Is Media Making Us Dumber or Smarter?

Steven Pinker wrote an Op-Ed piece for the New York Times in which he defends mass media against its critics. He points out that every new form of media has met with fierce criticism, and that ultimately the critics have been wrong.

"Media critics write as if the brain takes on the qualities of whatever it consumes, the informational equivalent of “you are what you eat.” As with primitive peoples who believe that eating fierce animals will make them fierce, they assume that watching quick cuts in rock videos turns your mental life into quick cuts or that reading bullet points and Twitter postings turns your thoughts into bullet points and Twitter postings."

I think the same is true in the church. We don't like change, we don't like it when new things come along and force us to think in new ways, so we often descry them as bad or wrong. The truth is that the media isn't bad, the way in which we deliver information can't really be good or bad, but it's the content delivered that is the most important thing.

Have you had a conversation about whether using media in church is good or bad? What's your take on the issue?