welcome everyone to this webinar this webinar is organized by the Center for Autism and Theology and before I introduce our speaker of today Dr Catherine trifona let me briefly introduce the center to you the Center for Autism and theology was launched in 2018 by Professor Grant mccaskill and some other colleagues in the department in the department of divinity and religious studies at the University of Aberdeen the center aims to host interdisciplinary Research into autism and theology in relation to Theology and church and faith as such we hope that the center can function as a hub bringing together everyone interested academically or not in the intersection of autism and theology and in this way we hope to contribute to the academic world but also to be of service to the church and other Faith communities as part of our activities we organize two webinars per teaching term so do take a look at our websites for other activities that we are doing and how you might get involved with the center and of course you can follow us on social media it's a real pleasure to introduce to you Dr Catherine trifona Catherine is based at Cardiff Metropolitan University where she is associated associate Dean for Partnerships with Cardiff School of Technologies Catherine is a principal lecturer in software engineering teaching a range of topics including programming mobile app developments and team project development her research centers on the use of technology for the purpose of inclusivity and accessibility and one of her specific interests which he will talk about today is how the use of Technology by autistic children in worship settings is perceived in churches and specifically by clergy the program for today Catherine will talk for about 45 minutes and after that we will have a short break a couple of minutes and then during the break and after that you can type your questions in the chat box and we will have a time of questioning and answers q a so Catherine it's a real pleasure to have you with us today and we look forward to what you have to say the digital floors and floor is yours brilliant thank you so much uh for that introduction uh Leon it's it's a real privilege to be here and to talk to the group today um I've got quite a lot of slides that I'm going to whiz through um and um as always with these sort of presentations it's hard to go into a lot of depth um when it comes to research work but um hopefully I can give you a little bit of a flavor for some of the things that I've been doing um as Leon said one of my roles at the university is that of associate Dean for partnership so it would be remiss of me if I didn't take this opportunity just to very quickly introduce um the school to you and so we're based in Cardiff Metropolitan University we are the nearest newest of five schools we've formed in February of 2018 and I'm really lucky with my portfolio that I get to look after a lot of different aspects of the school life including research and Innovation Partnerships industrial partnership and some International Partnerships as well um and as you can see we we enjoy some lovely facilities you can see in this bottom right we've got some students working hard on their code and this picture just above is with our Deputy Dean Dr Jason Williams and he is doing a great Chris tarot impression there um and he is hosting a game of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire as I mentioned we work really hard with Welsh government and local businesses to um I think I suppose help with the economic priorities of the area um so we work closely with Industries you can see in this top left hand corner and the bottom when um I don't know if you can see but that's a group of students many of them are wearing orange we enjoy really good links with International universities across Europe so that day we had students over from Eindhoven and Utrecht and it happened to be King's Day so they were wearing orange and and celebrating with us so we're really really lucky that we're either we're a small school um we're really active so um just to give you a brief uh overview of some of the things I'm going to be talking about today um I'm going to firstly explain where this project sits on the Computing spectrum because um some of this comes down to semantics and and understanding what this sort of Technology project looks like um I'm going to give you a brief a very brief introduction into why autism and Technology why this is an important area of research um I'm going to tell you a little bit about what you know why I chose this topic and very briefly skim over some of the methods and the methodology um and then really what I want to do is spend the bulk of the time focusing on what emerged from the research that I undertook because I think particularly given the the people in the attendance today I'm hoping it some of it will be of some interest to you and it might give some food for thought uh going forward including some thoughts about uh the future and then of course as Leon said earlier hopefully we'll have some time for some questions uh after the break so if there's anything that I say that's of interest um please do ask away uh I just want to touch on the use of terminology because um you know I know there will be lots of different views on this and I am coming at this I guess from the perspective of a technologist rather than a theologian so some of the language that I use might not be um how you would prefer me to use it um I tend to try and stick to um terminology such as uh artistic person or autistic child and most of my research I should mention at this point focuses on the experiences of of children using technology but it could much much of it could equally apply to adults as well I may occasionally say person with autism um sometimes that's because that some of the terminology that I've been used to hearing over the last 20 years of my exposure to this area but I do try to focus on an artistic person and autistic child because that represents a lot of the preferences that we hear from the autism Community I try to use the word clerics um so that might refer to people who are priests deacons ministers and Bishops depending on which denomination you belong to you may have your own terminology but um it's a person I guess who's in Authority that I'm I'm generally referring to here mobile technology is quite quite a broad um term but in the context of this study I'm talking about smartphones and tablet computers and of course mobile technology can include things like smart watches it could be things like virtual reality headsets uh you name it but that's generally what I'm going to be referring to I just want to pause on this one because one thing that you might hear me referring to in my talk is um problem um and I think this is probably true of a number of different disciplines but in technology problem really refers to something that we are trying to address it's not necessarily something in a negative sense um so if I use that term it's generally how we refer to something that we are trying to um improve or assist uh with technology it's in no way a reference to the person using it or the organization within which that it's being used it really is about helping technology using technology to help make the world a better place I guess so I said that I was going to explain a little bit about where this project sits um you've possibly heard um even if you don't work in technology you've possibly heard this sort of terminology flying around you know a computer scientist a software engineer an information systems analyst and um what did what the differences are and I think this is probably a semantics issue that we have not just in research but also in Industry as well because sometimes the terminology can get switched about but really a computer scientist is somebody who thinks about the theoretical and the mathematical underpinnings of of computing software engineering if you're old enough like me to remember the old zanussi adverts where they talked about the appliance of science a software engineer assembly takes that that theory that's been proven in computer science and uses it to create Innovative software artifacts um and then you've got an information systems person or an information systems analyst and that is somebody who um has a technical understanding of software um and and hardware and Technology but looks to understand ways in which it can interact with people or organizations and Society so from my career background I probably sit um somewhere in the middle between software engineer and information systems I've got professional software engineering experience but I've long had an interest in how technology can help and support people and my project that I'm talking about today sits squarely within that space it's not really about the technology development per se it's it's understanding how people feel about its use um and one of the things that I found when I embarked on this research is there is actually quite a quite a gap in the literature and the research uh when it comes to um science uh and and in religious spaces technology and religious spaces um and I think that there is a hesitancy To Tread that line between the two domains and I think that that's for multiple reasons um one of my background um one of my previous roles is teaching astronomy out in the community and it was always interesting to come across people and talk to them about how um scientific understanding fits in um with religious beliefs but one of my favorite quotes is that of Carl Sagan um and it's that science is not only compatible with spirituality it is a profound source of spirituality um and um yeah so Carl Sagan was a senior scientist with NASA and the universities in New York um I suspect many people will have will have heard of him so why autism and Technology at all well um autistic children have often shown a strong affinity for technology um including mobile technology which is what we're going to be focusing on today um and and there's plenty plenty of literature to to back that up and I suspect um let's face it I think a lot of children have a strong affinity for mobile technology but um there are numerous possible reasons why autistic children in particular gravitate towards digital technology different ideas have been put forward that it might be to do with predictability with control with sensory distraction um it is something we are still unpicking I think in terms of the research uh but yes so so we know that they they are often drawn to technology and same with adults actually but we're focusing on children today one of the uh attractive things up think about mobile technology is that it is relatively relatively affordable compared to some of the other supportive technology that's been used in domains such as speech and language therapy and because of course most of us have smartphones or tablet computers um It's relatively discreet as well you know if you take these sort of devices out into the community and people aren't necessarily going to know why you're using it and that brings many benefits but as we'll see later in this talk it actually does also bring about some drawbacks too um they're mobile they're easy to check in a bag as a mum I know I know how how much of a benefit that can be but like I said one of the things that Drew me to this project is that this is not really been widely explored um how people feel about autistic children using this sort of technology in um you know in in religious spaces I'm gonna give you two minutes to watch a quick video and this is about robots and I know that doesn't seem necessarily relevant but I just want you to watch it for a couple of minutes and just have a little think about how you feel about what you're seeing I can't ask you because this is a webinar um but just just have a look at this video and also pay attention to the little boy towards the last part of this video who is wearing a blue t-shirt and glasses hopefully you'll be able to hear this foreign could help teach a non-verbal child how to communicate with loved ones what if an animator could Bridge a habitual child to an Ever evolving community what if a researcher could Implement Innovative technology to minimize overstimulation in children and improve learning what if these people and others from around the world came together on a journey to transform the classroom combining talents to shape a better path for special education by allowing children to take their learning to the next level opening up a world of possibilities help shape the path and become a part of the journey um so I suspect you you guessed from the context of the video that um the little boy at the end is autistic uh these now robots as they're called um have been used quite extensively in terms of supporting children who are autistic and actually also dyslexic um the reason I showed you this is because uh interaction with this sort of Technology can often bring about quite a strong emotional response um and sometimes that's favorable sometimes it's not sometimes it can be mixed emotions this idea of sort of seeing a child make friends with that robot and apparently this little boy was very much drawn to the robot wanted to be his friend and wanted to teach him new things um so it's really interesting we have these robots in the university and seeing people interact with them for the first time is amazing um because they will Crouch down and they will talk to them um I myself even though you see them regularly I will pick them up and carry them on my hip like a small child or I will put my finger in its hand or I will talk to it as I'm moving it around which is ludicrous because it would be like me doing that with my MacBook it is still a plastic box full of wires but the presentation of that technology um does promote an emotional response and some people might not feel comfortable with the idea of an autistic child interacting with that sort of Technology but those robots and you can see some of the other robots that we have at the University here on this slide um they're all kind of cutesy looking um and and that is by Design all of these robots operate within hospitals care home settings or with children we've used them to help Refugee children learn English and you can see avine she's a that's a picture of the the lady on her own with the laptop avine is also using these robots these now robots to help with speech and language therapy and the design of them means they are people are more likely to be welcoming as opposed to a robot like say Sophia Sophia is much more humanoid looking and as a result people can sometimes feel a little bit more freaked out for one of a better description or they may be more more suspicious so the robots that you saw in the previous slide are deliberately kept as kind of a cute design because that helps them make them more acceptable um and um they're better for for accessibility in that sense so why am i showing you these robots um because it gets you thinking I think a little bit about our emotional response to technology and Robotics and technology is developing very very quickly and it's understandable if we have mixed feelings about it um so if I bring us back now to the humble mobile phone uh compared to the robots you might be thinking well I don't really have um much of a strong reaction to that but hopefully as we go through the slides now we will then pick and pick that a little bit and maybe sort of have a mutual reflection on how we feel about mobile technology some of the ways in which autistic children might be using mobile technology um there's there's various various ways um particularly within um therapeutic support and health care and and even Diagnostics so there's been a number of ways in which researchers have tried to support the diagnostic process using mobile technology and I've got some examples here and this this particular this particular picture here that you can see with like a heat map on it um this is from an app um produced by a company called Harriet Mata which is a Polish company and they work in collaboration with the University of strathclyde um they look at how an autistic child or any child interacts with the tablet so it's got a number of games on it and it looks at things like the child's or the users motor skills but also the way they play certain games and what that does is it gathers data to to give some sort of probability that the child might be autistic so software like this is able to draw on things like machine learning that identifies patterns in users Behavior to to pick up evidence that you know something might be going on um and there's another one here called NoDa so NoDa works with parents and families to capture evidence of autistic behaviors outside of the clinician's office so this is a us-based project and there's sort of a bi-directional link between the family and and the the clinician in in a healthcare setting and they can be directed to gather evidence of autistic behaviors by the child so that might be um filming them during play time or it might be filming them at the dinner table and we all know I think that probably uh getting a diagnosis um of autism is important um you know it's it's one of the best prognosis indicators if you can get an early diagnosis according to the literature because um it often unlocks opportunities for support but getting there is really challenging and um when you take a child to see a healthcare professional sometimes you're getting very much a snapshot of what's going on in a rather unusual environment it is an evidence-based diagnosis so these um these software applications are trying to contribute to building that portfolio of evidence to support it um and there's also like I said there's the therapeutic application so there's an example there of PEX pixel exchange communication um system you've possibly seen PEX cards um that can be used to support um verbal communication um generally the software option is only there for um people who who have gained a certain level of proficiency in using PEX um but again putting them on a tablet device helps with Mobility but you can also do things like you can set up contexts so if a child is in a supermarket there's a good chance that the tablet or the mobile phone knows that um so it may be that certain PEX cards can be made more readily available and more quickly for the user um but I think also one of the most important uses of mobile technology for autistic children and their families is that it is a welcome Play device a welcome distraction um and sometimes just having those devices um with the family can can help their mobility and help them to go out and and and um in enjoy different uh situations that might otherwise be be challenging uh there are many autistic families who report that having a mobile phone or a tablet computer can make the difference between you being able to stay in a restaurant um or a play center or or not so there's lots of potentially really good applications um I'm not going to leave at this point but I've put this here because I think we probably all use mobile technology I perhaps use it a lot more than many many people but mobile technology is something that has become ubiquitous in society it is something that many of us are depending on on a day-to-day basis so coming back to the robots and I was sort of saying about the emotional response even though I mean and you know most of us don't have robots um motoring around our homes on an everyday basis but mobile technology we often do and um you know it might be easy to assume I think that we don't have similar emotional responses um but I I would argue potentially that we do um this is an image I found by an artist called Steve cutts um you could go on YouTube and have a look at some of um the videos he's produced um they're very dark but they're really quite remarkable um and mobile technology I think it's fair to say can suffer from an image problem um you know there's you you often hear words um being thrown around such as that it dehumanizes us or it turns us into zombies um that it's enslavement of humanity and you know people like Elon Musk who I know which is very very much man at the moment in the news today uh but Elon Musk talks about our attachment to mobile technology is effectively turning us into a cyborg I'm not here to debate that and that's above my pay grade but you can see that actually we tend to have very strong feelings you know people talk about taking a digital detox when they go on holiday when they unplug and they switch everything off um and if you think about how how it feels to see people in restaurants you know all sat around the table all on their mobile phones it's you know people can be quite judgmental of that so given given the image problem the thing I wanted to think about was okay so you know what are the themes that shape the acceptance of mobile technology when it's used by autistic children and their families in religious spaces um mobile sorry technology acceptance is a very well developed discipline um within Computing and information systems but in religious context it's really not that well explored and I came across one study of those now robots in the context of Islam um but broadly speaking there wasn't a huge amount besides um so I started all this in the pandemic um that's where I sort of really got going with it um and the bulk of the data collection that I did was done during the lockdowns and that's very much shaped how I've approached uh approached this um I just want to make the point that I haven't knowingly asked any autistic people in the project um this my participants were all clerics um so they're in no known autistic people in the project I'm not going to bore you with the literature and list it and the thesis I believe is available online if you want to read it but just some of the key points in the literature were that you know as I've said autistic children often have a strong affinity for mobile technology and what was clear from the literature and subsequently the data is that it is quite clear the Christian communities not only want to be inclusive and create that sense of belonging but they are committed to it um and I think that goes without saying certainly from you know um a theological perspective a philosophical perspective they want to be inclusive environments um autistic people are spiritual and they want to be included in religious communities and there's again been some really interesting literature in that space um the problem is thinking about the Steve cutts image that we just saw um where there is a risk of stigma either real or perceived having children extensively use mobile technology in public spaces risks compounding that stigma um and like I said it's very limited in terms of of the acceptance there are technology acceptance models but they tend to focus on the organization and the user um and I'm looking at um how people observing the use um feel so so this is a little bit different so I did this by using something called an interpretive phenomenological approach which is where shorthand version you almost become a participant in your own study I mean it is about gaining an understanding into the lived experience of of of people so I wanted to gain an understanding of the lived experience of clerics to try to figure out how they felt about this use one of the reasons I did this um you can see this image here on the right this is actually a picture of the bishop laying his hands on my dad's head my dad is a Roman Catholic priest before that he was an Anglican priest um and I'm Greek Orthodox officially so um I grew up with an understanding of the churches being a cultural organization um an organization with its own politics and Dynamics instead of just you know a place that I went to go and worship and therefore um that would have been pretty hard to remove from myself as a researcher so this seemed a really good way to incorporate that I interviewed senior clerics and only a few of them um and they were all Bishops and archbishops um so a senior senior clerics in three different denominations the Anglican Church the Roman Catholic church and an Eastern Orthodox Church based here in the UK so this study was confined to the UK so I'm going to go through each of the themes that emerged from the data so once I did these interviews I went through the data that the the track the interviews I transcripted them and then I did a thematic analysis so I looked for key themes that were emerging from each of these interviews and that's what I'm going to be addressing now and I'm just keeping an eye on my time just to make sure I don't go too far over so the first one is inclusivity um so as I mentioned before it goes without saying that um the Christian Community here in the UK give every indication that inclusion and belonging is really important to them um so that was and and that was backed up not only in the literature but what was emerging from the interviews with the clerics as well um and and that's really great because you know there was a large Christian Community here in the UK um and that represents a significant opportunity for autistic children and their family to vote a forge valuable social contacts um you know we know the benefits of spiritual and religious expression and you know whether somebody is Autistic or not that can be really really important but Church communities also represent um they're like a family um so they're an important source of pastoral and practical support in many cases you know if we think about the wonderfully diverse um community that we have in here in the UK and I know this all too well having been a migrant myself and living in another country um that when you have a family particularly children and potentially autistic children having that source of support can be really really important um so I've got here a quote from one of my uh participants um you know I think I've mentioned earlier about the theological motivation for inclusion of autistic individuals um and this this was um one of the quotes that I really liked and he Jesus accepted everyone and why can't we take that as an example and we who consider ourselves whole or normal uh whatever you want to call us should look to these others and learn from them um so so yeah I mean you know again some some of the language coming through might not be something you know everybody agrees with but I think there was this sense of openness that was prevalent across all the interviews um and churches you know are complex I I remember a quote um in Grant mccaskill's book you know which was that the place where the battle of the Flesh and the spirit occurs most violently and it may therefore continue to be full of dangers for its vulnerable members is really interesting because the desire for inclusivity and belonging is there but how it plays out doesn't always work that way um covid-19 as I said that the research was being undertaken in the covid-19 pandemic it's a really interesting time to look at this because um in effect we all started to bend on technology in some way for our own inclusion and our own sense of belonging and that could have been with friends and family I mean who remembers quiz nights on teams or Zoom um you know um or or trying to attend attend church services and it was a when the pandemic started I thought oh no this ruins everything but actually it made it for a really interesting conversation because churches were then reflecting on their own relationship with technology and what it meant to be included you know what are the implications of um making spiritual communion rather than necessarily being in the church what does this mean for people who have previously been excluded for whatever reason um so there's been some really interesting dialogue and discussion within the Christian Community about technology and its role in our lives but I think one of the important things about inclusion is particularly if it is facilitated by technology is will we even recognize it when it's there um coming back to that image problem of mobile technology you know how many of us have seen groups of young people in restaurants just like that image there and thought you're not even talking to each other you're not are you even with each other why why bother yeah um you know that that's sometimes how people feel when they're confronted with that sort of scene um but for those who perhaps not autistic people know it is not necessarily that simple um parallel play um I loved I saw this cartoon um a few weeks ago and I I had to check it in this presentation because I just thought it was so great um for many people who know and love autistic people they will know that parallel play is um a really important feature and I know that's something you know that uh many people I love really enjoy um but but the art sticks of it are problematic because it doesn't necessarily look like Fellowship it doesn't necessarily look like Community it can actually look like it's running counter to all of that so that's something for us to think about another really important theme that emerged was the role of clergy um so that image there and some of you might recognize the the priest in the picture that's father Jorge bergolio who is now Pope Francis um I didn't want to put another one in on my dad so um so yeah so this this was a really interesting thing because obviously I was talking to senior clerics um and what was evident from the discussion is that the majority of clerics or clergy are really quite comfortable with the use of mobile technology in spiritual domains um so it's it's quite widespread widely spread in terms of its use um but what was interesting is it seemed to be confined to certain types of events so things like chapter meetings um clergy conferences um that sort of thing rather than necessarily routine services so if you think about a clergy conference or the bench of Bishops or some sort of meeting like that often the the clerics there will bring out mobile phones and tablets rather than lugging around huge volumes um of books um some were saying that they used it for for their daily office um but there were some some minor concerns there was often a hesitancy I got the impression there was a hesitancy around its adoption at first um but also there is if you think about those big missiles that I've just mentioned there is a level of discipline in learning your way around those sort of volumes those sort of books and navigating your way around them and some people especially older clerics some older clerics not all um there may have been concern around a lack of discipline or that something was being lost by the automated Nation the automated um in nature of of that kind of use um so why are they more confident in using it I I don't know um that's the short answer I do wonder if there is a reinforcement um I got the impression that you know in these sort of events when one you know some clerics were using it then it became more acceptable and then more and more people were using it but it's not necessarily translating into the services remember I had a very limited um data set so you know in some some Churches this might not be a problem at all but there seems to be a little bit more of a hesitancy in taking it into services that perhaps involve congregation so that's just something for us to think about um one of the interesting thing is given the seniority of the clerics you know Bishops and archbishops you might expect that the directives will come down uh from that level to the perhaps the parish level uh that Grassroots level as I describe it but that wasn't actually the case it didn't work out like that at all um there was a consistent message generally that the clerics would be the the Grassroots level would be the ones who would be providing the education and shaping acceptance um amongst congregations um some cultural uh variation was observed so one of as I said one of the denominations that I looked at is an ethno-religious group and um you know so there's there's something here called Power distance this is um a model by clear trofsted I don't know suspect many people will have heard of this um and we can see that in Russia and Greece and Egypt for example there's a much greater deference to power than there is um perhaps in in the UK so some of that was coming through in the data as well um I won't read out these quotes but I will leave them up on the screen and perhaps you know if you want to have a little look at those um but it was evident that you know Grassroots level change is going to be required if we think about the different denominations and even within any one denomination there's going to be huge cultural variation on the ground so it is clear that the the clerics at that level are they're going to be the people who know they know their their Parish their group uh the best and they will be the best place to to support change purpose of use was important there was a general acceptance so if I was to say to somebody oh you know you can can an autistic child use a tablet in church yeah no problem but actually one of the things that came through was this idea of purpose of use why are people using these tablets so there was a general acceptance but you could see there was some hesitancy around why somebody might be using it um and when I spoke to clerics either informally or formally they all said the same thing it's nobody's business it's nobody's business why they're using the tablet or the mobile phone but quite frankly I'm not sure that that's enough reassurance for families um so you know one one of the clerics sort of mentioned about um you know the the use should be confined to children not so much adults because Temptation and that was the word temptation might creep in um and I think a lot of that comes down to the potential for just traction um another cleric said it doesn't really matter because we're all playing video games in our head when we go to church anyway um you know going to church and thinking about the washing up um what you've got to do and work on Monday whatever it happens to be um so this idea of hidden functionality um could you could see there was a potential for that to create some level of anxiety so one of the things we talked about was this idea of visible authorization of use would it help if churches had their own tablets that were issued by them um so that people had a clear indication that this use was being authorized by the church so if I was to go to church and use one of these tablets people would be maybe less likely to judge because I was using a tablet that had clearly been issued um by the church itself individual and Community uh was another theme that came up um I've mentioned this before but the the cultural variation um across the different denominations is quite important um I think you know for our own identity um you know we I think a lot of people will go to church um and and have an expectation of what that's going to look like um and and you know what they want the environment to be in order to express um their own uh to to express themselves spiritually in a way they they want but also in a way they need um and it was interesting to hear the clerics draw the comparison with being part of a messy family a messy home you know for those of us who live with other individuals we know that we have to kind of accommodate each other um regardless of who we are you know we all have um we all have our own wants and desires and our own quirks um and that family Dynamic is um imperfect uh and and it can be messy and there's a lot of parallels drawn in the data between the home uh and um and and the church environment so so that there's a level I guess of of of Tolerance um that that might be needed um so I've mentioned also uh in previous slides about the ethno religious churches but again with ethno-religious churches they can be um you know they can be a strong need to preserve culture and tradition perhaps that might be a little bit stronger in some of those churches because they are also an anchor to home um you know they are also a cultural reference point as well as a religious one so the Dynamics there in those sub contexts can be a little bit more uh complex um digital versus analog um it's in this is this was really interesting because um there is a lot of uh comparison I think between digital technology and traditional technology so if you think about the image of a child at the back of church using a coloring in book and scribbling um that it seems a lot more wholesome than a child sat on at the back of church on a tablet maybe playing Roblox or something like that um and um there was some really interesting stuff that came out at discussion um in the church times during the covert pandemic about the use of tablets instead of um books in the church and thinking there was sort of terminology that was coming through like kindleization of the word and things like this but one of my participants was talking about um telling some people to oh you know because he was asked if a particular book was on Kindle and he said go and buy the book get the book you know touch the pages smell the pages there was something you know distinct and perhaps more wholesome for one of a better word uh when it came to digital versus analog so you know that's something I think a lot of us feel in society so you can see this image here um from where you've got people looking at their screens and then this person who's illuminated and colorful reading an actual analog book um one of the interesting points um that came across in the data was there was no real clear rationale as to why people felt this way but it was suggested that it might be an issue of novelty I mean let's face it the book is a form of Technology but it's one that's been around for several hundred years um and we are now comfortable with its use but with the Kindle or a tablet that's really quite novel and so maybe we're not not yet sure and this is my last theme um you'll be pleased to know but my theological thoughts so you know as I said I'm not a theologian so I'm not going to critique um the theology but I do it is inevitable when you're doing a study like this um that theological thought will creep into it because you're you're considering the the ontological framework of the Christian Community to try and understand why technology is accepted and I found personally that theological thought permeated the whole study but what was interesting is the way it emerged in the data it kind of informed and motivated the other themes things like it motivated inclusion and acceptance it informed the behaviors of the clerics um you know it may have informed the behaviors of the congregation but the Theology of Technology itself was not a huge feature in the data itself and what I took from that is that actually a lot of the theological thought about the actual um sorry a lot of the thoughts about the actual use of the technology in churches were not really about the Theology of the artifact but it was about our societal perceptions because I think when we come into churches you know we come in as a human and we bring in some of those societal perceptions and baggage um so what was interesting and and this is um probably one area where where perhaps theology was a little bit more explicit is I shared a quote by um Bishop callistos Ware who is an orthodox Bishop who he passed away very recently um and he said our human task as Craftsmen or manufacturers is to discern this logos dwelling in each thing and to remain render it manifest we speak seek not to dominate but to cooperate um so I'm not going to get into the christology of the logos because again that's above my pay grade um but what was lovely is one of the quotes I got back and I'm going to read it to you um it's if what you are doing oh it's a context sorry um I asked this I shared this quote because I wanted to understand as a software engineer if there was anything I could be doing better to help this technology be accepted and one of my participants said if what you are doing in any kind of craft or creative activity is looking for the logos element it's um is not just something self-contained it's something that flows into the life of other things and makes everything more Itself by connecting by communion so I guess if you're trying to apply what callistos is saying in this context you'd want to say so how does this kind of Technology actually facilitate real communion between people and how does it facilitate a just and constructive attitude to the rest of the physical environment and so on so you know you could look at the whole question of technological solutions in the environmental movement it's not that technology is the enemy it's just that you have to discover a technology that works for and not against ecological balance so I think um you know of even on a relatively superficial level of is it from a technology technologist perspective it's like to what extent do I need to design technology that is going to be culturally sensitive so in this case to the autism community and the logos you know what does its role in true communion uh actually look like and that is um you know something that requires a great deal of consideration and I think that would be squarely not just my discipline but probably the disciplines of theology as well so there's lots of scope for interdisciplinary discussion uh I think there but it shows something that I think demands quite careful consideration um and it was interesting that the participant talked about the environmental um movement um and they went on to sort of compare it technology with the windmill um which of course we see with Heidegger um and another concept that Heidegger talks about is poison which is bringing forth the potential for something um so maybe these tablets and these smartphones um can play a role in you know what I described as the policies of Fellowship it's not that the spirituality and the potential for Fellowship of the autistic individual um has ever not been there but maybe that this technology can be a vehicle to help um to help that the challenge then is of course will we recognize it as I mentioned earlier so we have um this I'm sure you've seen variations on this cartoon numerous times um and this one's been updated with the vaccine um but given the hidden functionality and the the somewhat confusing Optics um well we know well we you know is is this and again this is something for theologians to think about um you know will we recognize it as the help that we maybe want um or you know are we gonna fall prey I guess to um the difficulty with the Optics you know are we going to be closed off to these opportunities because we're worried about that and so what's next this is my final slide um so those were the themes it's very superficial because it is exploratory at this stage there's clearly so much work to be done um this is just a very very tiny piece of a much bigger puzzle that remains to be solved and I think it requires um as I said you know an interdisciplinary multi-disciplinary effort to to address it the conversation is far from over one of the things I I can tell you as a technologist is that our domain changes weekly um there's always new developments Elon Musk who again has been in the news um talks about developing a chip for the brain um to to help with certain conditions does he mean autism who knows um would we want that kind of Technology uh probably not but um you know again Elon Musk is an autistic individual and it's interesting that he is coming out with ideas like that and quite possibly has the means so it raises significant ethical concerns developing developments and Technology always do and um yeah so I think we have to be vigilant as a community to these changes because they're coming in uh thick and fast so for theology there is um a long conversation uh ahead I think and I believe that we are now at the point where we take a short break Catherine thank you so much for a fascinating um well can I say conversation starter then because you made clear that the conversation is uh far from over and I take it as an invitation to do interdisciplinary research indeed so great invitation to the theologians amongst us but also the technologists I think and anyone else because what you've demonstrated is that technology is all around us and whether we liked or not it is also part of what it means to be a church community and and I think you've um really challenged us to think about the acceptance of Technology biotistic people in the church so thank you so much for um for this overview of your research which is also a great introduction to this topic thank you so much for that um as Catherine said we will have a break but before we have a break I'm going to hand over to henna who will moderate the discussion after the break Anna kundal is one of our pH these two students and Affiliates with the center for ultimate theology as well Hannah over to you thank you yeah just to give a few instructions for those of you who want to ask questions of Catherine you'll see there's a q a function on your screen as you type the question in it will appear it will seem to disappear it hasn't it's come through just for uh moderators behind the scenes to check it through for anything that can't be made public so just be patient and it will then appear if you see a question that somebody else has asked in the list that particularly interests you you can give it a thumbs up and that will boost it up the priority order so we'll make sure that Catherine gets to answer the the most pressing questions there's a little check box which allows you to ask the question anonymously um that's up to you whether you choose to use that box or not we will try not to say people's names and things out loud as we ask the questions and respond to them because this is being recorded um for use on YouTube afterwards and on the cat website um so it's up to you to whether you want to be anonymous or not but we will try not to use your names as we ask the questions or the names of anybody you've included um and other than that I think those are all the instructions so I guess we'll take a break until just after 5 p.m and then it'll be an opportunity to hear Catherine's response to your questions hi welcome back everyone so just to say if you have any questions for Catherine you can put them in the Q a now and we'll have an opportunity to ask them of her so I think as we're just waiting for some questions to come in I might speak my question in first if that's all right with you Catherine um I'm really interested to hear what you have to say about you know when technology is being used in a service uh or during an act of worship it sounds to me like most of your um participants were talking about it being used as a distraction or as a way of keeping young people occupied um was there any talk about using it didactically you know maybe having an interactive liturgy or something or liturgy presented as a computer game or something like that you know to enable participation rather than distraction or can you see any scope for that can you hear me okay yes yeah bro okay um that's brilliant um yeah it's a really good question I think it was I mean it it was used I think it was viewed primarily as as a distraction tool um one participant interestingly said oh you know well if you come into the church with this device um we'll start with you from there and see where we go and that that you know that very you know we'll start with you from there and it's like start from where you know I think that indicated that it was seen as as a prop or a crypt to get somebody into the church and then maybe migrate to not having it or or whatever it's hard to know without sort of following up but I think I think that's indicative of the fact that it was seen as a distraction and a tool um to support them in that environment um yes there was there was some discussion around the potential use of these devices to support children during the Liturgy or or perhaps during Sunday school environments as well um so one denomination in particular was quite keen and focused on that well actually two of them so yeah super thanks for that um and I know that Leon has a question he wants to ask you so we'll maybe go to Leon just now thank you Anna um yeah um one of your participants I think said um about use of Technology uh it's it's nobody it's nobody's business what I'm doing on my phone or or a tablet or something like that and um it just struck me that that's not a great theological statement um and and so I just wondered whether you could reflect on that a little bit um because I I okay you've said you're not a theologian but you did this this uh research in the context of worship communities and I'm I'm not entirely sure what it says about Community when you said when when everyone is doing something different on their on their devices or and maybe even that is acceptable uh from from autistic perspective or or I mean From perspective of including uh or or making sure that everyone belongs in the church but from a theological perspective I I wonder about that statements and and I wonder if it what was it one of your participants who who literally said that or yeah I I wanted to hear um I want to hear a little bit more if that's okay yeah of course um so all of my participants said that in effect in different ways um and and also clerics that I talked to about my research anecdotally outside of my um set of participants uh you know obviously it would be difficult for me to unpick the Theology of that but what I would say is I got the overwhelming impression from everybody who has said that that it is said with good intentions it's kind of like people shouldn't be judging what other people are doing in in the church you know we we all come as individuals you know and I think I think it was done with the sense of welcoming behind it everybody is welcome it's nobody's business they shouldn't be judging what other people are doing within the church you know I guess and you know and perhaps speaking for them here but it's almost that that sense if people should just concentrate on themselves and what they're doing and why they're there um again not negating the sense of community because I I think I think there's a duality to it isn't it when we come to church you know we are part of a community a community but we are also very much there as individuals and that desire for that particular aesthetic um sometimes that can be selfish but sometimes it can be it can stem from a need I need the church to be quiet I need it to look a particular way I'm coming here with a particularly pressing issue and I just need it to be a certain way so again coming back to my original point there is that oversen overarching sense of welcome and I think that's where that comment stems from it's people should be welcoming they shouldn't be judging I think that's where it comes from foreign because almost every cleric I have spoken to either as part of the study or outside of it has said the same thing it's nobody's business sorry for the delay there Catherine something on my screen that would let me unmute my microphone um so we've had a question come in saying to thanking you for your presentation regarding your point that science forward slash technology is spiritual with which I would agree says the questioner is the disagreement surrounding the use of Technology because culturally we assume technology is morally neutral rather than seeing it as formational either for good or bad for example research shows that books and literacy have profoundly changed our physiology has any of your participants raised the question of how mobile tech shapes us spiritually either for good or bad um that's a really good point and and no not explicitly and I think coming back to my point there wasn't a lot about the Theology of the technology itself um which you know which is a distinct discipline in its own right um you know I spoke to a theologian in Saint melatus theological College I think is called called Matthew Pryor who looks at mobile technology in in religious context um that that sort of thought those sort of thoughts were not really not really expressed um there was there was one comment about distraction and um looking for salvation in the wrong place looking for salvation um in the technology instead of instead of God um in terms of the moral neutrality I think it goes back to yes I mean all three participants gave the general impression that they felt felt that the mobile technology was not inherently good or bad but it was the potential for how it would be used that could be problematic um so one participant compared it to money money in itself is not inherently good or bad but it's it's how you deal with it um so so it's a really good point about moral neutrality and and um you know that did feature but I don't I wouldn't have said it was sort of deeply theologically explored in the in the discussions or dialogue right we have a second question along a similar line actually um someone's saying I appreciated what you had to say about technology being used to Aid in worship with the intent behind the creation of some technologies there is the tendency towards distraction and isolation uh so maybe something you know less neutral there and the questioner says I think of the recent issues in the United States over Facebook and Instagram uh presumably that's contributing towards distraction and isolation can you speak a little more to the proper use of technology to Aid connection um and worship and how could technology creators think differently about creating future Technologies towards that end it's a good question um I think again societally you know we look at mobile technology in a particular way so if I'm on my phone um I might actually be working or I might be you know doing any number of noble things with my phone but equally I could be looking at Instagram Facebook and and wiling away the hours although they're not I won't argue that it's not always inherently bad anyway um I think the challenge that we have comes down to the Optics again and I think particularly with autism because engagement isn't necessarily going to look like how we expect it to so if an autistic child is playing a candy crush or raw blogs or whatever in the church it would be wrong to assume that they're not engaging in the Liturgy I mean it might be that that is providing some level of support sensory distraction whatever it happens to be every autistic person is different um but I think it would be very easy to make the assumption that they are distracted they may be looking at Instagram photos but that doesn't necessarily mean that that's not the very thing that is keeping them emotionally spiritually and mentally hooked into what's going on around them whereas if you take that away and you ask them to sit there and sit quietly or look at a book their brain might be elsewhere anyway so it you know I think I think I think there's always that element to consider in terms of going forward in the developments in technology that's probably not a question I can easily answer but I think that you know if there's further interdisciplinary work in this space greater conversation between technologists and um and theologians I think confidence will grow um and and and the way that that technology could be developed could look any number of different ways but I think it requires much deeper dialogue before I can sort of say this is the the direction it should be going it needs to be informed by those who are benefits of talking to autistic individuals getting the engagement of autistic individuals and asking them what they need and what they want and what helps but also having a better understanding um of theology the sort of confidence can grow I think you know like I said it wasn't the Theology of Technology didn't come into the conversations much but if people had a greater awareness of the Theology of Technology maybe confidence of use will grow in religious contexts that's great and interesting that you mentioned about how you know anything going forward needs to um be informed by the voices of those that would benefit you know listen to the autistic voice because the next question is sort of along those lines it says you mentioned that you had no autistic clergy participate and I'm curious if that was because you w
2022-12-06