 Thank you so much. Check one two. There we go. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Please remain seated and join us in our in-gathering hymn number 126. Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing. Welcome to the 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 as together we seek to be a force for good in the world. My name is Eric Severson. I am this year's ministerial intern. I'm delighted to be with you. And on behalf of the congregation, I'd like to extend a special welcome to any visitors here today. We are a welcoming congregation, so whoever you are, we celebrate your presence among us. Newcomers are encouraged to stay for our fellowship hour after the service and to visit the library right across the hall from this auditorium. Bring your drinks and your questions. There will be members available to answer any questions. This would be a good time to turn off any electronic devices that might disrupt the service, including cell phones. An experienced guide will be available after the service for building tours. If you would like to learn more about this sustainably designed addition or our national landmark meeting house, please meet near the large glass window to my right. 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 lively, acoustical environment. And our child haven in the corner and our commons outside the doors are excellent places where you can go and still hear and see the service. I'd like to acknowledge those individuals who help with our services, make them run smoothly. Let's see today's sound operator is David Briles, lay ministers Tom Boykoff and Anne Smiley, our greeters Mary Elizabeth Conkel, Usher's Tom Dolmage and Nancy Daley, hospitality staff members and Joe Kramer, and our tour guide today is Pamela McMullen. Please note the announcements in your red floors insert in your order of service, which describes events coming up at our society. And more information about today's activities. Are there any other special announcements for today? Again, welcome. We hope that today's service will stimulate your mind, touch your heart and stir your spirit. 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 run. I invite you to rise as you're able and join in reading together the words written in your order of service to the light of the heart. 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. And I invite you to turn and create together a spirit of hospitality and welcome and share a sunny greeting on this foggy day. And now is the time I'd like to invite young people of any age to come up here and join me if you'd like. We have this very special space that is just for you and me and my buddy here who is named Fudgie Bear. A lot of you do not know my friend. Fudgie Bear lives in the forests and mountains of Baraboo with his mama bear and papa bear and his grandpa bear and his brother and sister, Erabica and Espresso. So you know what the minister is thinking of on Sunday mornings. Well, this week it has been so wet and rainy and Fudgie Bear has had to stay inside all the time. And so he was bored. He was bored, bored, bored, so bored because it was too wet to play outside. And he had already played all of his games inside and the only thing left to do was clean his room and he wasn't interested in doing that. So he was really bored. Well, what that meant was that he got to stay inside every day and hang out with grandpa bear. Now this is a pretty great deal because Fudgie Bear really, really likes grandpa bear. Grandpa bear has all the best stories and it seems like he knows the answer to any question. So he's really fun to spend the day with. So they sat and they told stories and they played games and for the most part it was pretty good. But you know sometimes when you stay inside and you forget to use your inside voice or you forget that you have to be calm and quiet and not run around inside, Fudgie Bear forgets that sometimes. And he was climbing up on a chair to help grandpa bear get the honey down from a shelf so that they could have sandwiches and they heard a loud crack. Fudgie Bear scrambled down from the chair but when he looked he saw that one of the legs of the chair had broken. He almost fell and hurt himself. Well, grandpa bear came rushing into the kitchen and Fudgie Bear said, grandpa bear, a terrible thing happened. I broke one of the legs of the chair. Well, grandpa bear was calm as he always is. He said, well now, Fudgie Bear, it might be bad, it might be good. When you've lived as long as I have, you know that you just might have to wait and see. Well, after lunch, Fudgie Bear wanted to play his favorite toy with grandpa bear and he looked and he looked and he looked and he couldn't find it anywhere. Remember, he didn't clean his room. And so he was getting so upset. You know how you get when you can't find what you want? He was so mad and sad that he thought he might even start to cry. And he said, grandpa bear, this is terrible. I can't find my toy. Stroke his beard and said, well now, it might be bad, it might be good. When you've lived as long as I have, you know that sometimes you might just have to wait and see. Well, they didn't find Fudgie Bear's favorite toy, but they did find the checkers set, which had also been lost. And so they spent the afternoon playing checkers, which was so much fun. Well, now grandpa bear is a very, very smart bear, but he gets tired sometimes and this time he needed a little break. And so he went to lie down for a while and Fudgie Bear promised that he would be good while grandpa bear took a nap. But he kind of forgot and he went outside in the rain to look for his lost toy. As they played checkers later in the afternoon, Fudgie Bear started to feel not so great. And by the end of the afternoon, he had caught a cold. Well, grandpa bear put Fudgie Bear to bed and gave him some Kleenexes for his nose. And when mama bear and papa bear came home, that's where they found him, sniffling in bed. They said to him, oh poor Fudgie Bear, this is terrible. We're so sorry that you're sick. Fudgie Bear wiped his red nose and he 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 see. Well, thank you all for being such good listeners. It is always so great to have Fudgie Bear get to meet new friends here. We're going to invite our young people to go off to summer fun and we will sing together. If you'll rise as you're able, number six in your hymn book, just as long as I have breath. His book, Small Pieces Loot. The World Wide Web 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 wear, canoes, or 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 even yet 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 appears to revolve around us. If we're gregarious, the world appears as 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 World Wide Web and the Web of Life by Tim Berners-Lee. This week marked the 25th anniversary of the public's access to the World Wide Web. British scientist Tim Berners-Lee, working at the CERN laboratories 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. Berners-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 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 Henry VI were possibly William Shakespeare's earliest performed works and were also among the very first dramatic accounts of the life and politics of London described directly rather than disguised as stories about ancient Greece or Egypt. The second of the Henry VI plays includes a popular uprising against the king's advisors under the leadership of Jack Cade. When one of the most hated noblemen is brought before the rebels, Cade boasts to him, be it known unto thee by these presents that I am the broom that must sweep the court clean of such filth as thou art. Thou hast most traitorously corrupted the youth of the 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 thee that talk of a noun and a verb and such abominable words as no Christian ear can endure to hear. 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-nots. 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 has it 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 World Wide 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 Schoolcraft, Michigan. Her mother Lafia 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, dish washing, 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, bake 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 such extreme speeds. 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 Pokémon 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. Clarke observed 40 years ago that any technological development far enough beyond our understanding was indistinguishable from magic. For those of you with VCRs that have been flashing 12 o'clock for decades who simply hold your breath and press buttons on your 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, 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 frustrations 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 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 Berners-Lee made the worldwide web accessible to the public. Even as a child, Berners-Lee had imagined linking associated facts and ideas much in the way that we think the mind functions. As an adult computer scientist, he was able to make this a reality by embedding what we call hyperlinks in documents, allowing the reader to jump to related documents on any network in the system without having to first arrange permission. Rather than being like a collect call where you first have to get the recipient's consent, it's more like being able to send a piece of mail to anyone whose address I 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 is as easy as with 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 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 making sure that the answers are correct and the access is democratic. Readers of The Guardian enjoyed the story of Mae 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 pausing to check our spelling and punctuation before we post a comment to 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's 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 robbed while using a bank ATM, you can enter your pin code backwards to summon the police. There are also plenty of clearly malicious claims such as that Tennessee schoolchildren are forced to pray to Allah or that President Obama is banning the pledge of allegiance. In all of these cases, the ease of internet communication encourages people to simply share messages 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 also likely to see examples of what is called astroturfing, in which paid commenters attempt to sway the reader, either by posing as average citizens or by commenting under several different names to create the appearance of a widespread shared opinion. As exhilarating as liberty can be, as we sang in our opening hymn, Diga Duncan Zin 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 technological electronic technologies and media. And it's 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 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 these digital natives retreat to social media when they're finding real world socializing or intimacy difficult. She notes that schools are bringing her in as a consultant because their students' ability to build friendships and develop empathy seems to be stunted by their immersion in the online world. What the internet did for information, social media are now doing with relationships, making them abundant and cheap, disconnected from location and other real world concerns that we've assumed to be central to our culture. Turkle worries that young people are failing to develop basic human qualities that are critically necessary for maintaining a functional society. Although I wonder whether Turkle's conclusions are perhaps alarmist, the possibility of so much at stake will be on our minds at a minister's study group that I attend each fall, this year with a 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 Handmaid'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 that is inherently popular with youth and young adults. Part of what I find so valuable about dystopian stories is how they help me to see the limitations of technological determinism. In Pat Frank's novel Alas Babylon, a nuclear war apparently destroys civilization. And in Stephen King's book The Stand, a genetically modified flu virus 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 change. Religions have raised this conversation in their own version of dystopian literature, The Apocalypse, in which devastation overturns the entire order of nature and society and all of our everyday assumptions, values, and habits must be swept away. I've been watching how this idea has gained a 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. This prospect of such a traumatic 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 when it would have been tempting to let these values fall away. Some religious communities have been tempted to cling even more tightly to the moral codes of ancient societies, and I see how painful 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 teachers today is the guidance to identify true knowledge from among all the misleading falsehoods and trivial gossip. Soil science professor and former FUS 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 today, but all along the journey that we are making together. With this in mind, I'd like to leave you with 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 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 consistent electronic surveillance. I had resisted carrying a cell phone but it became necessary for my work here at FUS and I eventually traded that in for a smartphone. I first started to pay attention to the real potential of always having a camera and internet with me in 2011 as the protests in Madison coincided with the uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia, and other Arab countries. There, activists used their smartphones to sidestep government censorship and documented for the world the violent repression of their protests. My concerns about surveillance 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 them 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 are 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 we want to live in. May we be up to the task. Now, our ushers will pass the basket for the giving and receiving of our offering. All that you have given and continue to give to this community and its good work makes such a difference and is so appreciated. Thank you. Your caring and concern will, for Anne Smiley, extend a special thanks to all who participated and contributed and served this Saturday. It was truly an event of the whole community. We invite also in this silence all the joys and sorrows too tender to share that live in the fullness of our hearts. May we remember that we are a 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. I invite you now to rise as you're able and join in singing together our closing hymn, number 295, Sing Out Praises for the Journey.