"In this post I want to go deeper into how the Orthodox view the Fall and salvation. To do this I'll be sharing extensive quotes from Orthodox theologian John Romanides' book Ancestral Sin. Romanides' work will pull together most of the threads of the earlier posts. What you'll find new in this post are first glimpses of the Orthodox view of salvation and the Christian life. "
"Is [the parable of the talents] not praise for being an astute manager of money, investing it so that it produces more rather than simply sitting on it and doing nothing?
"First, the paper magazine was crammed into the little iPad frame. In form of a PNG slide show. To compensate for the lack of interactive logic, this pretty package was provided with a fruity navigation. In the end it was spiced with in-app links, plucked with a couple of movies and salted with audio files ('interactive'). Then it was off to marketing."
Some older, initial impressions of design for the iPad. I'm working to create a collection of these, and am tracking down the ones I didn't save when I first read them.
This examines ways that symbolic actions in the vein of the Old Testament prophets could be done today, to confront the violence of captivity and poverty. This is a necessary conversation, as it is hard to think of actions that would be meaningful in our context. I don't think all of these would, but that's not the point – it's a start.
"There's just so much science, nature, music, arts, technology, storytelling and assorted good stuff out there that my kids (and maybe your kids) haven't seen. It's most likely not stuff that was made for them… But we don't underestimate kids around here."
"The early stages of product innovation can crucially influence the success and direction of any product. Yet these stages tend to be fuzzy, highly politicized, and under-documented. This article is a high-level overview of how teams can use Design Studio to explore opportunities and innovate products to better serve customers needs."
"Online narrative is about understanding perception. You provide a framework; your readers fill the gaps. If they can create coherence, they’ll convert. Our role as storytellers online is the same as it’s always been—to provide the building blocks of the story: the what, when, where, and why of coherence, and the spark that ignites our readers’ imagination."
"The hard currency of the Internet is 'Social Objects'. i.e. Social Objects for people to SHARE MEANINGFULLY with other people. You’re either creating them or you’re not. And if you’re not, you will fail, end of story."
"In this awful world where the efforts of caring people often pale in comparison to what is done by those who have power, how do I manage to stay involved and seemingly happy? I am totally confident not that the world will get better, but that we should not give up the game before all the cards have been played. The metaphor is deliberate; life is a gamble. Not to play is to foreclose any chance of winning. "
Kester Brewin continues his theological musings on pirates. "The skull and crossed bones does not mean ‘we are bringing you death’; rather it announces ‘we are the dead.’ We, the shat-on, the abused, the flogged, the ones you treated as less than human, have escaped your power, have slipped away from the identity you foisted onto us. We, the ones who you took for dead, are returning as the dead – and thus totally free of all fear, totally free of all human labels or classifications or ranks."
"Becoming a change agent means getting used to doing things that we find scary: challenging assumptions, asking questions about business goals and risks, and facilitating discussions about change. We need to articulate the problem so that our stakeholders will understand it and find it difficult to ignore."
"The key to understanding (and ultimately benefitting from) true 'customer loyalty' is to recognize and respect that customers–as people– are deeply loyal to themselves and those they love, but not to products and brands. They are loyal to their own values and the (relatively few) people and causes they truly believe in. What looks and feels like loyalty to a product, brand, company, etc. is driven by what that product, service, brand says about who we are and what we value."
"In many ways these [speculative] fictions take up the task that the church has nearly completely abdicated. Churches don’t use their collective voice and energy to challenge the existence of a world where God’s ways are not allowed to reign. Oh, churches fight for their rights, but rarely are the ones helping build a better world for all."
"Fortunately, it’s possible to create designs that are 'fun' without resorting to the old 'I’ll know it when I see it' method. There will always be an element of subjectivity in designing fun, but by defining, researching, building, and measuring, we can develop a long-term approach for incorporating 'fun' into our designs. And maybe even have some fun in the process."
"Never before has it been so easy to bring animation into a usable, standards-based browsing environment. Determining how often and to what degree one should use animation on a web build can be tricky. As we evaluate how to implement animations from project to project, we’ll need to carefully consider how it might affect user experience. Here are a few observations I’ve made from the field."
"Much like the opening of the American frontier gave rise to lawlessness, which gave rise to guns, which gave rise to wounds, which gave rise to the snake oil salesmen; the rise of social media has given rise to social media experts extolling the virtues of their 10-in-1 Social Media Strategies™. Let me save you the joy of sitting through a 45 minute webinar: Act intentionally."
Jonathan Stegall is a web designer and emergent / emerging follower of Jesus currently living in Atlanta, seeking to abide in the creative tension between theology, spirituality, design, and justice.