Conference tecrus::mormonism

455.0. "notes vs internet and church communications and me" by MAASUP::MUDGETT (We Need Dinozord Power NOW!) Sat Sep 17 1994 06:46

    Greetings all,
    
    
    A couple thoughts then on to the raw meat of this note...
    
    1. I have worked with a guy that we all might know and love, Frank
    Mueller. He's a remote support person for field servcie. I was
    distressed to talk to him and find out that he was going to be tfso'd
    and had the thought of putting in a tribute to what a nice fellow he
    was to work with. Tragically (this is a tragedy) his manager has taken
    back his layoff for a couple weeks! So the news should read something
    like... I've known and worked with Frank Mueller for 5 or so years and
    it is wonderful to deal with a fellow latter day saint that is so
    competant and pleasent to deal with. AND he's still with the company!
    If you've been following the current disembowelling of the field
    service organization this comment might make sense.
    
    2. I've rarely commented in the Digital notesfile. I'm usually busy
    on-site and generally read the stuff with an occasional coment. I
    recently had the pleasure of getting a new boss that brought up
    something that I had said years ago in digital. He further said that he
    did a dump of my name in that notesfile and read all my notes, so what
    I thought! Its odd to hear that I'm being watched for what I've said,
    but then in the old digital (you know the one that was growing, making
    money and was respected by customers for the products we sold not just
    by other companys that buy our engineering gems at firesale prices)
    open communication was a valued commmodity. Notes is an example of what
    companys need and weather the Mormonism notesfile is worth the disk
    space it takes up is as debatable as weather or not we need a smoke
    room in each facility. Anyways, my point, I like reading in these
    non-buisness notesfiles. Who cares what the Mormons are blabing about
    in their own little corner of the world.
    
    Now for my main point. While this notesfile was down or lost I got into
    reading the Mormonism newsgroup on internet. It is very illustrative
    the difference in approach to the problem of how to send information
    around on a topic. I find the NOTES method wonderful but costly because
    we have made information a resource that can be searched, archived and
    does not have to be duplicated. Its odd that the world is being turned
    on to the information superhighway by way of newgroups. I find the
    newsreader thing irritating because as someone said all the knowledge
    in the world is on the newsreader and is duplicated every two weeks. 
    So my thoughts around this are:
    
    1. I think notes is a wonderful utility and internet news is a clunky,
    old fashioned, awkward confusing mess and is on par with a gossip
    column in a newspaper.
    
    2. I love the world-wide readership of internet news. There are
    insights that I've never seen or heard of there. Also because of the
    uncensored nature people can say whats basically on their mind. Some of
    the articles I've read I wanted to say, "yup that's the exact same way
    I would have said it!" 
    
    3. My daughter needed some info to give a talk in church recently and I
    told her I'd look up in notes what thoughts you all had on the subject.
    Unfortunately the notes file was south for a while but this just showed
    me how much we/I depend on others for direction. 
    
    Finally I wonder why the Church itself doesn't have a BBS or something
    on the superhighway. I've worked with a guy who was involved with the
    church's pathworks network and its fairly extensive as well as robust.
    It would take some patience and need to be well thought out but the
    internet or some sort of electronic messaging system is another
    effective way to get your information to the world. It sure beats the
    tired commercials on channel 46 at 2:30 in the morning. 
    
    Thanks for your time,
    
    Fred Mudgett

>    I recently had the pleasure of getting a new boss that brought up
>    something that I had said years ago in digital. He further said that he
>    did a dump of my name in that notesfile and read all my notes, so what
>    I thought! Its odd to hear that I'm being watched for what I've said, ...

	It is easy to be paranoid now days, but I sincerely hope yours is not
	justified.  It could be that, in being a "new" manager, he just wanted
	to know where you were coming from and what kind of person he has just
	started to manage.  Unless your previously noted thoughts and ideas
	are used to your detriment, I would think he just wanted to know
	more about you.

>    Now for my main point. While this notesfile was down or lost I got into
>    reading the Mormonism newsgroup on internet. It is very illustrative
>    the difference in approach to the problem of how to send information
>    around on a topic. 

	I spent some time for a while on one of those, but I got tired of the
	intellectual elitism and discussion over trivialities.


>    1. I think notes is a wonderful utility and internet news is a clunky,
>    old fashioned, awkward confusing mess and is on par with a gossip
>    column in a newspaper.

	Isn't that the truth!

>    2. I love the world-wide readership of internet news. There are
>    insights that I've never seen or heard of there. Also because of the
>    uncensored nature people can say whats basically on their mind. Some of
>    the articles I've read I wanted to say, "yup that's the exact same way
>    I would have said it!" 

	It is good to get you thinking, but most of the stuff on the internet
	that I saw lacked scriptural basis and was just opinions from who knows
	where.
    
>    Finally I wonder why the Church itself doesn't have a BBS or something
>    on the superhighway. 

	The entire world, i.e. every church ward/branch, is not on the internet.
	Also, if the church did have something, then it would probably, IMHO, 
	be a great waste of time because everything said by a general authority
	would be taken as "policy".  This might cause more problems then it was
	worth.

	The church has a means in place to disseminate information, and I 
	would, personally, like more information on some topics but I also 
	think it would detract from the stewardship of taking the gospel to 
	the world.