Bryan has been telling me a bit about smart agents:
I know people don't think of church in a smart agent way. I don't. I'm just interested in what this constant classification of not only who we are, but who we let help decide who we are does to the national psyche.
Ads would have you believe that you can achieve individuality only through using their products, the same products everyone else uses. This wasn't true fifty years ago. The ads then wanted you use this product BECAUSE everyone else did, to fit in. Mmmmm, irony. Follow your thirst, drink Sprite. Now, there's smart agenting at work. The tagline sets up a way to become yourself, be yourself, make the journey and do the faux work (Follow your Thirst). Then filters out all the other choices so that the only way to enlightment is to drink Sprite. Ta-Da, groupspeak individiuality.
If I'm understanding this, I think when he talks about 'filters' he means the framework of things one presupposes, or believes beforehand, that sift off or exclude some information while allowing other information to enter freely. If that is the case, then the smart agent must be the 'entity' (for lack of a better word) which installs and maintains these filters.
The question he asks interests me ("Is the church or preacher a smart agent?") because among people particularly critical or hostile toward 'organized religion' I persistently hear the complaint that the church or the preacher's main goal is to control people and society -- and with a whole lot of superstitious mumbo-jumbo concocted in the top secret (but by no means fictional) ancient Middle-Eastern and Italian religious psycholabs. Manipulating people, particularly stupid people, or people helplessly trapped in their ignorance.
So far, this smart agent theory if/when applied to the church seems to me to be an extension of the church/religion as manipulator theory.
I'm quite certain there's a non-perjorative way of understanding the smart agent. I need to think about it some more, about what a smart agent is and does. But when all is said and done, smart agent or not, I don't believe the Gospel is simply a bit of information requiring someone to act on it. Or maybe that's because I have the wrong smart agent... :-D
