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V RaptureChrist Newsletter
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Digitalization is occurring. Photographic film is going away. Most pictures are taken via digital cameras, and uploaded to the computer for viewing. Back in the 90's, most photographs were taken using a film camera. I had to take the film to a local pharmacy on the corner. Then I would wait for one hour for them to process it. Afterwards, I would go back home and scan it in. This took several hours from the time I took a photo to when it finally did appear on a web page. I was glad when digital cameras came down in price. The time from taking a photo to it appearing on a web page is now less than a minute, and it is a lot less expensive. Developing photographic film was expensive. It was approximately 50 cents per photograph, and now using digital images, it is less than one penny per image. It is not just photography that is affected, last year, for the first time, more e-books were sold than books on paper. Amazon is pushing digitalization because it is less expensive. Before digital, Amazon spent money on buying wood pulp, transportation, manufacturing, and keeping books in a warehouse. Plus, they needed a lot more workers. Before, Amazon could only have a few best sellers, but now they can have many more titles, as the cost of storage for an electronic book is minimal. Also, it is a lot faster to download an electronic book than driving to the book store to get one. In a similar way, people do not buy a DVD, but record TV movies or use the internet to download them for free instead of buying the DVDs. Both Blockbuster video and Hollywood video went bankrupt because they cannot compete with free. It is the same with a music CD, as it is a lot faster to get the MP3 over the internet than to drive a car to a store many miles away. Being able to read news over the internet has destroyed over half of our daily newspapers. Pulp is expensive and transportation costs money. Computer software used to arrive via mail in CD form and now people simply download programs off the internet. Broadband connections are so fast that you can be using a program a few minutes after you pay for it. This reminds me, back in the analog era, people would send a check over the mail, and now they pay using a credit card over the internet. Basically, the internet has replaced your {telephone, VCR, television, video game player, record store, cinema, mail, bookstore, newspaper, magazines, technical journals, and camera.} Is this a good trend? Look at our analysis on the right side. |
Yesterday, I saw an Amish woman in an electronics store buying a laptop computer for her six children who were in their early teens and younger. I began to wonder about her decision. They no doubt will be exposed to a lot of web sites that have questionable content.
Probably, she will be very vigilant at first, but gradually she will relax her standards, and allow her children to look at web sites that a Christian should not be viewing. Sadly, the internet has a lot of web sites that are utterly immoral. This problem has grown worse over the years. Back in the 90's most web sites were just text, and many were simply scholarly magazines. The internet had a university flavor, as most people using it were in academia. Slowly, it became popular with the masses. Back in the 90's people were on 56K modems using slow dial up. Most sites now are filled with videos and movies. This is because less than 1% of internet connections are now dial up. Broadband high speed connections are inexpensive now. In the US there is very little or no filtering of internet TV shows. In the early years of TV, content was censored. They did not allow profanity before 9PM. Gradually, standards were relaxed. People are now bombarded with immoral messages. TV shows in the 1950's did not have the constant glorification of sin that we have now. Internet does not have to follow Federal Communication Commission (FCC) codes, so now we have a barrage of profane images and coarse language assaulting our eyes and ears. Being shown nasty comments on the internet is corrosive. Some religious leaders have already realized that the internet can create a detour in your spiritual journey. God says: 2 Timothy 3:13 2 Timothy 2:16 Basically, our world is going the way of total corruption. What others may see as progress, is often, one more avenue in sin. Even the Amish are dancing their way to spiritual destruction. |
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