Sharing

New media opportunities opened up to the world with the introduction of the internet. In the forty years since this technology came into the world we’ve become familiar with e-mail, comfortable with e-commerce and reliant on search engines. New technology has shaped the way we access and publish information. The internet has molded how we contact each, pulling us away from many of the older methods. Letters and phone calls from far continents still occur; but often MSN, SKYPE or Outlook provide more reliable methods of keeping in touch, and the people we talk to on these platforms are sometimes in the same building.

Denying the changes wrought by this technology means turning a blind eye on the influence new tools have on the way we work. Closing our eyes to the changes yet to come can seriously impede our ability to develop efficiently. The way we work and share our productivity has changed; mostly those changes are for the better. Those changes were partly planned for; some though simply seeped in from the changes found in society itself.

Within our own field of interest SAT 7 provides a great example of embracing new technology. Fourteen years ago they began to share the message of Christ in a new way. Their message went out into areas of the world with inherent difficulties; they used a new medium for communicating with those who could not be reached on foot.

In the same way the Guttenberg Bible was possible thanks to the new medium of movable type printing. Each new medium can bring with it ways to share information, through new distribution and production methods. In the case of Guttenberg the production of bibles of such reliable quality and in such large numbers made it possible to bring the word of God to the masses, with satellite broadcasting SAT 7 saw new methods available to deliver the good news to newly reachable areas.

New opportunities are opening up to us all the time. Technology available today allows wide access distribution networks for video and audio files. Podcasts and RSS feeds, iTunes and Peer to Peer file sharing provide and enable us to produce and distribute content, messages and even evangelistic resources throughout the world. Whether we use these technologies to allow our remotest workers to contribute to the production of resources or simply receive the projects we build here in house the future of delivery and production are there waiting for us to continually adapt to and embrace.

---

416 Words