 The first summer is when you've got children to look at it from their face, outside of their televisions. Oh, over there. Over there. From that moment I realized that part of the music, another of the music, another of the music. I saw it. You know, I keep thinking about doing it. Which is actually very good. Oh, yeah. You're right. I think you're going to be in trouble. The kids are right here. And the kids are turning right here. Some will be back. What? Right. Yeah, it's never perfect. You know, every time I speak here, I debate music out for illustrations during the show. I guess it's never going to run. That's such a great resource. And we don't use it as it is, right? Right. We wanted to see it. So we went to the service. We went to the media. But they have really good skills in these videos. I have videos of them. They're pretty good. They're amazing to me. And the girls said they're much too weak. It's pretty. You thought that thing. I think it's pretty good. I think it's pretty good. There's space there. I don't know what was there. I think it's really good. But maybe they're very too weak with me. Is this what you're saying? I cannot imagine. I mean, how long has it been for you? Maybe it's been a while. Well, yeah. You know, it's snowing a lot. I see it. I'm trying for the content of the video. That's how it is. It's a technical thing. Yeah. It's a sound. It's a technical thing. And it says that's very quickly. Yes. Because the members of the crew, I heard the whole thing spinning back and forth. It says meaning much. It's great that we were able to do it. Yeah. And we're looking very clearly at it. And it's good. The most lucrative thing. It's a pretty much whole thing. Are you feeling something that you need to do? There's so much. Yeah. So much. Yeah. It's now the secret. Yeah. Yeah. It's been two times a month. Oh, my gosh. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. Check, check, check, check, check, check, check, thank you. Good morning. Please join me in a moment of centering silence. Please remain seated and join in our in-gathering hymn 126, Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing. Welcome to First Unitarian Society of Madison. This is a place where curious seekers gather to explore spiritual, ethical, and social issues in a safe and accepting environment. Unitarian Universalism supports the freedom of conscience of each individual, and as together we seek to be a force for good in the world. My name is Eric Severson. I am this year's Intern Ministerial Intern, and it is a pleasure to be with you. Thank you. On behalf of the congregation, I'd like to extend a warm welcome to our visitors this morning. We are a welcoming congregation, so whoever you are, we celebrate your presence among us. Newcomers are encouraged to state for fellowship after the service and visit in the library, which is directly across the hall from this auditorium. Bring your drinks and your questions. We will have members available to answer your questions there. This would be a good time to turn off any electronic devices, like cell phones that might disrupt the service. Experienced guides, John Powell, thank you very much. We'll join it. We'll lead a building tour after the service. We'll gather right down here by the windows after the service. We welcome children to stay with us during the service. Please remember that it often becomes difficult for those in attendance to hear in this acoustically live environment, and our child haven back in the corner or the commons outside the doors are excellent places for you and your child to experience the service you can see and hear just as well. I'd like now to acknowledge those individuals who helped our services run smoothly. Your name too can be read. If you would choose to volunteer for our congregation, just go to our website and sign up to do that. Today's volunteers are, let's see here, we've got some staff running the sound for lack of volunteers. Thank you to Steve. And Smiley is a lay minister today, Greeter Carol Angel, Usher's Judy Troyer and Chuck Evenson, Coffee and Hospitality by Lois Evenson and Jeannie Hills, and Orchid Care by Nancy Webster and our tour guide John Powell. So sign up please. It's the beginning of a new year. Please note the announcements on the red floor's insert in your order of service, which described upcoming events of our society and provides more information about any other activities. Again, welcome. We hope that today's service will stimulate your mind, touch your heart and stir your spirit. I have one other announcement. If you happen to know who might have left keys during the first service, let me know. Thank you very much. Gloration and questioning. Come into this moment that we make wholly by our intention. Come into this community as you are, for our past does not define us nor our future limit us. The world needs your awareness and your tender heart as it unfurls into its next great amazement. Come into this time of worship as we join together to remember who we are and dream of how our story might. I'd like you to invite you to rise as you're able and join in reading together the words printed in your order of service for the lighting of our chalice. It falls to us to bring this moment its meaning. The light of the chalice can dazzle as well as illuminate. Its flame can harm as easily as giving warmth. And any symbol may be used to repress as well as inspire. It falls to us to give meaning to our chalice lighting. To find in its glow a reminder of the guiding light. In its flame the passionate call to care and justice. And in its symbolism a connection with all who have craved freedom of the heart and mind. It falls to us to create this moment's meaning together. I invite you now to create a warm community together by sharing sunny greetings with your neighbors. Well this is a special time for young people of Ford and Sit in our that is set aside just for if you want to come up you'll get to meet my very dear friend an old friend of this group named Fudgy Bear. See there are lots of great people who want everybody wants to be up here. This is my buddy Fudgy Bear. Fudgy Bear lives in the forests and mountains of Bearaboo with his mama bear and papa bear those jokes never get old folks. With his mama bear and papa bear and grandpa bear and his brother and sister Arabica and espresso. Well it has rained and rained and rained and it is so wet outside that Fudgy Bear has had to stay indoors all this time and so you know when you have to stay indoors and you get bored he has been bored bored bored bored because he can't go out and play because it's too muddy and he's already played with all of his toys inside and there's nothing else to do except clean his room and he doesn't want to do that so he is so bored. Well what he has been doing is spending every day with grandpa bear which turns out is really great because the secret is that grandpa bear is really Fudgy Bear's very best friend. He knows all the best stories and it seems like he knows the answer to any question you can think of so he's a great pal to hang around with. Well the rain kept falling but Fudgy Bear and grandpa bear stayed inside and had a wonderful time together. You know though when you play inside you forget sometimes how you're supposed to be indoors you use your inside voice and you don't climb the curtains and you don't jump on the couch. Well Fudgy Bear forgot some of those things and he was helping grandpa bear make sandwiches and so he climbed up on a chair to get the honey down and they heard a loud crack. Fudgy Bear scrambled down from his chair just in time to see that one of the legs of the chair had broken off. Grandpa bear came in and Fudgy Bear said grandpa bear I've done a terrible thing the leg of the chair has broken off. Grandpa bear is always calm though he said well might be bad might be good when you're as old as I am you know sometimes you just might have to wait and see. So he looked at the chair and he said Fudgy Bear look here the wood in this chair is old and rotten. You know if someone had sat down in this it might have crashed under them and they could have gotten hurt so maybe it was a good thing that you found this out. Well after they had their sandwiches Fudgy Bear wanted to play with his favorite toy and show it to grandpa but he couldn't find it anywhere remember he didn't want to clean his room so it's lost somewhere and he got more and more upset you know how when you want to find something that's really important to you and you can't find it he was getting mad and sad at the same time and he thought he might even start to cry he said grandpa bear I can't find my favorite toy anywhere this is terrible he stroked his beard and he said well it might be bad it might be good when you've lived as long as I have you know sometimes you might just have to wait and see. Well they kept looking and they didn't find Fudgy Bear's toy but they did find the checkers set which was also lost for a long time so they played checkers all afternoon and had a great time. Well grandpa bear is very smart but sometimes he gets really tired too and he needed a little break so he was going to go lie down and Fudgy Bear promised that he would be good while grandpa bear took his nap a little and went outside in the rain to look for his toy. Well as the afternoon went on and Fudgy Bear and grandpa bear played more games of checkers Fudgy Bear didn't feel so good and by the end of the afternoon he had caught a cold so grandpa bear put him to bed with some Kleenexes and that's how mama bear and papa bear found him when they came home curled up in bed with a red runny nose they said Fudgy Bear we're so sorry that you're sick how sad Fudgy Bear wiped his red nose and said well might be bad might be good you know when you've lived as long as I have you know sometimes you just have to wait and I know some of those naps take forever well thank you all for being such good listeners we're going to send our young ones off to summer fun and I invite the rest of you to rise as you're able and join in singing together hymn number six just as long as I have breath reading this morning is by David Wine has sent a jolt through our culture zapping our economy our ideas about sharing creative works and possibly even institutions such as religion and government why how do we explain the lightning charge of the web why did this technology hit our culture like a bolt from Zeus suppose that the web is a new world that we're just beginning to inhabit we're like the early European settlers in the united states living on the edge of the forest we don't know what's there and we don't know exactly what we need to do to find out do we pack mountain climbing gear desert where canoes are all three of course while the settlers may not have known what the geography of the new world was going to be they at least knew that there was a geography the web on the other hand has no geography no landscape it has no distance it has few rules of behavior and fewer lines of authority common sense doesn't hold there and uncommon sense hasn't yet emerged no wonder we're having trouble figuring out how to build businesses in this new land we don't yet even know how to talk about a place that has no soil no boundaries no near no far new worlds create new people this has always been the case because how we live in our world is the same thing as who we are are we charitable self-centered cheerful ambitious pessimistic gregarious stoic forgiving each of these describes how we are engaged with our world but each can also be expressed as the way our world appears to us if we're egotistical the world appeals appears to revolve around us if we're gregarious the world appears to be an invitation to be with others if we're ambitious the world appears to await our conquest we can't characterize ourselves without simultaneously drawing a picture of how the world seems to us and we can't describe our world without simultaneously describing the type of people we are if we are entering a new world then we are also becoming new people our second reading is from the worldwide web and the web of life by tim burners lee this week marked the 25th anniversary of the public's access to the worldwide web british scientist tim burners lee working on the cern laboratories and in switzerland had developed a system of computing language and standards enabling networks of computers to link documents so that information could be shared between them burners lee is also a unitarian universalist in cambridge massachusetts and he reflects here on one connection between his work and his spiritual journey the whole spread of the web happened not because of a decision and a mandate from any authority but because a whole bunch of people across the net picked it up and brought up web clients and servers it actually happened the actual explosion of creativity and the coming into being of the web was the result of thousands of individuals playing a small part in the first couple of years often this was not for a direct gain but because they had an inkling that it was the right way to go and a gleam of an exciting future it is necessary to unitarian universalist philosophy that such things can happen that we will get to a better state in the end by each playing our small part uuism is full of hope and the fact that the web happens is an example of a dream coming true and an encouragement to all who hope the historical trilogy of plays possibly william shakespeare's the second of the henry the sixth plays includes a popular uprising against the king's advisors under the leadership of when one of the most hated noblemen is brought before the rebels cade boasts be it known unto thee by these presents that i am the broom that must sweep the court clean of the likes of you thou hast most traitorously corrupted the youth of our realm in erecting a grammar school and whereas before our forefathers had no other books but the score and the tally thou hast caused printing to be used and contrary to the king his crown and dignity thou hast built a paper mill it will be proved to thy face that thou hast men about the that talk of a noun and a verb and such abominable words as no christian ear can endure we typically think of the printing press as an instrument that brought liberation and social uplift to europe but cade's rant reminds us that literacy was one of the divisions between the haves and the have not the prospect of abundant and cheap popular printing although beneficial in many ways also involved the threat of considerable social upheaval and the further disempowerment of those who would never learn to read thus it has ever been that significant technological developments have brought in their wake sometimes profound social transformations for better or worse this morning i'd like to explore with you the incredible proliferation of new technologies shaping our everyday lives and how we might navigate these waters without intimidation and anxiety overwhelming us in particular as we celebrate this week the 25th anniversary of the worldwide web it seems fitting that we consider especially the changes wrought by the internet and social media no matter your age your lifetime has already experienced profound technological change the automobile radio and television electricity clean water and sanitation antibiotics and vaccinations steel steam engines optical lenses the mechanized clock in so many ways technology has reduced our vulnerability to nature and weakened our immediate dependence on one another i was reading this week about the life of olympia brown the first american woman to graduate from theological school and become a full-time ordained minister who reminisced about the backbreaking daily life of a pioneer woman on their homestead in school craft michigan her mother laffia spent practically every waking moment pumping and hauling water to their cabin and heating it in a great iron pot over the fireplace for cooking dishwashing bathing and laundry for her family and the several hired men who lived with them as soon as olympia was old enough to learn she was expected to help scrub clothes sweep and dust haul wood milk the cows and make butter and cheese spin flax and wool make candles and soap bake bread and salt down meat for the winter consider all the time that future generations would find freed up by household appliances brown's mother marveled that even a seemingly minor change like installing a cook stove made a considerable difference in her day one of the conventional promises of development has been that new technologies would save time and make more space in our lives for the cultivation of knowledge and culture however these changes also provoke anxiety do you ever worry that our society is leaving you behind moving in strange directions that make no sense to you you would certainly be in good company historically young people in the 19th century shocked their elders by reading newly available popular novels instead of engaging in polite conversations in the parlor early railways inspired the fear that our bodies simply weren't made to travel as fast as 30 miles per hour and that we might be crushed or melted by the extreme speed less gruesome but no less earnest was the fear that the body would be confused by rapid travel finding itself so far away from its starting point in so little time panic over new technologies is not just a thing of the past a catholic bishop in italy has recently threatened legal action against the makers of the wildly popular smartphone game pokemon go claiming that the activity of catching virtual creatures on their phones has quote alienated thousands and thousands of young people and become a totalitarian system close to Nazism what i see in our responses over centuries of technological change is the consistent anxiety that these developments are being forced on us and that they are unstoppable british science fiction writer arthur c clark observed 40 years ago that any technological development far enough beyond our understanding was indistinguishable from magic for those of you whose vcrs have been flashing 12 o'clock for decades or who simply hold your breath and press buttons on the computer in the hope that something will work you're in good company among those who feel more confused and out of control in our increasingly electronic lives there's a philosophical position known as technological determinism which states that technology drives the progress of history and that we are essentially passive recipients of technology and our lives are changed whether we want it or not when we see sensationalist headlines like is google making us stupid or is facebook making us lonely our frustration and anxiety tempt us to accept this view but i want to explain how this interpretation misunderstands the function of technology in our lives the internet provides an excellent case study partly because it's a recent development and partly because it feels like such a cultural juggernaut as eric mentioned in our second reading it was 25 years ago this week that tim burners lee made the worldwide web accessible to the public even as a child burners lee had imagined linking associated facts and ideas much in the way we think that the mind works as an adult computer scientist he was able to make this a reality by embedding what are called hyperlinks in documents allowing the reader to jump to other documents on any network in the system without having first to arrange permission rather than being like a collect call without having without having to first arrange excuse me rather than being like a collect call where you first have to get the recipients consent it's more like being able to simply send pieces of mail to anyone whose address you have once it was clear that this new web was going to succeed the media spun grandiose predictions of how it was going to revolutionize our lives the internet was going to completely democratize knowledge everyone would have the same access to information and an equal voice in promoting their ideas our activities and relationships would be completely freed from traditional concerns for time and space since communication with someone around the world would be as easy as our neighbor down the street traditional nation states and repressive governments would be made obsolete by these radically democratic connections all in all we were promised that our lives would be utterly transformed by the dissolving of boundaries and limitations of course the media also made some predictions that were spectacularly wrong for example the national science foundation considered that this radically free communication might overthrow the two-party domination of our political system this is part of why scholars of technology chafe at the idea of technological determinism because when we are faced with something new especially something confusing or intimidating perhaps not surprisingly we simply fall back on patterns of behavior from the past david weinberger the author of our first reading this morning noted the worldwide web is profoundly unmanaged and that is crucial to its success perhaps but many of us think of it as if it were centrally controlled with someone behind the scenes in charge of making sure the answers are correct and the access is democratic readers of the guardian enjoyed the story of may asworth an 86 year old english grandmother who types her google requests as if she were speaking to a librarian please translate these roman numerals thank you believing that her request was being seen by a person at the other end rather than a soulless network of databases she hoped that her search would be quicker if she were polite and there are plenty of us who reveal our lack of coolness by stopping to check our spelling and punctuation before we post a comment on facebook or send out a text message when confronted by the revolutionary network of the internet many of us simply fall back on the responses and conventions we had developed in earlier times for all of the amazing ways in which the worldwide web is like the universe's most amazing library its profoundly unmanaged nature lacks some of the features that have historically made libraries so valuable the unregulated character of the internet invites anyone to share information there such that no one is required to check the truth of their claims i warn my history students that as attractive as google and wikipedia appear to be for research tools we have to be aware of the enormous amount of misinformation online practically indistinguishable from legitimate knowledge are those innocent claims which are simply incorrect such as the myth that if you're being robbed while using your bank atm you can enter your pin code backwards to summon the police that's not correct there are also plenty of malicious claims such as that tennessee school children are forced to pray to a law or that president obama is banning the pledge of allegiance those are also not correct in all of these cases the ease of internet communication encourages people to simply pass these messages along without checking them first after all if my uncle herb or my friend karen sent it to me it's probably true right this potential for misinformation is worsened by our ability to disguise our identity online if you check the comments section at the end of any internet article in addition to the legitimate remarks you're likely to also see examples of what is called astroturfing in which paid commenters attempt to sway the reader either by posing as an average citizen or by commenting under several different names to create the appearance of a widely shared opinion as exhilarating as liberty can be as we sang in our opening hymn diga dank and zind fry we've seen throughout human history that in the absence of boundaries it is the loudest voices or the most aggressive participants that typically seize control the most vulnerable the young the elderly the uninformed or simply the credulous are too easily exploited by those who will gladly deceive and cheat us sociologist of technology sherry turkle worries that social media in particular are reshaping our identities and behaviors in unhealthy ways especially in younger people by social media we mean the forms of electronic communication through which we create online communities applications such as facebook instagram twitter and skype turkle is particularly concerned about digital natives those born later than approximately 1980 who have lived their entire lives surrounded by electronic technologies and media it is these youth and young adults who seem much less concerned than my generation for example about electronic surveillance and the loss of privacy they're completely accustomed to giving away personal information online and broadcasting their location and activities constantly digital natives make less of a fuss about the distinction between the virtual and real worlds whether a conversation or even a relationship occurs in person or online makes less of a difference to them than it does to older generations i was discussing with a colleague recently how this also erodes the distinction we traditionally make between ordinary and sacred spaces the smartphone game pokemon go for example has led players to wander carelessly playing through cemeteries and memorials such as the holocaust museum and hiroshima peace park turkle also wonders whether digital natives retreat to social media when they're finding real world socializing and intimacy difficult she notes that schools are bringing her in as a consultant because their students ability to build relationships and develop empathy seems to be stunted by their immersion in the online world what the internet did with information social media are now doing with relationships making them abundant and cheap disconnected from location and other real world concerns that we have always assumed to be central to our culture turkle worries that our young people are failing to develop basic human qualities that are critically necessary for maintaining a functional society now i wonder whether turkles conclusions are alarmist but the possibility of so much at stake is going to be on our minds at a minister's study group that i attend each fall this year with the theme of dystopia and faith a dystopia is more or less the opposite of a utopia describing a society or community dominated by misery or suffering many of us have been exposed to the idea of dystopia through important stories such as 1984 brave new world or the handmade's tale or in films such as the hunger games or the matrix as unpleasant as it might sound to read or view such gloomy stories these narratives are an important part of our literary tradition and they are perennially popular with youth and young adults part of what i find so valuable about dystopian stories is they help me to see the limitations of technological determinism in pat franc's novel alas Babylon a nuclear war apparently destroys civilization and in steven king's book the stand a genetically modified flu virus escapes from the lab and kills all but a very small fraction of humanity in both stories the survivors must rebuild society but struggle against persistent greed stupidity and brutality a similar theme is explored in william golding's classic lord of the flies in which a band of preteen boys is stranded on an isolated tropical island and their attempts to organize themselves fail in the face of our innately brutal nature these stories tap into our feelings of helplessness in the face of technology and remind us that even in new circumstances we find ways to reenact the same old conflicts i raise these concerns in our spiritual community this morning because the topic of technological development implicates the question of whether we will relinquish or preserve our most beloved values in the face of tremendous changes religions have raised this conversation in their own version of dystopian literature the apocalypse in which destruction overturns the entire order of nature and society and all of our everyday assumptions about what we value and how we should live our lives must be swept away i've been watching how this idea has gained such powerful appeal in our presidential election with both donald trump and bernie sanders finding a following by threatening to shake up the broken system so thoroughly that we are forced to let go of business as usual the prospect of such a change is both attractive and potentially disastrous unitarian universalist theologian paul rasor notes that liberal religion is distinguished by its compatibility with modern knowledge and modern life experience in the midst of the profound changes that characterize modernity we have continued to affirm the value of free and open search for truth and meaning the authority of our individual experience and reason and the expression of religious responses that are both intellectually credible and socially relevant even as we have been constantly tempted to let these fall away some religious communities have been tempted to cling even more tightly to the moral codes of ancient societies and i see how traumatic these modern technological and ethical questions are for them i notice some of the same challenges in the history classroom that we are experiencing in our congregations while in the past professors served as gatekeepers to knowledge today our students are each carrying the internet in their pockets what students need from their teachers today is the guidance to identify true knowledge from among all of the misleading misinformation and trivial gossip soil science professor and former f us member terry balzer reminds us that we are seeking strategies to serve us in a future that does not yet exist and therefore our values need to be capable of producing truth and meaning not only where we stand in this moment but all along the journey that we are making together with this in mind i'd like to offer a few questions to keep us striving after a heartfelt and meaningful response to our anxieties over technological change first of all what are your fears and your hopes as new technologies continue to transform our lives are you able to see promise as well as challenge in these developments second what's really at stake for you in these changes is it the loss of familiarity and comfort or something even deeper like wanting to feel heard and valued or the fear of becoming irrelevant lastly would you be willing to consider updating some of the values that you hold dear this last question became a pressing one for me over the past decade as i worried about our society's movement toward constant electronic surveillance i had resisted carrying a cell phone but it eventually became necessary for my work here at f us and then i eventually traded that in for a smartphone i first started to pay closer attention to the real potential of always having a camera and internet with me in 2011 as the protests in madison coincided with the protests in egypt tunisia and other arab countries their activists were using their smartphones to sidestep government censorship and documented for the world the violent repression of their uprisings my concerns about surveillance and privacy had to shift further as i saw how people of color in this country were documenting abuses of power and miscarriages of justice and sharing these images and videos immediately and worldwide on social media again new technologies have not provided a magical solution but rather offer new ways to reassert the values that already matter most to us in every age we're called to find new ways to identify which forces have diminished our lives and what values have enriched us we remember with gratitude the knowledge and strategies of earlier generations but those can only be the foundation for our own responses mindful that we are living the same old human struggles replayed in ever changing circumstances the responsibility will be ours together to identify what we will preserve and what we will let fall away in creating the kind of world that we want to live in may we be up to that task now i'd like to invite you to join in the giving and receiving for the growth and good work of this congregation as our ushers pass the basket for our weekly offering all that you give and have given makes such a difference and is very much appreciated thank you in this place we love and we forgive we give and we receive in return we come together to find strength and common purpose turning our minds and hearts toward one another seeking to bring into our circle of concern all who need our love and support this week we remember especially james morgan who writes to us i thank each of you for your courage to speak out to stand with those of us who struggle and are less fortunate your voices are our voices your strength our strength your caring and concern will forever be appreciated and for man smiley who thanks all who contributed and participated in service saturday making it truly a community event as well i'd like to invite into this moment a bit of silence for all the joys and sorrows too tender to share that live in the fullness of our hearts may we remember that we are part of a web of life that makes us one with all humanity one with all the universe may we be grateful for the miracle of life that we share and the hope that gives us the power to care to remember and to love now i invite you to rise as you're able and join in singing together our closing hymn number 295 sing out praises for the journey every moment but with open heart for the world has never lost its need for these values and our ability to make them would you please be seated for the postlet