Google, Apple & how Next Gen INTERNET will DECIMATE the Watchtower Society

by jwfacts 45 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

• 

  Mandette

  I was absolutely THRILLED to find this website. Now I'm not sure if the internet is going to have a big part in reducing their members or not. I think they're doing a good job of that all by their lonesome.

  I was talking with someone still in "good standing" the other day. He's having MAJOR doubts. So he was more than willing to tell me the current happenings in the Kingdom Hall. Lately he had a friend disfellowshipped for just being on websites such as Freeminds. The Society is still preaching hard that the internet is bad bad bad. I do believe that the Society is very threatened by the internet. Now we have concrete information and research at our fingertips. Before the internet we had to rely on rumors. And we never knew who we could talk to.

  I keep trying to convince my elder father to get the net. He KNOWS how much of a use it is for everything. But I don't think he can get over that the society is so dead set against it.

  I'm sure EVIL travels through the internet connection to reach out through the moniter and grab ya!!!!! HA!

  Once again I'm so glad I found this site!!!!!!!! It's so awesome that I'm not alone and I know I'm not crazy for some of the stuff I feel!!!!!!!

  Mandette
• 

  sass_my_frass

  This isn't something I'd be sad to see right now, but by the time it happens, I hope that neither of us care anymore, hey?

  Is that your baby? What a beautiful baby!
• 

  slimboyfat

  The received wisdom is that the Internet has dramatically damaged the ability of the Watchtower Society to gain and retain followers. There was a very eloquent article to that effect written some time ago by a commentator who attempted to buttress his argument with reference to the postmodern condition and the breakdown of metanarratives in today’s secular society, even a come-back for Enlightenment notions of “truth”.
  
  In the 1970/80s there were major challenges to the Watchtower’s theology (great crowd in heaven) and chronology (1914) in Norway, Alberta Canada, Dublin Ireland and in the NewYork Bethel itself: but the damage caused by those involved in the dissent was limited because knowledge was dispersed merely through personal contact and minimal use of obscure publications that seldom met the eyes of Witnesses innocent of the Watchtower’s doctrinal and chronological vacillations. During the 1990s this all changed, and now most Witnesses have access to all the information involved in those earlier disputes, plus many more recent “scandals”, at the click of a button in the privacy of their own homes. Surely this must open the floodgates of mass exodus? Wrong! Let me explain why: The Internet has in truth proved a very mixed blessing for apostates indeed; in fact I will argue that it has proved a positive disadvantage in the furtherance of their cause. Here are some of the main reasons for this:
  
  In the pre-Internet age apostates would engage much more with their ‘brothers’ in the faith about the doubts they were having and dissention spread more productively. This was because defectors simply did not have the support networks available to them that they can now find on forums such as this: they were forced to work away at their issues with fellow Witnesses, and were often far more effective in convincing others in their congregations to join them as a result. That is why major regional defections (such as in Alberta and Norway mentioned above) happened in the pre-Internet age and are not likely to be repeated. Whereas pre-Internet apostates would extract themselves from the community with much struggle and bloodletting, a key buzzword for apostates in the Internet age is the “fade”. Apostates now simply slip away from congregations without dragging others with them because they have another option than going through all the trouble: they simply immerse themselves in the online apostate community instead. The Internet is truly a blessing for the Society in this respect: apostates are causing less trouble in local congregations than they once did.
  
  But surely even if apostates are less vocal locally, this is more than made up for by the fact that most Witnesses worldwide now can access apostate literature (sometimes even accidentally) on their home computers. Don’t the numbers of those here on this forum who learned the “truth about the troof” in that way testify to the danger the Internet poses for the Society? Not really. Most Witnesses are too busy to look up apostate sites; many who do come upon them casually make fun of them and, most importantly, those Witnesses who are very active online have been effective in recent years at creating protected online communities. They have learned from the mistakes of the early days of greatcrowd.com and such like. Apostates have sometimes prided themselves in infiltrating such “moderated” Witness groups, but not to any great extent.
  
  Consider also that there are no great apostate conventions anymore. In Britain there used to be great ex-Witness conventions: now all but disappeared: thanks to the Internet. Penton, Stafford, Bergman, Johnson, Franz and others simply message each other on Channel C rather than meet up for grand discussions. The “Apostafest” of modern-day apostates is the poor relative in the Internet age of the great ex-Witness gatherings in the pre-Internet period. Apostasy is all but dead: ironically in the flicker of a hyperlink.
  
  The Internet spells the end for effective apostasy and should make the Watchtower Society have one huge sigh of relief.
• 

  shamus100

  If the Watchtower society was really thinking, they would ban the internet at all costs to they're members. They've done the ultimate mistake - allowing the R&F to access something so vast that they are bound to check out some of these sites. It's an easy out for any who doubt.
• 

  Dogpatch

  wow, that was provocative slimboy. :-))

  run that by me again, slower...

  so what are you predicting exactly?

  Randy
• 

  besty

  I agree with jwfacts on one level - the internet is still an immature 'product' - compare the advances made in automobile technology over the last hundred years and then let your mind imagine what the Internet will enable in 5, 10 or 20 years.

  I've worked for an ISP for the last 8 years and am currently working for MySpace so have some <limited> insight into what some of the leading consumer technology companies are working on. One thing is sure - the rate of change is increasing - think about the adoption of DVD players compared to VCR compared to color TV compared to radio. Cliched but true - we tend to underestimate change over the next few years and overestimate what will happen over the next 20 years. Remember those scientists in the 1950's that said we would all be eating pills for dinner in our pressurised bubble homes.

  One example - imagine satnav that shows video of what your route looks like - what is round the next corner or the next continent? Not real-time video but still a big leap from the 2D maps we have today. Add in realtime traffic conditions and auto re-routing, maybe some social networking to share route hacks and satnav will be radically more functional within 5 years. Companies like TeleAtlas are compiling vast vast vast amounts of data by driving every road and capturing the video - Google StreetView being an early indication of whats to come. Already you can visit real estate websites that map their available properties and have integrated StreetView to show you what the neighbourhood looks like.

  Another thing i'm sure of is that broadcast TV as we know will change radically within 5-10 years. People demand content on a 1-2-1 basis when they want it, where they want it and on a device of their choosing. Think mobile Tivo combined with Hulu, except Hulu (or some aggregation service such as Veoh) will have every piece of content ever created in its easily searchable database. Add user generated content such as V's WT Comments on YouTube to that database and GPS data and jwfacts idea of 'seeing' inside your local Kingdom Hall is not all farfetched.

  Whether future Internet technology developments will decimate the WTS I'm not so sure. As long as the human reasons for joining and staying in high control groups exists then the WTS will have a membership. I'm certain the profile of that membership will change and is already in that process. Net decline and stagnation in Western countries and growth amongst immigrant populations and Africa. I think back to my childhood say 25 years ago and the vast battalions of lower middle class white families out every Saturday and Sunday on FS convincing their neighbours the end of the world was nigh - that just doesn't describe the Western JW's anymore. The FS is a drag, the meetings are a chore, there is limited socializing that is sanctioned and its all very cookie-cutter. (In Africa and amongst immigrants selling Paradise is probably doing quite nicely)

  We passively consumed Web 1.0, we are Web 2.0. So the UN story on the Guardian website was Web 1.0, creating comments about the same story on JWD was Web 1.5. V's WT Comments on YouTube is Web 2.0 - his own content is the story.

  jwfacts is attempting to give a glimpse into Web 3.0. For me I find it difficult to speculate - lacking in imagination maybe. Right now we are amateur computer technicians tethered to a fairly crude input/output device. Its not difficult to foresee an iPhone device maybe twice the size with a simple multitouch interface and that is permanently broadband (10Mbps and above) connected to the cloud. (the cloud being software held centrally and delivered on demand - why do we buy and install Microsoft Office on one static PC - why not fire up MS Word when/where we need to create a document and pay a onetime fee for the privilege)

  Again jwfacts is spot on with his reference to the Internet generation - kids that grow up now will be permanently connected to their peers and to the Internet - anything less will make them a sub-citizen. As well as being a marketers dream this connectivity will allow information sharing instantly. (Imagine a JW kid trying to give a canned presentation to his classmates - ok class - Google Jehovahs Witness and all give me one different fact about what we have just heard...of course the JW kid and his classmates would all be immersed holographically telepresenced into a virtual classroom)

  Social networking is also still in its infancy - the ever elusive 'next big thing' seems to me to be a mobile-based situational aware social aggregation service with presence. (what was that load of busllsh*t? - sorry I can't describe what I mean any other way). Today we have to subscribe to multiple SN's - LinkedIn for business, FaceBook for friends, MySpace for music with more specific-interest networks opening every day. JWD is a form of social network where we are linked by a common interest. (JWD 2.0 is a separate thread - DogPatch being on the money with his quest to make freeminds.org mobile specific).

  So imagine walking into a public space - say an art gallery - and your mobile device which has agregated all your social networks into one master profile (scary thought but again for another thread) brings up a situationally aware list of other people who you may wish to meet. It doesn't share your work profile because thats not appropriate in an art gallery, but it does share out your love of Impressionist works or whatever, you get the idea. But say the art gallery was being used for a corporate event the following week. Walk in there and the same device then shares out a different subset of your profile to a different audience. The point is to enable instant human contact with other people you may want to interact with who you would otherwise have no idea were there or had similar interests. See this article from way back in 2004...

  And of course it is presence aware, meaning it knows when you are online and available - MSN style instant mesaaging apps being the classic example. Again a marketers dream to know who you are, where you are and what you like/dislike using advanced alogorithms and vast amounts of user data to predict when/what you may be in the mood to buy. <special offer for you for the next 10 minutes only Paul - walk towards the booth located 10 yards to your left where our tele-representative will show you details of a <insert desirable consumer product/service that Google thinks I might buy>...

  SlimBoyFat makes a point that SweetPea and I discussed the other day. I was in Falkirk, UK congregation several years after about 27 people were DF'd for apostasy. You can imagine that was B I G news for a long time. Anne Sanderson was one of those. For the reasons SBF gives I agree this sort of thing is unlikely to happen again today. Where I disagree with him is that the WTS are breathing a sigh of relief because the Internet has arrived and spells the end of effective apostasy. The Internet enables and then speeds up the education and subsequent leaving process for many JW's. SweetPea looked at jwfacts and decided to quit the JWs in a weekend. We have talked to many people that left pre-Internet that had to spend months researching in libraries, museums etc.

  Also the social support possibilities the Internet offers heavily outweigh the low impact quiet fade SBF describes. Give me 10,000 quiet lurker faders rather than 27 going out in a bang. In fact many experienced JW's (elders etc) quietly fade without ever looking at the Internet - they just know how to play the system. How many posters here have namechecked JWD, freeminds and jwfacts amongst other websites as being instrumental in their decision to leave? In any case many people that get DF'd for apostasy have by definition shared their findings with others, so its not a zero sum argument.

  What SBF doesn't address is the effect the Internet is having on new conversions to the JW's. Tell me that a Bible Study with Internet access is not going to Google for more information? Perhaps this is why so much emphasis is placed on foreign language fields - see here for the chances of these people having broadband...lets not forget the 'foreign language field' is a bit of a misleading term - Polish is not a foreign language in ...erm... Poland...which shows little or no growth as a country. Immigrant Poles are vulnerable of course - lets recruit them in London rather than Warsaw....

  One more future-looking thing - Google has already put a huge percentage of the worlds information in your pocket - could you have imagined that 10 years ago? Larry and Sergey did. Today they are imagining put the worlds information in your head.

  "Your mind is tremendously efficient at weighing an enormous amount of information. We want to make smarter search engines that do a lot of the work for us. The smarter we can make the search engine, the better. Where will it lead? Who knows? But it’s credible to imagine a leap as great as that from hunting through library stacks to a Google session, when we leap from today’s search engines to having the entirety of the world’s information as just one of our thoughts." Sergey Brin September 2004

  So in summary I'm excited about the continuing evolution of the Internet and the possibilities for interaction it will offer. It won't decimate the WTS - perhaps when religion loses its sacred cow status and legislation is enacted against shunning and the deliberate misrepresentation of medical facts about blood there might be a move to the mainstream. Even better if legislation could define cult practices and outlaw high control techniques.

  Thanks for reading.
• 

  jehovahsheep

  when i was doing the reinstatement process-i took a peek at the apostate sites.i obtained the crisis of conscience book and have learned the truth about the wts.if there was not an intranet i would be back at the kh.
• 

  steve2

  A way too breathless claim!

  The net makes potentially damaging information much more accessible. That's all it does. The doesn't open people's minds, nor does it build confidence in the source of the information (anything and everything can be claimed on the net).

  No, the net won't decimate the Watchtower. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that it won't ever be Apostasy that decimates the Watchtower but the other A word: Apathy. The Watchtower loses far, far more members to Apathy than to Apostasy.
• 

  BizzyBee

  There was a very eloquent article to that effect written some time ago by a commentator who attempted to buttress his argument with reference to the postmodern condition and the breakdown of metanarratives in today’s secular society, even a come-back for Enlightenment notions of “truth”.

  I believe this is article to which SBF refers, and a good one it is, exploring the WTS internet dilemma specifically :

  http://libertyunbound.com/archive/2003_10/cox-truth.html

  The best weapon against the lies and inaccuracies of the WTS is truth and information. The internet is quite efficient in providing both, as this article points out. Bottom-line: if the internet, apostates and education weren't having a decimating effect on the recruitment and retention of JWs, would the WTS be so rabid about demonizing them?
• 

  Dogpatch

  Thanks Besty,

  I will respond over the roar of drunken surfers in the background. :-))

  You say,

  we tend to underestimate change over the next few years and overestimate what will happen over the next 20 years. Remember those scientists in the 1950's that said we would all be eating pills for dinner in our pressurised bubble homes.

  I agree. The next 5 years wil catch us all by surprise. I want to be ready, not so much just for the JWs but for addressing high-control issues across the board, on a video platform similar to independent television (a la PBS for example) but which is funded more likely by one or a few select investors. But perhaps financing models may change rapidly as well. It all makes my head spin.

  All I know is, I don't have to cow tow to another corporation or entity or religion, I just want the content out there. I am open to what the future brings. And the future will most certainly involve a level of networking we can't even imagine now. Today, some people simply cannot live without their cell phones. We may find that funny, but in 10 years, yes, it will most certainly be a reality for all but the most socially non-progressive. We are all going to be part of a hive, like it or not, doomsayers or not. They will pass, but it will happen, without near as much pain as people think.

  But life as we now know it will be quaint by comparison. Like country life is to a city girl.

  What does that mean to me? More networking, communities, artificial families, perhaps even physical communities comprised of persons of common interest, say theme housing. :-))

  Traditional families may be a novelty. Designer families will be in vogue, and ex-JWs will find a niche, I am sure.

  Another thing i'm sure of is that broadcast TV as we know will change radically within 5-10 years. People demand content on a 1-2-1 basis when they want it, where they want it and on a device of their choosing. Think mobile Tivo combined with Hulu, except Hulu (or some aggregation service such as Veoh) will have every piece of content ever created in its easily searchable database. Add user generated content such as V's WT Comments on YouTube to that database and GPS data and jwfacts idea of 'seeing' inside your local Kingdom Hall is not all farfetched.

  If the WT doesn't make a rapid about-shift in their approach to technology and communication, they are really slitting their own throats. Any business manager worth their salt would DIE for the opportunity to turn that religion around to making a "profit" and growing rapidly. I could think of a few friends from the past from Trinity Broadcasting that could turn that sorry ship around in a year! Doesn't really take much, just a "new big thing." WT leaders are the most ignorant of business people I have ever seen.

  Randy