After I bought an older Vulcan Drifter in Memphis, I had a five hour ride home. I’d never ridden this bike before and I was just a little concerned. I can’t remember when I last rode something other than a BMW.  I doubt I’ve shifted gears on another brand in twenty years, maybe longer. And I don’t ride the Interstate.

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In Shop Class as Soulcraft, Matthew B. Crawford writes that bikes have personalities. I think the older they are the more unique the personality. They, like us, create patterns of behavior that are familiar and relatively predictable.

I don’t know this bike’s personality and that can mean not knowing how easily or reliably it shifts, brakes, accelerates or runs on the straightaway.

Some say riding is about ninety percent in your head. But the ten percent that’s method is important.

I don’t like riding the Interstate. It’s faster than I’d normally ride. Seventy-five to eighty-five mph is not my preference when I’m exposed to the elements and sitting about six inches above the asphalt.

Trucks whip you around, the wind roars through your helmet. And when I lifted my foot, I felt the pressure of wind and gravity. I was surprised. Because your feet are behind the cylinder heads on a BMW you don’t experience this pressure so it came as a strange sensation.

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For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to own an Indian motorcycle. The Indian is, in my opinion, the ultimate classic design for a motorcycle. It was born in the era that also gave birth to the flowing lines of Art Deco which is reflected in buildings, railroad streamliners, signage and steamships.

But classic Indians cost a premium. The original company stopped manufacturing them several years ago. When new owners opened up again, contemporary versions cost as much as a luxury automobile. Beautiful as they are, they are beyond my pocketbook and my sense of financial stewardship.

It came as a surprise to me that during 2000 to 2006 Kawasaki introduced an Indian replica called the Vulcan Drifter. When one came up for sale in Memphis, I went to see it. It was priced right. In good shape. I bought it.

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Perspectives has a new look for the New Year.

Join the conversation on how our faith fits into the 21st Century and how we fit into the world around us.  Sure, it’s a world of Facebook, smartphones and e-book Bibles.  But it’s also a world of faith, hope and love.   I hope to explore the new ways we can express our faith and meet some interesting people who are showing us how to make a difference in this world.  And along the way, I’ll give you some insight on speeding through this new world on my retro motorcycle.

“The Final Great Awakening – An Endtime Revival”.: The Circuit Rider vs The Televangelist

I just returned from a walk around our building. I do this every so often.

Frankly, it serves my own purposes more than anything else. I am surrounded by committed, creative, wonderful people, and to have the chance to chat with them is a real picker-upper.

Here’s why: I learned that a young woman who saw a video profile we posted on the web was moved to call the producer to ask for contact information because she “wanted to turn her life around.”

The two were connected and vetted each other, and she’s considering going on a mission trip to Liberia as an assistant to a team of dental practitioners.

Another person sent a note explaining how he is using a video on HIV/AIDS that we posted before World AIDS Day to convene an interfaith group to address HIV/AIDS in his city.

And we heard from a group in Kalamazoo that registrations for a Kalamazoo Christmas event are up over last year as a result of widespread coverage through Rethink Church advertising.

The author of the children’s book, “A Kalamazoo Christmas”, learned of the event and donated a couple of hundred copies to the event. (She said she’s never been to Kalamazoo, by the way, but she found the name intriguing.)

Interestingly, more than half (54 percent) of the volunteers for this community service event are not affiliated with a local church, reinforcing the idea that disciple-making today comes, in part, through mission engagement.

I received an e-mail from a writer in Bangkok who wanted to renew contact with a photographer who had done some work that we had posted on women in Sudan. Our staff helped them re-connect.

There are days when the value of the global connection of The United Methodist Church is manifestly clear to me. And it is a strength that supports and sustains meaningful human community and personal growth.

Today was one of those days.

Have you ever been in a conversation that gave your thoughts permission to soar? One that you knew was important and filled with meaning even as it continued?

I was in a conversation like this recently. We were talking about the creative treatment of the Imagine No Malaria campaign.

This campaign seeks to put an end to deaths caused by malaria. Every 45 seconds, the disease takes the life of someone in Africa–a child, mother or father. It’s been around perhaps as long as we’ve walked upright.

The conversation brought us to discuss new ways of bringing the message to those of us in the U.S. and Europe where malaria isn’t a problem.

The challenge is how to convey the seriousness of its effects.

The conversation was focused and everyone engaged. There were no side comments or cynical diversions that undercut the concern, as often occurs in meetings.

It became a conversation about life and death and how to communicate about it. Strange as it sounds, it was not heavy and ponderous. In fact, it was uplifting, creative and soaring.

It was a conversation about life and how to contribute to and engage with others in a mission to make life better—not in a way that is self-gratifying, but by comprehending how we are all interconnected and responsible for each other.

Conversations like this make my day.

For the past five weeks I’ve been taking notes with a Livescribe Pulse 2GB smartpen, a system that records audio as you write notes. The Livescribe pen plays back audio as you move the tip to a point in the notepad you want to hear. I’m using the Mac version of the software.

It’s an ingenious, helpful system. Battery life for the pen has lasted for a full day  before recharging. It’s recharged by connecting to a laptop with a standard USB port with the Livescribe cradle, or by using a wall plug charger. Both are supplied with the basic kit.

The pen is about triple the size of a normal ink pen. It’s not unmanageable. It contains an led screen that gives time, date, battery status, and, most important, a menu that  progressively leads you to various tasks. It’s activated by pressing on icons on the Livescribe paper.

Livescribe requires dot-imprinted paper. It won’t work on plain copy paper. However, it’s possible to print your own paper on a 600dpi (or higher) color printer using a utility provided with the desktop software. And Livescribe notebooks and paper in varying sizes can be purchased online or at many Best Buy and Target stores.

I’ve read that some users find the pen runs out of ink sooner than other pens. The cartridge is smaller than most standard ball point refills. Refills can be ordered online or in the stores above. I use the pen to note key points, not to write a detailed narrative as I do when taking notes without the smartpen. Using it in this way, I haven’t experienced a shortage of ink.

The main menu allows you to replay a recorded session, draw a musical keyboard for a piano, demo the translator function in the software (write a word and a definition scrolls the pen’s led screen), delete a session or all sessions and create a security password.

Icons on the paper allow you to start recording, pause or stop. You can playback, jump ahead, go back, adjust volume and adjust playback speed.

With the smarten attached to a desktop, you can view notes on-screen and playback audio. Using the mouse pointer, audio playback can be started at various points. This is the ingenious part of Livescribe. It will accurately take you to audio where you have written key points you want to review.

You can also upload notes to your private account on the Livescribe website where you can work with the notes and audio and share them with co-workers if you choose.

Co-workers can see the notes and listen to the audio as well. I’ve used this collaborative capability with two workgroups and we’ve found it very useful.

I nearly panicked when I uploaded the first time, however. Livescribe calls uploading “Share with community.” When I thought I had mistakenly uploaded internal notes to a wider community, I nearly had a panic attack. But after a call to Livescribe support and a more careful reading of the user manual, I learned that despite this misleading label, uploaded notes are locked and private until the user adds the email addresses and names of those who will be given access to them.

I’m impressed with the quality of the recorded playback on a laptop system. I’ve used the pen only in conference room settings, I haven’t tried larger halls, but I’ve seen photos of people using the pen, holding it as if it were a microphone. A set of earbuds plug into the pen for private listening, a handy tool that could prevent you an embarrassment I experienced.

In order to review a recorded comment, I held the pen to my ear during a break at a recent staff retreat. I took a good deal of razzing about having a large pen sticking out of my ear.

The variable audio quality and adjustable volume offer surprising fidelity. One of my co-workers called me after logging onto shared meeting notes and described the playback as “awesome.” I don’t normally receive that kind of response to new media from our technologically jaded crew, so I take that as a great compliment to Livescribe.

Files can be organized into project notebooks and are searchable by keyword. A third party utility can turn handwritten notes into text. Alas, no transcription for audio to text. Wouldn’t that be something? But, hey, this little smartpen can do a lot and do it very well. I’m enjoying using it.

Recently someone “deeply involved in budgeting” for a local church contacted United Methodist Communications seeking financial information. When we suggested contacting the conference treasurer, the response was complete lack of knowledge about who, or what, a conference treasurer is.

This is not an isolated occurrence. We often encounter United Methodists who are unaware of how our connection works, what it is doing in the world or what it teaches.

Is the connection connected?

An anecdote does not make a trend. However, when asked by United Methodist Communications researchers if their local church understands the concept of connectionalism, only 18 percent of pastors and 12 percent of laity strongly agree that they understand it. When clergy and laypersons are asked individually if they understand the church’s structure, 38 percent of clergy and 17 percent of laity strongly affirm that they understand it.

Couple this with participation in connectional giving and the story is consistent. The most widely observed offering in the church is One Great Hour of Sharing, yet only 28 percent of United Methodist congregations participate in it. This is the highest rate of participation for any of the general church offerings.

At a time when global realities call for deeper understanding of our interrelatedness and interdependencies, the fraying of the connectional system of The United Methodist Church is a cause for concern. The lack of awareness about how we are connected from the local church to the annual conference and from the annual conference to the general church is important, not only to us as a faith community but also to the world.

Let me illustrate. It is noteworthy that the World Health Organization is reporting that malaria is claiming fewer children today than in previous years. What does this have to do with the connection? I believe when the people of The United Methodist Church entered into the fight against this killer disease, we encouraged others and helped, along with other partners, to focus on something the world could do together: tackle a disease of poverty.

It was our scale partnering with others of scale that gave hope that together we could alleviate human suffering and death in a global movement. Our connectedness was, and is, an immeasurable asset in the mission to embody the leading causes of life, to quote Gary Gunderson’s marvelous phrase.

If we reclaim an understanding that the connection is about making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world (that’s scale), and that discipleship is expressed through missional outreach to the world (that’s scale), we can participate with God in the transformation of the world (that’s real scale).

I know there are many complex reasons the connection is fraying. But I’m asking a simple question. What if the connection were viewed less as a bureaucratic organizational model that’s a drag on finances and more as a life-giving movement for the healing of the world? What if we viewed it, interpreted it and embodied it in this way? What might happen?

The flip side of the behavioral change that results from new media that I wrote two days ago is information overload. It’s a many-sided dilemma. We can’t manage the information that’s available to us. We’re burdened by too much information. Too many book recommendations, articles, websites and social media messages.

In this climate it’s difficult to determine the truly important and meaningful from the trivial and fleeting. It all comes at us with speed, volume and missing context. We lose our bearings.

Easy access to so much information can lead to a demand for a continuous flow of new information even if none exists. It’s been suggested that this creates a treadmill for producers to stay ahead of our expectations. So they send along less significant,  less meaningful content that adds to our overload and further homogenizes the truly useful.

I was reminded of this by the cover story in the Columbia Journalism Review that equates higher production of less important content to a hamster wheel. Journalists are producing more and reflecting deeply upon less, according to the article.

It raises the question: Do we really need all that’s being churned out? Is it driven by insatiable appetite and addiction to the continuous flow, and not by a functional need? (There are currently 14,800,000 Google results for Twitter addiction as I write this post.) Can’t we form an opinion, or act upon what we already know?

It’s been argued that our appetite for new information is reducing attention span. I’ve thought a lot about this and I remain a skeptic. I became aware of my own shortening attention span long before digital media entered my life. I noticed it when I was working in New York in a communications job that required me to manage several projects at once, supervise staff, attend meetings and write, edit, and produce.

I found myself juggling several balls at once, unable to give undivided attention to any one of them as I preferred.

Even before that I took a course in speed reading well before the Internet was a gleam in anyone’s eyes. And I’ve practiced some of those techniques ever since.

As for the claim that content is less meaty than in the past, I’m not sure. The cjr article seems to say journalistic quality hasn’t suffered even as output has increased significantly. My recollection of pop culture and mass media is that it’s always run on the fuel of dross-celebrity, scandal and crime or fears of crime, especially during sweeps months when audience measurements are taken.

I tune out local TV news for the most part because of this. And I think this is a point worth remembering. I can be more selective in my use of media today than ever before. I filter out much that I consider trivial and not worth my time. And, of course, like everyone else, I still probably waste time in these media.

But that’s not new. I managed to do that even before new media came along. What about you?

As I wrote yesterday, the media environment is changing. As this happens, we who use new media are changing too. At least I’m changing. I’m aware of some of this change, but perhaps insidiously, some of it is subtle and less conscious. I’m guessing this is true for others as well.

For example, I frequently discover upon opening the front page of my physical newspaper (even the language is required to change) that I’ve already read much of it. It’s been published on the web, sometimes hours earlier. I use Pulse on the iPad and YourVersion on a laptop or iPad. I also go to the NY Times, Christian Science Monitor, BBC, Thomson Reuters, USA Today, Washington Post, The Guardian and Newsy. Often, I send an article I want to read later to Instapaper.

This is causing me to think I don’t need the paper edition, a huge change of attitude for me.  When we moved from the New York city region several years ago, the one heartbreaking reservation I had to accept was moving away from the print version of the New York Times. This was before it was widely available in print nationally.

When I stop my print subscription it will be a big, emotional step, but I can sense it’s coming. And it’s a bit disorienting.

Another significant behavioral change is the way I start the day. In one of those insidious changes, I recently realized I review social media first by reading it on Flipboard on an iPad or TweetDeck on the iPad or laptop. I sometimes follow links friends have sent. Then I review several news sources by going directly to websites or by looking at aggregated content.

When I find pertinent articles, video, photos or audio in my surfing, I often link to them and share the link via Twitter and Facebook. In the past, I clipped physical articles and filed them for reference later. Today, I clip media to Evernote and file in an electronic database called DevonThink which has an iPad app in beta testing now. What I once did manually, I now do electronically, seamlessly and instantaneously.

I still read physical books but I’m reading more electronically and even listening to audiobooks, which I’ve never done before. My audio listening is done while driving to work. As a result, I haven’t listened to radio much in the past nine months. One victim of my changing media habits is my morning rendezvous with NPR. Doesn’t happen anymore. And I’m aware that I retain audio information in my memory as well as, if not a bit better than, information I’ve read.

I find I’m reading more. I have iBooks, Kindle, nook, BibleReader and Audible on an iPad. I even have an audio reader on a GPS unit in the car. Digital readers haven’t diminished my reading, they’ve actually increased it.

As a writer and media producer, my research methods have changed substantially. Commonly, my research is likely to begin with a database search on Google, then to other sources including physical references. I haven’t used a brick and mortar library in recent memory except to vote. But I’m doing more research than ever.

Finally, I’m more connected across geographic boundaries than ever, and I’ve been globally connected for a long time. But now my connections are quicker, more available and more accessible than before digital media.

This isn’t the whole picture. I’m sure these media are also changing our learning styles, attention spans and cognition in other ways. But as I survey the critiques and endorsements of new media, I don’t get a clear enough picture to know the cumulative nor ultimate result. I doubt it was any different with the advent of the printing press, telegraph, telephone, radio, or television. It’s clear any new medium changes how we access information, use it, store it and, perhaps, even how we act upon it. But, for now, this is a fair assessment of how these media are changing some of my daily routine.

I’m curious how my experience squares with or is different from how you are using new media and if it is also changing you in unexpected ways?