our proprioceptive immersion in the three dimensional space that we normally inhabit. We have to work so hard to construct the interpersonal cues that we normally get without effort. This is physically tiring. Third, and to my mind metaphysically tiresome, is that one becomes an actor on one’s own screen, an homunculus escaped from inside, to be attended to as if a third person in the conversation. It is a happy accident that normal telephony does not create this perspective, this new form of self-conciousness. I don’t think Walter Benjamin would have liked it, but rather doubt whether dissipation of the aura is the reason why.
Kathy Lang
4 years ago
I suspect the clue to these different approaches lies in Anita’s words: “without the previous relationships already established, the effects you describe might be an issue”. My experience so far is that, in meetings of fewer than perhaps ten people, who all know each other face-to-face, Zoom is not only a good medium but has one surprising advantage over a conventional meeting: all the participants can see each other all the time. When all are sitting round a table, one can’t do that. But NOTHING can replace the physical contact or the “shared space”, especially of worship and most of all of Holy Communion. And THAT is not just a problem of remote consecration. It’s not called Communion for nothing – communion with God, certainly; real presence, certainly; but shared Communion with one’s fellow Communicants too.
Scott Allan
4 years ago
You begin with a completely false statement about photography stealing the souls of Australian Aboriginals and First Nations in North America. Neither of these peoples ever subscribed to that assertion.
Aboriginal Australians concern with photography is seeing images of people who are deceased. Depictions of the deceased is a taboo here. The protocol is to first place a verbal and written warning with enough time for people to escape the exposure to these images.
I have filmed and photographed multiple clans in BC Canada and all I can say is the people love the camera. I have never heard or been told of any such superstition. There have been isolated individuals in early history such as Crazy Horse but beyond that it is false to assert this was common. (Ref: http://riic.ca/the-guide/in…
Both groups do prefer permission is sought to photograph or film as many images of their cultures have been exploited without regard to them or misrepresented intensely sensitive beliefs these people hold.
As far as the rest of us Zoom or Bluejeans are a necessary part of our lives. Even before Corona 19 I was remote interviewing subjects for documentaries many times rather than travelling personally for professional work. In my personal life this mode of communication is vital for robust relations with friends and family. Especially I find grandparents and their grandchildren.
In Fairness to Rev Fraser, I think that the phrasing of his opening sentence, ‘Native Americans and Aboriginal Australians are SOMETIMES ASSOCIATED with the view that cameras can steal the soul’, lets him off the hook here.
Interesting contribution though. I always suspected that this notion was largely false.
People like Scott always misread and misinterpret so they can get in a good scolding. It’s what makes them alive.
bowkers
4 years ago
I like Zoom. Compared to Skype it’s a Rolls-Royce versus a model T Ford. I’m afraid worries about a man-made belief system using it are very low on my list.
schaedellaura5
4 years ago
Is it possible that some personalities or generations enjoy using virtual meetings to a greater degree than others? While I respect and am thankful for it, in light of social distancing, I am mourning the loss of physical community. There is so much more to communication than the 2-D version Zoom provides. The spiritual aspect is dampened and interferred with. The technology will, at times, freeze faces in odd expressions, be out of sync, or boot someone out. It’s rude. But it’s all we have until God intervenes. Please God, forgive us, have mercy on us and intervene. Even as I jog or walk my dog, I notice fear in my fellow humans eyes as they pull their mask over their faces. Or, am I ascribing my own fears to them? Maybe they are just being socially responsible? It’s just that gesture of pulling a physical barrier up or moving far away, sends a message that my brain percieves as hostility or fear.
Thank you for this piece, as it has affirmed my feelings and thoughts and allowed me to grieve and lift my request to God for help and thank Him for providing our ultimate rescue in Jesus.
Anita Coltman
4 years ago
I have some further thoughts about Mr Fraser’s concerns relating to our dehumanisation by the very participation in a video conference. Firstly, I remembered the last few verses of 1 Corinthians 13. In verse 12 particularly, Paul states ” …now we see only as a reflection in a mirror; then we shall see face to face …”. I wonder if the sense of unease about video conferencing could be connected to the frustration outlined in these verses concerning not only the yearning to know God, & be known by Him, but similarly the impossibility to fully know & be known by other people when using this medium. Secondly, there is the Second Commandment’s prohibition about idols & our worship of them. Is our worry about our soul’s diminution a reflection of God’s repugnance at what happens when we worship that graven image?
Dr Leah Remeika-Dugan
3 years ago
Exquisitely written, Revd Fraser. If I’m ever near St Mary’s Newington, especially on a Sunday, I’ll pay your church a visit.
In meantime thank you for ‘virtually’ putting into words part of what I’ve felt.
craig
3 years ago
“Zoom takes away a piece of our souls” Does it? Does it really? An article so full of nonesense it really isnt fit for Underd.
I have a very different attitude to video conferencing. My current experience involves communicating with my daughter, son in law & most importantly my 6 month old grandchild who live on the other side of the world. Certainly the contact is hugely inferior to the actual contact we had a few months ago & I ache to hold them. I sometimes find myself reaching out to the screen as if to touch their faces. But surely this contact is an order of magnitude better than a phone call, which itself would be another order of magnitude better than letters.
Perhaps without the previous relationships already established, the effects you describe might be an issue. I remember when I was working, it always was a great boost to meet colleagues with whom I had previously had only phone, email or letter communication.
There is something about being physically together that enhances relationships (which is your point) but for me, this video contact is way better than the other options currently available.
I understand what you’re getting at, but would perhaps quibble on the letters front ““ one cannot keep Zoom calls or phone calls, but one can fondly re-read letters many years from now. In fact, as someone born in 1974, I often lament the fact that my cache of letters more or less dries up circa 1998-ish.
I tried to respond to this thoughtful piece yesterday, but my words seem to have vanished into the ether. I very much doubt if Walter Benjamin would have liked Zoom. But suspect that his reason would not have been dilution of the aura. There is a kind of problem in the philosophy of mind that video conferencing forces upon us, by placing us on that screen along with the other participants. When we address them, we see this homuncular version of ourselves, somehow escaped from the interior and playing a part on the video stage. Who is this person? Our interiority has been violated, and with it our personality. We are obliged to respond to our own changes of facial expression, in an implicitly infinite corridor of mirrors. No wonder it is exhausting. By an historical fluke, none of this applies to the telephone, where (unless there is bad feedback on the line) the voice we hear is what we are used to hearing in everyday life. No problems with the soul there.
The greatest struggle of my life to date has been the struggle to come awake to each day, to each person before me, and to really be there and breathe in and with that moment.
Technology is abstraction, which provides power at the expense of depth. It is distraction, which fills your consciousness with the exotic and the far away, leaving you too drained to clearly see the close, humble and mundane.
I am a programmer. I build these systems and I began as their biggest fan — you mean I can be well paid for working on these cool machines and not talking to people? Sign me up! I wish I could go back to that young fella and take him on a walk. I would encourage him to take a hammer to that wall he was beginning to build against first the dangerous feelings of others, and then finally his own.
Now, we all pour our energies into screens. I would ask a challenging question: if you wonder what we are fussing about, with our talk of auras, of souls, of shared spaces with some kind of magic in them… If you don’t see the difference between your co-worker beside you and his 320×200 pixel representation on a screen, maybe you, like me, have only barely felt the Real World.
Excellent comment. Very nicely said. I’ve trodden the same road, and I now wake up every day and commit myself to being HERE, and focusing my energy on my life and surroundings, and not out THERE. It makes a huge difference.
Maybe this is simplistic, but could it be the fact that you can be instantly “switched off” at any moment if you do or say something the other people taking part in the video conference don’t like that makes it rather sinister? In a real life flesh-and-blood encounter neither you nor the people you’re talking to can be just disappeared in this way. (You can walk out of the room of course, but that isn’t quite the same thing).
There is something forever 1974 about Giles Fraser. He is like one of those unfortunate little bugs that get stuck in some tree resin and for the next three thousand years remain in exactly the same position and attitude. That’s not all bad, you understand, but it has the staleness of something which just doesn’t change. The world of the Giles Fraser is gone, the world of the trendy vicar with his staunch commitment to Marx and distinct lack of interest in Jesus, and his belief that only through the destruction of our society, traditions and mores can we ever reach our earthly paradise. I thank God every day that the Giles Fraser world is now as dead as a dodo.
Not sure about this. I’m finding I am seeing more of family with FaceTime than I ever was when I could jump on a train for a half hour journey. And the medium is forcing us to be creative about how we interact. I played Top Trumps with my 5 year old grandson last night, with his father holding my hand of cards, but me making the calls. Grandson loved it. So did I. We’ll finish the game tonight. I make terrible cakes, which I show him, so he can have a good laugh at crazy granny. Then I post him the recipe and cookie cutters so he can have a go at baking himself and eventually show me. I think love overcomes technology. The soul is stronger. Maybe the church needs to rethink distant eucharists on that same basis.
I’ve been using online meeting technology for years for business as well as for education and socializing. It’s a godsend. Of course, one should have people contact in their lives, but Zoom expands one’s horizons immeasurably. The pandemic takes away a piece of our soul, not Zoom.
Zoom is a problem but not for the reason you elaborate on. I would contend that the technology does help and provides comfort”but with every tool there are downsides and Zoom is worrisome because it is potentially connected to China and their survelillance.
Regarding vanity…If a person wants to be vain on camera, so be it”its human nature to be vain. when life returns to a level of normalcy, there are hundreds of other ways people express their vanity everyday from their locations of their homes, to the clothes they wear and how much skin they are showing, boasting about their cars or vacations or their education attainments, the list is endless.
what destroys peoples souls that we should be concerned about is sin and the turning away from God and the Marxism that you are so warmly speaking of. Socialism removes men from the laws that God laid down for life and liberty. Socialism is the root ideology that directly leads to 150 million innocent men, women and children killed in the last 100 years in Russia, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, and is the same ideology that created and unleashed the Wuhan virus.
A potential downside to Zoom will be in the future where we might find that the words said on Zoom are recorded and will be used against us when the time comes and then we will know the true evil of the technologies we have created.
Zoom gives me a similar feeling of unease. I have used it for practical reasons because of Covid 19. I’ve even done a theatrical performance wherein we were all remote using Zoom. But the Zoom happy hours give me more if a feeling of isolation that being solitary doesn’t. I’ve not participated as a result, I find the concept of socializing in the two dimensional world just very disquieting. I need touch, real contact, and yes, the method of interaction in conversation that the article references which is not replaceable by videoconferencing. It’s terribly artificial, not quite the emperor’s new clothes, but almost as emotionally empty and unsatisfactory.
The sensation of one’s consciousness being drained out of one is palpable. I attribute it to three aspects of these conferencing platforms. First, and perhaps capable of elimination, the quality of the visual and auditory contact is so variable. Sound is often quite poor, sub-telephonic. Second, we suffer from the absence of normal interplay between different senses, and of our proprioceptive immersion in the three dimensional space that we normally inhabit. We have to work so hard to construct the interpersonal cues that we normally get without effort. This is physically tiring. Third, and to my mind metaphysically tiresome, is that one becomes an actor on one’s own screen, an homunculus escaped from inside, to be attended to as if a third person in the conversation. It is a happy accident that normal telephony does not create this perspective, this new form of self-conciousness. I don’t think Walter Benjamin would have liked it, but rather doubt whether dissipation of the aura is the reason why.
I suspect the clue to these different approaches lies in Anita’s words: “without the previous relationships already established, the effects you describe might be an issue”. My experience so far is that, in meetings of fewer than perhaps ten people, who all know each other face-to-face, Zoom is not only a good medium but has one surprising advantage over a conventional meeting: all the participants can see each other all the time. When all are sitting round a table, one can’t do that. But NOTHING can replace the physical contact or the “shared space”, especially of worship and most of all of Holy Communion. And THAT is not just a problem of remote consecration. It’s not called Communion for nothing – communion with God, certainly; real presence, certainly; but shared Communion with one’s fellow Communicants too.
You begin with a completely false statement about photography stealing the souls of Australian Aboriginals and First Nations in North America. Neither of these peoples ever subscribed to that assertion.
Aboriginal Australians concern with photography is seeing images of people who are deceased. Depictions of the deceased is a taboo here. The protocol is to first place a verbal and written warning with enough time for people to escape the exposure to these images.
I have filmed and photographed multiple clans in BC Canada and all I can say is the people love the camera. I have never heard or been told of any such superstition. There have been isolated individuals in early history such as Crazy Horse but beyond that it is false to assert this was common. (Ref: http://riic.ca/the-guide/in…
Both groups do prefer permission is sought to photograph or film as many images of their cultures have been exploited without regard to them or misrepresented intensely sensitive beliefs these people hold.
As far as the rest of us Zoom or Bluejeans are a necessary part of our lives. Even before Corona 19 I was remote interviewing subjects for documentaries many times rather than travelling personally for professional work. In my personal life this mode of communication is vital for robust relations with friends and family. Especially I find grandparents and their grandchildren.
In Fairness to Rev Fraser, I think that the phrasing of his opening sentence, ‘Native Americans and Aboriginal Australians are SOMETIMES ASSOCIATED with the view that cameras can steal the soul’, lets him off the hook here.
Interesting contribution though. I always suspected that this notion was largely false.
People like Scott always misread and misinterpret so they can get in a good scolding. It’s what makes them alive.
I like Zoom. Compared to Skype it’s a Rolls-Royce versus a model T Ford. I’m afraid worries about a man-made belief system using it are very low on my list.
Is it possible that some personalities or generations enjoy using virtual meetings to a greater degree than others? While I respect and am thankful for it, in light of social distancing, I am mourning the loss of physical community. There is so much more to communication than the 2-D version Zoom provides. The spiritual aspect is dampened and interferred with. The technology will, at times, freeze faces in odd expressions, be out of sync, or boot someone out. It’s rude. But it’s all we have until God intervenes. Please God, forgive us, have mercy on us and intervene. Even as I jog or walk my dog, I notice fear in my fellow humans eyes as they pull their mask over their faces. Or, am I ascribing my own fears to them? Maybe they are just being socially responsible? It’s just that gesture of pulling a physical barrier up or moving far away, sends a message that my brain percieves as hostility or fear.
Thank you for this piece, as it has affirmed my feelings and thoughts and allowed me to grieve and lift my request to God for help and thank Him for providing our ultimate rescue in Jesus.
I have some further thoughts about Mr Fraser’s concerns relating to our dehumanisation by the very participation in a video conference. Firstly, I remembered the last few verses of 1 Corinthians 13. In verse 12 particularly, Paul states ” …now we see only as a reflection in a mirror; then we shall see face to face …”.
I wonder if the sense of unease about video conferencing could be connected to the frustration outlined in these verses concerning not only the yearning to know God, & be known by Him, but similarly the impossibility to fully know & be known by other people when using this medium.
Secondly, there is the Second Commandment’s prohibition about idols & our worship of them.
Is our worry about our soul’s diminution a reflection of God’s repugnance at what happens when we worship that graven image?
Exquisitely written, Revd Fraser. If I’m ever near St Mary’s Newington, especially on a Sunday, I’ll pay your church a visit.
In meantime thank you for ‘virtually’ putting into words part of what I’ve felt.
“Zoom takes away a piece of our souls”
Does it? Does it really?
An article so full of nonesense it really isnt fit for Underd.