Unitarian Universalists are people who are concerned about all the things which your favorite religion is concerned about, but allow or even require their belief to be compatible with reason. They are hugely tolerant and decidedly liberal. The fundamental value and dignity of every human being is a core philosophy, and they have a healthy respect for those whose beliefs differ. They meet in churches instead of wired hotels, and discuss justice, peace, conflict, and morality rather than protocols and data formats, but in other ways the peer respect is very similar to that of the Internet Engineering Task Force. Both are communities which I really appreciate….
[There is] one [other] thing that comes to mind as common between the Internet folks and the UUs. The whole spread of the Web happened not because of a decision and a mandate from any authority, but because a whole bunch of people across the 'Net picked it up and brought up Web clients and servers, it actually happened. The actual explosion of creativity, and the coming into being of the Web was the result of thousands of individuals playing a small part. In the first couple of years, often this was not for a direct gain, but because they had an inkling that it was the right way to go, and a gleam of an exciting future. It is necessary to UU philosophy that such things can happen, that we will get to a better state in the end by each playing our small part. UUism is full of hope, and the fact that the Web happens is an example of a dream coming true and an encouragement to all who hope.4
In 1989, while working at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland, Tim Berners-Lee, an English computer scientist, proposed a global hypertext project, to be known as the World Wide Web. He wanted all the separate pieces of computer conversation to be able to converge in a way that could be shared with anyone with a computer in the world, also known as interoperable technologies.
An essential element I wanted to stress,
Tim wrote in an on-line interview, was its decentralized form allowing anything to link to anything.
2
This work was started in October 1990, and the program WorldWideWeb
was first made available within CERN in December, and on the Internet at large in the summer of 1991.
Now, the world wide web is not the Internet. The Internet was up and running first. The Internet is a network of networks, linking computers. The World Wide Web links programs and information in various formats. Tim Berners-Lee wanted to expand the tech savvy interplay of the internet in a way that would reach far more people—people who may or may not have any understanding of programming.
The Web could not be without the Net.
he writes, The Web made the net useful because people are really interested in information… and don't really want to have know about computers and cables.
1
In 1994, Tim founded the World Wide Web Consortium, which concentrates on web standards around the world and is a Director of the World Wide Web Foundation, started in 2008, to fund and coordinate efforts to further the potential of the Web to benefit humanity.
On March 18 2013, Tim, along with the inventors of the Internet (Vinton Cerf, Robert Kahn, Louis Pouzin and Marc Andreesen), was awarded the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering for
ground-breaking innovation in engineering that has been of global benefit to humanity.
3
Sir Tim Berners-Lee had not yet been introduced to Unitarian Universalism when he invented the world wide web. It wasn't until he moved to Massachusetts and was looking for a church for the family—children have a way of steering many of us back to church—that he found Unitarian Universalism. It was an easy match for him, and, as expressed in this morning's reading, a natural match to his philosophy of community and hope within the web world.
I found several themes in his writings about the reason for the web: a deep trust in the potential of humankind, a humility toward the truth which is larger and wider than any one of us, a belief in freedom of expression as a way to come to shared being, and a love of creativity, of the understanding of on-going revelations. Yes… a striking link to Unitarian Universalism&hellip.
For the fun of it, in a short article, Berners-Lee offered an informal comparison between how the World Wide Web works well and how Unitarian Universalists' envision a healthy society.4 I’ll share a few of his comparisons.
First, there's decentralization.
He explains: There is the idea that society can run without a hierarchical bureaucratic government being involved at every step,
if only we can hit on the right set of rules for peer-peer interaction.
So where design of the Internet and the Web is a search for a set of rules which will allow computers to work together in harmony,
so our spiritual and social quest is for a set of rules which allow people to work together in harmony.
In UUsm we believe there is not one way to be faithful, no one Truth, no one sacred book, no one authority. We do run by agreed-upon rules: the seven principles, but we strengthen our relating through covenant—trust in growing together—rather than creed-acceptance by way of a faith test.
We agree to ways of relating that provide a wide freedom of expression and responsibility toward our interdependence… we don't know what that will look like, but we trust in the basic principles.
Tim parallels that sentiment: Nowadays, even Web developments happen because of our gut feeling that certain properties of the Web will lead to great things,
(but) we often expect the results to be amazing and good, but unpredictable.
For this way of relating to work, there needs to be tolerance and acceptance of difference.
There is a principle of tolerance in Internet circles: Be conservative in what you do and liberal in what you expect.
The heritage of our faith is based on principles of tolerance and acceptance of difference. The streams of our faith from their inception were powered by freedom of religious belief and active opposition to tyranny and oppression.
But the whole concept of tolerance is being deeply tested these days: beheadings (world wide web,UUism), murderous rampage (ISIL). How do we stem greed, war-mongering, fear-mongering and keep freedom—an on-going dilemma, to be entered into with a wide humility and yet a fierce loyalty to life affirmation and justice….
Which brings us to another aspect that the web culture and Unitarian Universalism share: the embrace of the quest for truth, knowing it is larger than any one theory and wider than any one perspective. Inviting the engagement of many truths and many ways of speaking truths creates a rich environment that honors creation and the multiplicity of being. It's not easy to dwell in relative uncertainty, however, our faith upholds that love abides and has a surety about it that flows in and out of our limited lives. We need to teach each other, discipline ourselves, to prepare the ground for life affirmation and love of being—with the willingness to dissolve all distortions of being.
We in this web of life are blessed with awareness and relationship, with the ability to learn and to teach, with the power to love and to heal. And with the stunning example of Sir Tim Berners-Lee, may we find ways in our coming together to strengthen that which supports us all and cherish, with humility, the utter abundance of it.
So may it be, amen.
Copyright © 2014 Lisa Ward. All Rights Reserved.