A few months ago, I noticed there was a news story that headlined Book of Mormon Reaches 140 Million Milestone. 140 million printed copies of the Book of Mormon is an extraordinary achievement!
A number of years ago, President Ezra Taft Benson gave a general conference talk entitled Flooding the Earth with the Book of Mormon using “electronic media and the mass distribution of the printed word.” After rereading that talk , I began to wonder how we could more fully take advantage of the many opportunities to flood the earth with the Book of Mormon using “electronic media”.
Electronic Media to New Media
Electronic media was a foreshadowing of today’s digital or new media. Last year, Elder Russell M. Ballard counseled, “I ask that you join the conversation by participating on the Internet, particularly the New Media, to share the gospel and to explain in simple, clear terms the message of the Restoration” (see Using New Media to Support the Work of the Church).
A Vision and a Challenge
In President Benson’s talk, he mentioned he had a “vision” of how the earth could be flooded with the Book of Mormon and issued a series of challenges to all Church members. In part, he said:
I challenge the homes of Israel to display on their walls great quotations and scenes from the Book of Mormon… I have a vision of artists putting into film, drama, literature, music, and paintings great themes and great characters from the Book of Mormon… I have a vision of the whole Church getting nearer to God by abiding by the precepts of the Book of Mormon. Indeed, I have a vision of flooding the earth with the Book of Mormon.
What If?
I wonder what would happen if not only the homes, but also the thousands of blogs and web sites in use by Church members could help achieve this goal. In that context, here’s a series of “what ifs” just to get people thinking about what could be done to more fully flood the earth with the Book of Mormon using new media.
- What if someone hosted an LDS Widgets/Gadgets site and enlisted the support of thousands of interested developers (LDS Tech?) in creating gospel-oriented widgets and gadgets? For example, see Yahoo! Widgets, Google Gadgets, Windows Sidebar and Gadgets, Apple Dashboard Widgets, and many others.
- Following President Benson’s line of thinking, what if some of these widgets/gadgets contained images, videos, and podcasts of favorite scriptures, talks, pictures, lessons, and many other categories that could be posted on personal blogs and web sites?
- What if someone managed the Widgets/Gadgets forum and promoted this week’s “popular” widgets, “up and coming widgets”, “all time popular widgets”, etc.
- What if someone was chartered with managing and marketing the site to provide basic assistance and encourage development around specific categories?
- What would happen if static and rich media content was made available to a large Christian-oriented audience?
- What if these widgets/gadgets targeted specific content areas on Church and “friends of the Church” web sites and enlisted bloggers and web site owners to make them available?
I know quite a bit about how Google Gadgets work. If anyone is interesting in creating LDS gadgets, I would be glad to answer questions.
I know a number of developers that would like to include more Gospel content in new media type applications but are restricted by the Church’s restrictive copyright policies.
Sometimes it takes weeks just to get a response from Intellectual Reserve and the answers that people I know have always received have been:
“No” or “We’re still evaluating this”
As far as I know, most sites using church-owned materials such as online scripture sites, you tube videos of conference or other talks not uploaded by the church, handheld applications, etc.., are all doing so contrary to the copyright policy.
If the copyright policy were to ever change to be more liberal in regards to public, non-commercial use, then I suspect you would see the flood of Gospel content in new media that you’re asking for. Until then our hands as developers are tied.
I agree wholeheartedly with Anonymous on the copyright issue. So far the Church appears to be taking a decidedly laissez faire approach to bloggers like me. Mostly, I just quote parts of scripture and conference talks as well as posting video clips from YouTube and the Church web site.
If the Church adopted Creative Commons licensing tailored to still protect its IP from malicious changes and redistribution, more people would jump into it.
But one other issue nags me…how do you keep the doctrine pure with widgets? I used to be a fan of Bomtoons until they started releasing questionable content that, IMHO, trivializes sacred concepts as taught in the scriptures. I’m all for humor, but some of it crosses lines I’d rather not have crossed or can give a false impression that we actually believe the punch line rather than giving accurate information on the topic.
I started a Youtube channel for foreign language editions of the Book of Mormon. My idea is to merely make their existence known and give two avenues for obtaining copies, 1) getting a free copy from the missionary department, 888-537-2200; or 2) purchasing a copy ($2 to $3) from the LDS Distribution Center, 800-537-5971.
My videos are very amateurish, starting out with my cell phone, and then just video mode on my digital camera. Now I have Vista and Windows Movie Maker, but I don’t have time to do more videos of the translations.
Anyone want to take the ball and run with it?
Not to brag, but do a Youtube search for “Free urdu book” or “free bengali book” or “free swahili book” and see these rudimentary videos’ high ranking.
What this illustrates is that there is an opportunity for high placement for the Book of Mormon, to catch the eyes of anyone in the world seeking free (bilingual) reading material.
Any takers