I predict bold new changes in JW preaching work..want to bet me? :-)

by Mindchild 35 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  Nosferatu

  All said, the increasing popularity of the online world, the infusion of new technology, the clear emotional and psychological benefits for dubs to work through the Internet, and the generational changes in the Society all add up to: huge change.

  If this were to happen, the Society would have to quit demoniziing the internet, or use filtering software of some sort. Also, the Society already preaches via the internet: www.watchtower.org

  Now, how many people do you know have come into the truth by visiting watchtower.org? Quite the opposite is happening right now - people are leaving the troof because of the internet. Dubs have the opportunity to preach by providing a link to the Watchtower site. It's the same as giving them a magazine - without the donation.

  Another problem is if the Society starts making e-watchtowers and e-awakes, they can be copied easily, and the donation arrangement goes out the window. They can't go back to charging for the e-magazines because they'd have to tax them.

  There are too many negatives to online preaching. At the present moment, the Society still recieves donations from people who will never join the JWs, but enjoy reading the magazines while they're sitting on the toilet.

  You of course are aware that they have been singing a new song in this direction as well. For example, look at the topic of computers at Bethel. Back in the late 70's I was already hot with computers and was taking programming classes and I wanted to go to Bethel. I wrote to them and asked them if they had any need for computers. They told me pretty much the same thing as you said above, but look at where they are now. There are lots of computers at Bethel.

  They're using the computers to create the magazines they sell. They can therefore cut down on the volunteers they have to support because it's faster. They save money in the long run and the pictures of Paradise Erf look much nicer. Also from the experiences I've read on this website, Bethel is a whole different ballgame altogether.

  Just because new technology comes along and makes people's lives much easier and efficient, it doesn't mean it's going to benefit business. I've never seen a Watchtower audio tape on P2P file sharing networks, but I've seen ex-jw information in MP3 format on them. Apostates already have a head start on them.
• 

  Mindchild

  I think if there is one thing many ex-dubs can agree with it is the saying: "follow the money" when it comes to the actions of the Society. We have all watched while they have played professional corporate games with their assets, looked at their wide range of investments, watched as they heads towards outsourcing the printing of publications. For any new large scale shift in Watchtower policy regarding the preaching work, money is going to be involved in one way or another. So, I think it deserves a closer look/see to compare current income from the way things are done now, to how it will be done online.

  To start with, consider for the sake of arguement that we have a base number of 3,000,000 Witnesses in First World countries. Most of the contributions to the Society is likely to come from this group of members. We will also make a baseline of 10 hours a month across the board for these 3 million dubs, even though many will put in more hours pioneering, others will be slackers and only putting in a few hours a month. These figures are only to get estimates of income and costs, not for actual hours per publisher over time.

  The costs per publisher for doing 10 hours of preaching a month.

  Car costs (4 dubs/car x 2 times/month) $20.00 USD

  Literature costs per month: $3.00 USD

  Misc. costs per month (clothing, book bags,etc.) $10.00 USD

  Total estimate per publisher for one month: $33.00 USD Cost for 3,000,000 dubs: $99,000,000 USD

  Now, if you were to cut door to door ministry in half, and use the Internet more, it might be possible to make a 50% savings. This would leave over $49,000,000 in dub pockets. However, if the Society charged a modest subscriber fee for their services that all dubs paid, of only $10.00 USD per month it would generate $30,000,000 USD per month to the Society and still save dubs money. Even if you got nobody in the outside world to log on and pay as you go, the Society could still rake in $360 million dollars a year from dub fees! Now tell me that isn't profitable!

  The potential profits from multiuser, online game software could make this pale by comparison. I recently checked out SIM's Online, which went for a cool $34.95 at Sam's Club. Not only does the player pay for the software, but pays a user fee as well. Let's say that the Society markets these games through commecial vendors (another radical change in WT policy that might happen) and gives the standard 50% discount for wholesale costs. It still might be possible to realize $10 per package for the software, with at least one million in sales coming from dubs, but likely more. So, from one new release, they could potentially achieve a $100 million in profits, not counting subscriber fees.

  Consider too, that if they start a public works type ministry, they will have a "valid" reason to ask for donations for the work. No doubt your average dubbie will be soliciting donations online for this as well. All said and done, I think the potential is there economically to make a half billion dollars a year in profits for the Society. They will see this naturally as "being directed by Holy Spirit" and being blessed accordingly.

  Other thoughts and comments:

  Mulan, I believe the software needed for effectively filtering out websites is already here and workable. What the dubs don't have protection from though is being exposed to lots of disconcerting things that will cause them to doubt. Exposure can come from a lot of sites besides ex-JW sites! This is why I feel the Society will set up a cooperative monitoring network that allows for supervision of all online surfing and interactivity by the elders. They will have keystroke recorders and other software that will record where one of the "sheep" wandered out in the dangerous field.

  jgnat, I see your offer and slide a dog biscut on the table to sweeten the deal

  I certainly want to agree with you that the Borg will self destruct, not get MORE effective. I think that big blind elephant though has too much momentum to stop and roll over and play dead. The old generation running the show is already senile (look at Seven006 excellent posts about life at Bethel years ago) and before long will be dropping like flies from sheer old age. Younger, and more importantly, new generational thinking will take the helm. The winds of change are in the air for better or worse as a result. Other religions are way ahead of the Society as you clearly explained. Few though have the totalizing dynamics employed by the Witnesses and the nasty sting for those trying to leave. I think it might be interesting to see if other religions catch on to what I suggested and employ a more cyber conversional strategy. If so, you can bet that the Society will be watching very close.

  Skipper
• 

  jgnat

  <---gnaws that bone. Woof!

  But, but, but, those costs are not borne by the society, but the Rank & File. The WTBTS has rarely figured the cost borne by the sheep. In fact, if the sheep are kept busy enough and it costs them enough, they stay loyal. How many hours for a single convert these days? 3000 hours? Who wants to admit they were a fool sent on a fool's errand? Only the fools at JWD. It is a brave man who can admit he was fooled.

  Bethel was never efficient, it has cheap labour. Their current method of operation works, even though it is grossly inefficient. Microsoft Works works, even though it is grossly inefficient. Microsoft is around because it won the market share. WTBTS is still around, because, well, there are enough fools who like dressing in suits and stomping the pavement.
• 

  Satanus

  If the wt uses the net for witnessing, they could easily dispense w a live person and write a theocratic conversation program. When you talk to a dub, all their responses are like little tape recordings anyway. So, make a program w thousands of 'if, then' gates. If the witnessee says this, then respond w that, and so on. It would safeguard tender witness ears from hardened appostate stumpers. An apostate would tire of arguing in circles, but a computer could do it indefintely.

  All they would need is someone to monitor the server, while it conducted thousands of similtaneous conversations.

  SS
• 

  gumby

  I have been thinking about for quite some time now.

  "Quite some time".............. *gumby realised the problem*

  Not a chance!

  Gumby
• 

  Yerusalyim

  MindChild,

  If it comes to be you can say "I told you so" until then...You remind me a bit of Robert from days past.
• 

  jws

  I think a lot of this suffers from the same types of things you mentioned. Look to the future and we'll all be living in a perfect world where all our problems are solved. People expected the future to be an extenion of current concepts perfected. You do the same thing. You are obviously smitten by online VR worlds and technology and expect it to be widely in use by everyone all the time in another 10 years.

  The internet has gotten more popular and gaming has certainly gotten better, but I think you're missing a lot of the fundamentals. You see people in general moving over to some virtual world. Maybe you're getting caught up in movies like the Matrix and virtual worlds. I don't see this happening. People who game in virtual worlds are there for excitement. They aren't there to be preached to. They're there for the thrill of shooting the bad guys or sexual thrills or other types of challenges. They aren't going to be doing VR worlds to talk religion. That's overkill. The furthest I see it going is an audio chat room.

  The popularity of this same type of ministry today is way down; we all know that for a fact. Not only is it not popular with the public, it is even more distasteful for the average dub. Internet Witnessing on the other hand, will make the Witnessing activity much more palatable for both the public and dubs. It requires less emotional “investment” on the part of a dub to sit behind a screen and keyboard than it does to talk face to face with someone potentially hostile. With Internet Witnessing, there will always be JW “supervisors” there to step in and rescue your symbolic ass when the heat is on in discussion or to filter out anything nasty

  There are also underlying mind-games being played here. The fact that it is distasteful, yet they do it is part of the control. If you are sitting behind a computer screen, instantly sending an on-line message to millions of people, that doesn't take a lot of committment. The whole religion is steeped in sacrifice. It's sort of a domination type thing. It's a whole different relationship if you remove the master/slave aspect.

  As far as virtual anything, it's not there yet. It may never be. Face-to-face, in my opinion, is always better. Technologies, such as video conferences or even phone conferences are OK and sometimes kinda neat, but ineffective. To be a salesman, you have to be able to judge reactions and present certain reactions. When somebody starts showing a certain look in their eyes, you can tell whether you're reeling them in or driving them away. You can't do that as well over the phone or even a video conference. Do you expect some online avatar to convey those kinds of subtleties? Even if you have a video camera on somebody, you can't judge their expressions as easily as you can in person. Likewise, your own expressions, gestures, voice inflections and so on can help sell your product. Again, hard to do online.

  You can also give off an air of authority in person. You can intimidate people into giving you time to make your pitch. Online, people tend to be more brass and flippant. They'll insult you in ways they never would to your face.

  Same for online meetings. The meeting together in person reinforces their community in ways an online meeting or phone call couldn't. When you're there and people are judging you and you feel pressured to conform, that's all part of the control. They can't give that up.

  As far as gaming... The Society has never been that frivolous. Have you ever even seen an official JW board game or Bible Trivia game? Fantasy (aside from their doctrine) has never been something they've engaged in. I've thought about it. Why not do a computer game like "surviving armageddon" or "living in the new world". But there has been so much uncertainty about what it would be like, I think they'd feel they are misleading people by showing them one way it could be. And that's true. How many people now think of the Braveheart story when you mention William Wallace, despite all the historical errors? You give them a VR world and they're going to glimpse things and take hold of concepts that will be hard to forget when they eventually change their doctrine. As a JW I was warned not to speculate what life would be like in the New World. Would we have electricity? Would we have computers? Cars? Almost anything they could put in the virtual world would be controversial.

  You make a valid point. We can't predict the future. We can have fun guessing, but only time will tell.
• 

  Mindchild

  Nosferatu said:

  Now, how many people do you know have come into the truth by visiting watchtower.org? Quite the opposite is happening right now - people are leaving the troof because of the internet. Dubs have the opportunity to preach by providing a link to the Watchtower site. It's the same as giving them a magazine - without the donation.

  Another problem is if the Society starts making e-watchtowers and e-awakes, they can be copied easily, and the donation arrangement goes out the window. They can't go back to charging for the e-magazines because they'd have to tax them.

  I would certainly agree with what you say here, but please note the difference between what I’m suggesting vs. E-zines and online websites. Details about how they would make their money were covered in my last post.

  I think another thing worth considering is that the very nature of printed media will be changing in the not so distant future. While electronic books have pretty much been a flop, what holds much more promise is electronic paper that should be here in a few years. This will allow you to quickly download any book or magazine into your personal book. It will look a lot like a book, and you can turn pages instead of refreshing a screen, but it will hold hundreds if not thousands of books for you to instantly access. This will shake the publishing industry like nothing else, and if the Watchtower doesn’t adapt it, no skin off my back, but they are not stupid when it comes to making money. You can bet that someone can download books right at their door or online.

  Also a quick comment about the Society using computers…my point was back in the late 70’s they said they were not going to use computers, had no interest, etc. Of course they use them now for printing…I’m making the same point in using them for the preaching work, it will be more efficient to do it.

  Jgnat…your point is well taken. I’m trying to suggest that they will milk the rank and file cow even more to get their $$$. They don’t have to show tax statements and audits of where all that money is being spent. This “new light” of online ministry will be an easy way to collect mucho bucks with very little real costs, and keep on collecting, and collecting, and collecting.

  While we can call them fools by their own Biblical definition, it is amazing what a person will do for their beliefs and how powerful that belief is in filtering out anything they don’t want to see.

  SS…dude…don’t give them more ideas!!! Sheesh Actually, I’m sure that intelligent bots will be more widely used by everyone online in the future to do much more than searches. However, until computers become self-aware and pass the Turing test, to become mind-children they won’t be able to replace a live person at the keyboard.

  Gumby….off you go to my left with the Goats!!! You with little faith. Hehe

  Yerusalyim…lol, now that was an insult dude. I wonder what ever happened to that old master troll…Youknow.

  JWS…of course I have my own bias, but I gave my opinion based on what I’ve seen as the most likely scenario. I know there is a lot of hype by people about the future of the net, but there is much more reality in terms of what the picture really is. Consider looking at the trends in online gaming (check out this link for an example: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/2785179.stm ) that show amazing increases in the number of participants. There are a lot of things that could work to increase the trend, but also some things that work against it. However, I bet on the online world to become even more popular than it is today.

  I really liked this point you made:

  People who game in virtual worlds are there for excitement. They aren't there to be preached to. They're there for the thrill of shooting the bad guys or sexual thrills or other types of challenges. They aren't going to be doing VR worlds to talk religion. That's overkill. The furthest I see it going is an audio chat room.

  I agree 100%. You see, this is why the new approach will be successful in that it will be a new type of ministry, one of interactivity and design. Few, if any, people would enjoy going to a virtual Kingdom Hall for a Watchtower study. Man, you would have to be into heavy S&M to get into that! What would be much more fun would be an interactive adventure that taught JW ideology both by setting and by contact with other players. You see, I’m talking about the sneaky subtle approach. If you logged on, they are not going to hit you with any JW crap…it will be the big suck in…which is what they are good at. You will wake up one day to find that your online buddies are dubs and it is much easier to talk with a friend than a stranger. You get the picture.

  You also said:

  There are also underlying mind-games being played here. The fact that it is distasteful, yet they do it is part of the control. If you are sitting behind a computer screen, instantly sending an on-line message to millions of people, that doesn't take a lot of committment. The whole religion is steeped in sacrifice. It's sort of a domination type thing. It's a whole different relationship if you remove the master/slave aspect.

  Interesting point here as well, but while the dynamics will change, there will be a way for the elders and organization to retain control. I don’t see any of this online Witnessing to be done solo, except in rare cases, rather it will be a group activity…being monitored and watched by their peers. The master/pee on relationship continues.

  I’m pretty cognizant about the weaknesses of online interactivity…at least as it is currently. Yes, face-to-face is more effective, but online Witnessing is not going to completely replace this. I see the two types of Witnessing working together, where the online is the hook, and builds friendships, and then that is further developed by face-to-face interactivity.

  It’s of course a hard call to make about how a new generation of JW leadership will see gaming and online opportunities. But consider this, all this religion is can be labeled a myth. There is nothing real about it at all. The paradise earth is a myth, their god is a myth, their dogma is a myth. They present an image of a mythical happy life as a JW…now if that isn’t fictional, I sure the hell don’t know what is. Lol

  Skipper
• 

  rocketman

  I seriously doubt they'd use such avenues. Interesting, but they seem to decry almost all things Internet.
• 

  jgnat

  OK, I am setting my calendar alarm to ring me in ten years...we'll be in touch!