The Second Reformation

I don't think this is original with me. What I mean by that is not that I consciously ripped off someone else's ideas, just that I'd be surprised if I'm the only one who noticed this.

It seems to me that the real driver of the Protestant Reformation was not a a theological breakthrough, but a technical one: the printing press. The technology of the press transferred power from the mystical priesthood of Rome to the professors of learning (and reading). Mainstream Protestant clergy still wear the academic robes of the scholar, and get their educations from seminaries, which are basically specialized universities. Universities are just a support system for libraries.

Run that by again: The printing press gave us books. Books are assembled into collections and collections are gathered into libraries. Academics hang out around libraries and develop universities so they can have classes to explain the books to the newbies. If the library/university is specifically interested in matters theological, you have a seminary.

The repository of the wisdom of the ages shifts from the elders of the tribe and their appointed/anointed successors to the libraries/universities and the gatekeepers that run them. Wanna get ahead, son? Get a college degree--show the world you're a learned man.

So here we are in the third millenium AD, and a most interesting thing has happened. It's Gutenberg all over again, although maybe this time it's Tim Berners-Lee and a supporting cast. The Internet has brought us another power shift, only maybe this one is orders of magnitude greater than the last one.

The telegraph, radio, and television were just the warmup. The World Wide Web is the real deal.

And you know what has happened? We don't need Ph.D.'s anymore. Anyone with a three-digit IQ and a $500 appliance can learn anything he wants to know....

Scary, isn't it? Knowledge used to be stored up and guarded by professional keepers-of-the-flame, guys who got paid to tell us what to think, what was right and true.

Not any more. Go for it. Teach yourself something. Read. Absorb. Sift. Test. Compare. Prune. Build. Trust. Discern. Challenge. Yield. Reject. Absorb. Grow. Change. Learn. Live.

Or you can just go pay someone to tell you what to think....