The world is changing faster than we can appreciate or realize. To the average person, this can be unnerving at times. To the gadget lover, it’s a playground. In the spirit of the latter, I bring you the Best Gadgets of the Decade.

One thing to notice about nearly all of these items is that they were released against a flood of skepticism. Many were considered to be busts, or even downright bad ideas. I suppose that shows what we know.

10. Camera Phone
Sometimes technology takes us to new heights; sometimes it takes us to new lows. You could argue that the camera phone has done very little to impact society in a positive way, but it’s had an impact nonetheless. And while phone-mounted cameras are still probably a few years away from being able to actually take decent pictures, the ability to capture any image at anytime and then instantaneously share that image with everyone has made the world a slightly smaller place. As long as there is adequate lighting.

9. GPS
Male-kind cried out in despair: “I’m not asking for directons!” And it was given the GPS. Ironically, this can also serve as a bit of an obituary to the traditional GPS. Smart phones come standard with GPS chips, and now Google wants to give you the maps and turn-by-turn capability for free. Nice knowing you, TomTom.

8. Guitar Hero/Rock Band
I can stand in my living room and convince myself that I’m actually playing Free Bird. They should give out medals for that sort of progress.

(The VGAs do not count.)

7. The Wireless Router
At the turn of the century, when Apple first released the AirPort Base Station, I simply did not understand the appeal. Our little purple iMac had one cable going between it and our dial-up modem. I didn’t think that life would improve that much by getting rid of that cord. This, of course, was before the Laptop exploded in popularity (but more on that later). But can you now imagine life without Wi-Fi connections? It’s crazy how quickly we’ve come to take this capability for granted.

6. Wii
When the Wii was formally announced in 2005, it was a laughing stock. The name, the dinky little remote, the underpowered graphics architecture, the family friendly games– it was pronounced dead on arrival. Naturally, that little white glossy box is now a worldwide cultural phenomenon. Nintendo realized something very simple and yet industry-shifting– games should be about play, about playing together, and not about realistic-looking headshots. The Wii shows us that, despite what we all may think, it’s not always about the biggest, newest, most-expensive technology– there’s still a very important human element at play here.

5. HDTV
Another one for the “predicted failure” bunch. Prices were high, government deadlines were delayed countless times, and the majority of the general public just had a hard time seeing the advantages. The HDDVD-Blu Ray war, with it’s $1000 players and $40 movies, didn’t help either. Yet HDTV somehow survived it all, and it’s now the de-facto standard. Count me among the happy– watching Pixar movies on my budget plasma with my budget Blu-Ray player nearly rivals a theater experience.

4. Internet Video
“Hulu”… silly name, serious business. This ad-supported internet television portal was called a failure just weeks after its release in 2008 (and financially speaking, it still is). But after just over a year in service, Hulu has long-entrenched cable and satellite TV operators scrambling to remain relevant. In the face of tough economic times, Americans are ditching their paid TV service by the millions in favor of free internet alternatives. Most in the know say that it’s only a matter of time before internet TV is brought to actual televisions in a major way (rumors of an Apple a la carte “pay-per-channel” service have gotten popular recently). So while YouTub, Hulu, and Netflix streaming helped make internet TV one of the biggest technologies of this decade, look for even more noise in this space in the next….unless we break the internet first.

3. iPhone
The number of advancements pioneered or popularized by the iPhone is staggering – touch computing, mainstream wireless data adoption, mobile applications (good ones, anyway), mobile phone gaming, etc. Technologically speaking, the iPhone may be the single most influential device since the personal computer itself. However, I don’t think the scope of that influence has yet been truly realized so… sorry iPhone, you’re stuck at #3. And, not to sound like a broken record, but even the iPhone was called a dud after its unveiling… by jealous Verizon and Microsoft executives.

2. Notebook Computer
Sure, we’ve had notebook computers since the 80s, but no one cared until now. Notebook computers were always too underpowered, or had too little battery life, or too cruddy a display to sell to anything more than a niche market of Excel-obsessed traveling businessmen. However, technology finally caught up in the 2000s, and now it’s the desktop computer feeling slighted. Compact, light, sleek computers with large high-res displays, powerful yet efficient multi-core processors and hours-long battery life… unless you’re a scientist or you’re doing some pretty intense 3D, video, or design work, a laptop is really all you need these days. I should note, however, that popularity of this scale would not have been possible without the go-anywhere-connectivity provided by the laptop’s best friend, Wi-Fi. So, laptop– take Wi-Fi out for Starbucks or something. Then again, you’re probably already there.

1. iPod
Except maybe for the Wii, no product on this list was blasted so much, at least initially, as the iPod upon its unveiling in 2001. People just did not get it. MP3 players were around, but hardly popular, and most held a whopping 15 songs, in order to keep them small. In comparison, the iPod was a brick. It was still handy, but you had to rip all of your CDs into iTunes (iPod’s then-simple, Mac-only companion) in order to even make the device useful. But a couple of years later, the iTunes Music Store launched, and the rest is history. With their powers combined, the iPod and iTunes completely changed the face of the music industry. They changed the way we listen to music, the way we get music, and our general expectation for acquiring content in general. Now we expect (and often do) to get movies, TV shows, books, games, and applications in the same manner. iPod/iTunes also helped save a music industry crumbling under the weight of illegal downloading by offering a legitimate, instant, cheap alternative with the same by-song selection method (record company executives simply had to give Steve Jobs their first born child in return). The iPod claimed many victims in its domination– the CD, the album, Napster, the Walkman, radio, and many others. For better or worse, the iPod brought us kicking, screaming, and dancing into the digital age.

Note: I wrote this blog a few days ago, only to shelve it fear of sounding pretentious.  However, our polarized world has pressed painfully upon me since then.  So, I’m going to let this one slip out anyways, instead of being afraid of disagreement, or being afraid of being just flat out wrong.

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I’m not sure why this is on my mind today, but it’s there, and it’s not leaving.

Shouting matches are very vogue today.  Health care, homosexual ordination, the Olympics (my favorite line of the week…”It turns out that some Republicans do indeed hate Barack Obama more than they love America.”), and the list goes on.  At the foundation of these uproars, like everything else, is context.  For better of worse, context is the sneaky little spark that fuels all public conversation.

We can’t get past context.  There is no way around it.  No matter what I do, I will be a white middle class American that was raised in South Carolina in Baptist churches.  That has a profound impact on my worldview, and there’s only so much a person can do to stretch beyond it.  And there are both advantages and disadvantages to my– and every other– limited worldview.

One disadvantage is the misleading power of assumptions.  In the forefront of our minds, these are truth, and they are obviously so.  They’re not up for debate.  In nearly every argument of policy, structure, religion, and everything else that makes us turn red in the face, assumptions are both the starting point and the end.  We start with our assumptions, and the conversation is doomed in the end because of them.

But I’ll stop being vague.  These are the assumptions on my mind; some of them have plagued me in the past, and some of them plague me still, and all of them (I believe) are unhealthy and crippling genuine conversation.

-The U.S. was founded as a Christian nation.

-Traditional churches are old, backwards, and ineffective.

-Contemporary churches are “too hip” and lack depth.

-America is in the toilet morally when compared to 50 years ago.

-The church needs social media to stay alive.

-The church should avoid social media.

-The United States is God’s gift to the world.

-Socialism is the way of the devil.

-Barack Obama is a socialist.

-The answer to all of our problems will come when my favorite political party gains power.

-Lower division college sports are inferior.

-It really matters whether you use a Mac or a PC.

-Gay men and women universally desire to destroy your way of life.

-Government social programs and taxes can fix this nation’s deficiencies.

-Government social programs can’t help at all.

-The style of music we play on a Sunday morning is of utmost concern to God.

-Racists, criminals, terrorists, crooked politicians, and the like do not deserve our love.

I suppose I could go on all day, but that would stop being productive very quickly.

I imagine that you may disagree with some of this, but that is part of the point.  In some cases, I need to be willing to let go of what I understand to be true and false in order to even hear your point of view.  I feel that those who find themselves currently shouting or just really angry should learn to do the same.

Two weeks from now, Tiffany and I are moving to the Embry Hills community.  The natural progression, I suppose, would be to change the name of the blog to “Wanderings in the Hills.”  However, that sounds like a commentary blog for a certain “reality” show that I’ve never seen nor wish to see.

What do I do?  Please help me with my trivial quandary.

“15 Second Projects” (catchy, huh?) are how I’ve been releasing some creative energy over the last months.  Sometimes it’s just straight up experimenting, sometimes it has a philosophical or theological purpose, and sometimes the results can be just weird.  I thought I would start posting those here as I make them, just for variety’s sake.

Surprise, surprise, this one is Particular-centric (my paint brush of choice as of late).  I was wanting to do something smokey, and kept thinking of the Lost smoke monster, and then decided that he (or she?) wasn’t colorful enough.

Or you can think of it as an exploding rainbow (Tiffany’s first impression).

Watch on Vimeo

I know that I’ve had the tendency to “blog around”…some time on iWeb, some time on WordPress, some time on Tumblr, and now back on WordPress.  It appears that I enjoy creating new blogs more than actual blogging.  While this is sometimes the case, each blog and platform served a purpose for where I was at that point in time.  Tumblr, for example, was great for my period of artistic frustration and exploration.  I wasn’t interested so much in writing as I was interested in sharing what inspired me as an artist.

I have now entered a new phase in life, the shape of which was finally finalized today.  As many of you may know, I have started seminary, and I will be starting after Labor Day full-time at North Point Community Church as a designer/animator/shooter (my exact title).  Sadly, throwing seminary on top of that has become an impossibility, and I am no longer enrolled at McAfee School of Theology.  Just typing that sentence is a little gut-wrenching, honestly.  I wanted to go to seminary.  I’m not sure whether or not I was called to go, but I wanted to go.  It just… sounded right.  Practically speaking, however, it was a long-shot.

When I jumped into this, I didn’t even know if getting from Alpharetta at 5:00 to McAfee by 6:00 was possible.  So, already feeling overwhelmed by the scope of what I was taking on, Tiffany and I drove to North Point for a test run.  We failed pretty miserably; in fact, we didn’t make it to McAfee at all.  6:00 rolled around, and we found ourselves somewhere in Roswell, and also very hungry.

It was disappointing, but it was a relief.  I was staring at a life that included a church that expected a full-time effort, a school that expected the same, and a wife and home life that would have suffered as a result.  If the commute wasn’t a deal-breaker, I imagine the whole venture would have been possible… but I’m not sure it would have been worth it.  I’m the kind of person that needs time to decompress, time to reflect, and most importantly, time with his wife.  Work from 8 to 5, and class from 6 to 8 or 9, not to mention homework, research, and papers (the whole work 2 hours for every 1 hour of class thing)– I’m not sure my interest in theology would be worth such a deficit in hours.

I believe that God opened a door for me at North Point.  I’m not sure whether or not God was also opening a window at McAfee, or if I was taking a sledge hammer to the wall.  I had a hard time letting go of the classroom, but it is no longer what I am most passionate about.  That time and calling may come one day.  This experience may have been necessary for such a calling.  But I am hopeful that I am where God wants me right now– pursuing the unique voice, perspective, and talents that God gave me.

In the meantime, I want to write again.  I need and desire this outlet once again.  I’m enjoying reading what I want (currently, slowly making my way through The Hobbit), and I hope to enjoy writing what I want again, now that I am free to do so.

I admittedly stole the concept of “wanderings in the Forrest” from my brother.  I now live on Pine Forrest Drive (hence the misspelling), and I do indeed feel as though I live in a forest, lacking a path and concrete direction.  I’m simply walking through, enjoying the trees, turning here and there as I go.  I’ve strayed from the more easily-visible path of the seminarian, and into the wilderness, pursuing this strange calling that I cannot pull away from.

Corny, I know.  But what metaphor isn’t?