Martin Luther as blogger

October 31, 2008 at 12:00 pm | Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment
Tags: 95 theses, blogging, Martin Luther, message delivery, Protestant Reformation, Reformation Day, Technorati, Twitter, Wittenburg

Today is Reformation Day, marking the anniversary of Martin Luther’s submission of 95 theses for consideration of the Catholic church and ultimately the public. Whether he actually nailed them to the door of the church or not is debatable, but he did write them, and that fact sparked the Protestant Reformation (or the Schism, if you are of Catholic inclination). 

So what does that have to do with communications? Simple: imagine if Martin Luther were living today, or if blogging had been a possibility during his day. Would the Reformation Movement have spread faster? Almost certainly. If today’s technology had existed in 1517, Luther might have blogged his theses. Then a reader would have emailed a link to several friends, who would start Twittering about it. Someone might take a digital picture of the Wittenburg church, open Photoshop, and digitally place the 95 theses on the door and send it to their friends’ cell phones. “I’m a 95er” widgets would start appearing on blogs everywhere, and Luther would be a theological rock star on Technorati. 

Do you think that a message can be overshadowed by the way in which it is distributed? Can speed and reach make up for the shift in focus from the message to the delivery method?

As for me, I’m glad Luther lived when he did.