LDS Media Talk

I subscribe to the LDS Daily Gems and get great quotes by e-mail each day. I recently received the following quote titled “The Importance of First-Generation Members:”

“First-generation members occupy a special and important place in the Church and their families. Did you know that first-generation members constitute more than half of the membership of the Church? Perhaps not since the early days of the Church has the first generation constituted such a large percentage of total Church membership as it does today. Your faith and testimonies are a great strength and blessing to others. Through you, we gain a deeper understanding of gospel principles and our testimonies are strengthened.

“You add great strength to the Church when you use your testimony, talents, abilities, and energy to build the kingdom in your wards and branches. You are great examples of sharing the gospel, serving missions, sending children on missions, and welcoming new members. You reach out in kindness to those around you, lifting and blessing them through inspired service. So much of what is done in the Church today could not be done without your efforts.” (Paul B. Pieper, “The First Generation,” Ensign, Nov. 2006, 11-12)

How can modern technology help us in using our “testimony, talents, abilities, and energy to build the kingdom?”

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We are pleased to announce that we have just added the latter-day scriptures in German, French, and Italian to scriptures.lds.org. They join Spanish and English that were available previously.

You may be interested to note that the online scriptures now offer the ability to adjust the page margins to make them more easy to read. (Under Options, you may select narrow, medium, or wide Chapter Margins.)

More languages are coming…

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I just read the new Gartner report “Mobile Collaboration Will Be Driven by Consumer Technologies and Behaviors.” Smart phones already have keyboards and fully functional HTML Web browsers. The price of cell phones is dropping dramatically, while at the same time, their capabilities are increasing. The mobile phone is becoming a fully-functional computer in your hand.

But it’s more than that, because mobile devices also have a basic knowledge of their location from the network, and GPS and other location-sensing technologies will become increasingly common during the next five years. This will allow people to get location-specific information. For example, a person standing outside a restaurant can look up reviews left by previous customers commenting on the service.

Add to that our ability later this year to let Web users log in, and tie their identity to their membership record. Imagine…

• An endowed member traveling could get on his cell phone the directions to the nearest temple, a list of the session starting times, information on whether clothing rental is available, and the times the cafeteria is open.
• A nonmember (or member traveling in an unknown city) could get on his cell phone the address of the closest meetinghouse and times of the next sacrament meeting.
• A temple engineer who is having a problem with a piece of equipment could look up the maintenance manual off the Church Intranet and if that didn’t answer his question, he could take a picture of the problem with his cell phone and transmit it to an engineer at headquarters.
• A member in Japan who commutes to work two hours each way could get a podcast and listen to this week’s gospel doctrine scripture reading assignment.
• A humanitarian missionary providing emergency relief in Indonesia could share images and information with missionaries doing the same in Sri Lanka.

Just food for thought.

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Nearly 2 weeks ago, I blogged about the Uses of Broadband, and commented that now that about half of US households have broadband, the issue to think about isn’t just high-speed connection, but what value-added services the broadband connection can use to increase our quality of life.

I believe we are on the cusp of seeing a huge convergence of technology, both in the hardware (cell phones, land phones, televisions, computers, iPods, iPAQs, PalmPilots, Blackberrys, DVD players, etc.) and the means of communicating with them (wires, wireless, cable, fiber optic lines, satellite dishes, infrared, AM/FM, Blue Tooth, Wi-Fi, WiMAX, etc.) to provide voice conversations, movies, television programming, music, data transmission, home control and security, Internet access, access to the world’s libraries, and many things we can only dream about today.

In their new forecast report, Parks Associates calls these new capabilities “digital living services.” They state that “recent investment and developments in such services as broadband access and television, including the shift to digital and IP delivery of communications and entertainment services, have given rise to a host of new digital living products and services.” In 5 years, they expect that more than 30 million households will have a network that bridges numerous products and extends the entertainment experience to multiple rooms in the home.

Over the next 5 years, they expect the following growth:

• broadband and communications to grow from $168 billion to $229B
• PC/CE digital media platforms to grow from $23B to $34B
• Home security to grow from $8B to $10B
• On-demand entertainment to grow from $3B to $10B
• Home controls to grow from $3B to $5B

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Looking for a new year’s resolution? How about resolving to do some good things on the Internet this year to spread the gospel?

For some good ideas, see a post on the More Good Foundation’s newsletter that lists several good things you can do on the Internet.

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