Munk on the Yangzte River
Originally uploaded by mortsan.

Unmediated blog posted this exceptional blurb about tele-praying over the internet. It raises many questions. On the one hand, I can see this leading toward online marketing schemes, unleashing a new breed of religious ‘fundraising.’

This also raised a more interesting question about the nature of the online space. Can there be a ‘holy’ space online? In what ways can that space be created: through typing rituals and chants in virtual rooms? Perhaps the confession will take place in a private chat space with a religious official? Read along sacred texts with annotations. Email favorite passages to friends and share in the pure light of the computer screen.

*Picture: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mortsan/46475821/

Los Angeles mural
Originally uploaded by cjanebuy.

Samuel Huntington’s “The Hispanic Challenge,”
raises many heated questions about assimilation and immigration in the United States. The essay is well worth the read, and contains exceptional graphs about the Hispanics in the United States and outrageous quotes like the one below:

“Sosa ends his book, The Americano Dream, with encouragement for aspiring Hispanic entrepreneurs. “The Americano dream?” he asks. “It exists, it is realistic, and it is there for all of us to share.” Sosa is wrong. There is no Americano dream. There is only the American dream created by an Anglo-Protestant society. Mexican Americans
will share in that dream and in that society only if they dream in English.”

Huntington’s arguments are based on a vision for the United States that regards immigrants as a threat to the National identity. However, this identity no longer exists. What we have in its place is not a fixed concept, but fluid one. Our communities aren’t defined by gates, but have transcended them to include local, national, real and virtual. As we spend more of our time connecting online, we have more freedom to associate with the terms that define us.

Take the phenomena of tagging for example. We select the words that save files on del.icio.us, identify pictures in flickr and define our interests in Myspace. Our culture has become a fluid concept, exchanged as easily as you download a file, self-identified as readily as you upload.

Will the tendencies toward an online global culture have any real impact on the daily life of a recent U.S. Hispanic immigrant? Will the ideas of ethnic enclaves, which apply in large cities like New York and Los Angeles, also take hold in the virtual communities we create? Yes. We will have more choice about with whom we associate and more ability to participate in the cultures we define.

Not only is American society openly supporting the dreams of immigrants, even in other cultures and languages, it is also incorporating them into narratives supported both on and offline. We can identify as distinctly American, still, only because our voice possesses the qualities that Huntington criticizes: diversity, multicultural energy and global participation.

*Picture: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cjanebuy/61498779/