{"id":902,"date":"2008-03-27T00:05:53","date_gmt":"2008-03-27T04:05:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/archives\/902"},"modified":"2008-03-22T14:55:52","modified_gmt":"2008-03-22T18:55:52","slug":"things-becoming-obsolete","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/archives\/902","title":{"rendered":"Things becoming obsolete"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week someone left a plastic bag on my porch. It contained two hefty telephone directories. This yearly event used to annoy me. I have no use for phone books. If I want to find a person, company, or address I use the internet. Phone books are obsolete<\/a>. Why do they go through the expense of printing and distributing them? <\/p>\n

The same is true for school catalogues. Those now belong on a school\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s website, made interactive and more useful by inserting links to those sections you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re interested in. But, like phone books school catalogues continue to insist themselves into homes and offices. I suppose some people still need a sense of the tangible. I know my wife does. I picked up the hefty plastic bag with the phone books and tossed them in the garbage, only to discover later in the day that my wife had retrieved them and placed them on the counter. When I asked her why she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d done that she replied, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re the new ones.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d As if that logic made any sense to me. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153New\u00e2\u20ac\u009d does not instill something with value or relevance. Those phone books would have sat unused on the counter for a year if I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d not tossed them out again on garbage day (preventing their recovery once again). <\/p>\n

Planned obsolescence is the norm in our throw-away culture. But many of us have a hard time throwing away things. I still have obsolete things cluttering my study and various drawers: CD-ROMs that won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t work (Windows 98, etc.), travel maps (I have a GPS mapping gadget), AAA Tripticks (remember those?), a drawer full of hundreds of 3 \u00c2\u00bd inch computer data disks (the last three computer I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve bought don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have drives for that type of data storage) and more obsolete computer equipment and attachments than is reasonable (including yards of computer cables that won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t attach to anything ever again). The last time I tried to give away that stuff I got no takers. <\/p>\n

But it isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t just \u00e2\u20ac\u0153stuff\u00e2\u20ac\u009d that is becoming obsolete. One interesting, and anxious, discussion in theological education is whether the classic and basic ministerial degree, the Master of Divinity (M.Div.) is becoming obsolete. Recently one seminary ceased to offer the M.Div. degree<\/a>. Other seminaries are facing challenges in maintaining their traditional residential M.Div. degree programs. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an interesting phenomenon in education not restricted to traditional theological education. Classical and liberal education programs have been in turmoil for decades as they strive to attract students to perennial disciplines. <\/p>\n

I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to make a guess as to how long the M.Div. will remain viable. But it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an interesting philosophical and pragmatic question. What do you think? <\/p>\n

galindobanner5.jpg<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week someone left a plastic bag on my porch. It contained two hefty telephone directories. This yearly event used to annoy me. I have no use for phone books. If I want to find a person, company, or address … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,13,5],"tags":[42,194,195],"class_list":["post-902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-curriculum","category-philosophy","category-theology","tag-israel-galindo","tag-mdiv","tag-theological-education"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=902"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/902\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}