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Watching the web

This August the World Wide Web was 15 years old.

Britain’s Observer newspaper, commemorating this event, likened the influence the web has had on the world with that of Johannes Gutenberg’s 15th-century invention of movable-type printing, which enabled the Bible to be mass-produced (http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1843263,00.html).

There are similarities. Both inventions have brought about massive cultural and social revolutions by taking knowledge and power away from an elite and giving it to the masses. But whereas the former empowered people by opening their eyes and teaching them how they should live, the latter is arguably less impressive, governed as it is by the user’s own whims.

If I come to the Bible I am confronted by the spotless and unchanging truth of the Divine Author, which through the Holy Spirit is always for my improvement. But if I come to the web it is up to me what I use it for, whether to edify or to destroy. Sadly, man often uses it for the latter.

The Bible encompasses all truth and is a record of all history from beginning to end. The web seeks to do as much but, despite allegedly being hundreds of billions of pages in length, it achieves far less.

The extent to which the web has become a necessary part of our life in just 15 years is remarkable. But though it offers us evermore goods and services, it cannot on its own (online ministry aside) satisfy our craving for real, spiritual wisdom.

This has been particularly in evidence on youtube.com, a highly popular site that allows users to upload their own video clips. In recent months the star attraction has been a series of video diaries posted by a 79-year-old, English widower detailing his life story and thoughts on various topics (http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=geriatric1927).

He offers advice and experience to an audience that is alien to him in its youth, but ultimately this lonely man can provide no answers. His aim, he says at the outset, is simply to ‘grumble from the perspective of an old man’. It is sad that he can offer no more, given the thousands of responses his videos are generating.

No matter what else they have and how extensive the web might grow to be in the next 15 years, old and young alike still need the old answers that only the Bible can provide.

Stephen J. Doggett