Last night I spoke to about a dozen people from Seabury-Western Seminary and the surrounding neighborhood in Evanston, hosted by the Rev. Prof. AKMA…which also means that I got to hang out with AKMA, Margaret and the 9-year-old peppy Pippa who announced at dinner: “My job is to entertain faculty.” She does that mightily and deserves tenure and a promotion. I also met Si, whom many us already know from his blog; having two spatially disoriented, easily distracted people trying to meet each other in a crowded airport is like watching a bullfight between a blinfolded bull and a drunken matador. Thank goodness for cell phones. (And could I find a less apt simile for a pacifist, vegetarian, sober family?)

Anyway, I spoke for an hour about why the Web matters. The conversation after was great, and it was a pleasure talking with people who know technology but are rooted into something perhaps even more important. It was fascinating watching the seminarians applying this to their own realm of discourse.

Trevor Bechtel, AKMA’s Disseminarian partner, brought it around to the sense in which one is or isn’t embodied on the Web. He had been persuaded that the Web has to be a degraded form of socialilty because it lacks a characteristic some feminists have pointed to as essential: touch. But he’s rethinking this idea not because he thinks touch is less important but because he is reconsidering the nature of touch. (I’m sure I’m getting this at least somewhat wrong, and possibly entirely wrong. But he’ll correct me.) This led to a discussion of the nature of sign, symbol and the sacrament. For me, it was like listening to technoids talking tech over my head, an experience I enjoy for reasons I may never understand.

Lots more good discussion as well.

AKMA did the live blogging thang here. So did Tripp Hudgins, whose comments I find fascinating because of the way they appropriate what I was saying into Tripp’s faithful context. (Note: Tripp’s entry is broken into three headings; I did go on too long.)

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