Ali Johnson

Herbert Marshall McLuhan, CC (July 21, 1911 – December 31, 1980) was a Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar — a professor of English literature, a literary critic, a rhetorician, and a communication theorist. McLuhan's work is viewed as one of the cornerstones of the study of media theory. Marshall McLuhan in my mind is nothing short of a genius. A prophet and prodigal. This is taken from a brilliant short book called the Medium is the Massage. All media work us over completely. They are so pervasive in their personal,political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered. The medium is the massage. Any understanding of social and cultural change is impossible without ...

As many of you may have seen I have working on super exciting project called EasterLIVE. A project that is really centred around creating a way for people to really grapple with the beautiful truths that live behind Easter. And also creating away for people to use this powerful platforms, in Facebook and Twitter, to share the gospel with people who they are in relationships with. I wanted to post some of the most amazing ones for some reflection... Christopher Chiu-Tabet Before I think of my own definition, I'm reminded of how J. R. R. Tolkien described Easter as a "eucatastrophe" Andrew Horton God often works behind the scenes; this time he was centre stage. Andy Frost they thought ...

I spent yesterday up at Durham University with the Codec crowd and had some really great conversations about the current Digital environment we find ourself in. Our worldview is in flux. The dominant characteristics of a previous meta-narrative has eroded and we face a fragmented, yet smaller world. I wonder if you have ever spent sometime reflecting on a light switch. I was day dreaming about it the other day and fully believe that I have a worldview in which power is always at my beckon call. I live my life in a fast lane full of connections and full of things vying for a slice of my time. Two of ...

The hyperconnection we are seeing creates for us a massive amount of choice, which, in turn, has an impact on our relationships. How many of us have been frustrated in a conversation with someone who’s picked up their phone to check a text or an email that has just arrived? Hyperconnection is the experience of having too much control, literally too many choices, in our interpersonal connections. If a computer is overloaded and running too many applications or programmes it will grind to a halt. Human hyperconnectivity has a similar effect as we become lost in a sea of connections. Many times our relationships fail due to our inability to ...

A college student, when I asked her how she was, responded by saying “check my Facebook status”. We live in a ‘hyperconnected’ world, a world in which many different means of communication are used; more specifically social networking sites. You are never more than one click or tap away from millions of people all over the globe. Whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, Emails or some other form of connectedness, we are bombarded with connections. We are famous in our own world. We want people to ‘like’ our statuses, retweet our tweets and reply to our emails, in a way that has never been seen before. With the rise in smart phones our level of connectedness is only going to increase. We ...

Today I am going to take a quote from a book that I have been reading for a while now called Re Jesus. Amidst all the latest fads and "movements" within contemporary Christianity in the West, Frost and Hirsch's "ReJesus" is a clarion call to recalibrate our lives to the one that gathered us together and sent us out in the first place - Jesus. I love this quote and think its a worthwhile read if you want to get back to the our first love and invite Jesus into every area of lives. In their own words, "this book is dedicated to the recovery of the absolute centrality of the ...