Post by Tamrin on Aug 17, 2012 7:45:38 GMT 10
The Web:
The world wide web is of course central to the Information Age and has also become a key means of promoting the Craft, as well as publicising lodge activities, and providing excellent papers on Masonic subjects. Our Grand Lodge website has a number of links to useful Masonic websites: see the growing list on www.queenslandfreemasons.com/links/
The Internet as a public forum has been with us for over 30 years, and there is an in-depth article on the history of Freemasonry and the web in the transactions of the Quatuor Coronati Lodge No 2076 It was published in 2008 and entitled “An Historical Outline of Freemasons on the Internet” by V W Bro Trevor McKeown. He reports that usage started with bulletin board software and commercial email in 1978. The first Masonic website appeared in 1994. This started a popular trend but many were little more than „vanity plates on the information superhighway‟. Today if you search by Google for “Freemason” you will find over 10.2 million sites.
Then the educational potential was recognised, with sites dedicated to promoting Masonic education, with one of the first being the Pietre-Stones Review of Freemasonry, originally started in 1996 and with its site www.freemasons-freemasonry.com/ registered in 2003. Another such site was established by the Phoenixmasonry Research Society in 1999 – www.phoenixmasonry.org/ . Quatuor Coronati Lodge later established their website in 2003.
The author remarks that it could be said that the Internet took official Freemasonry by surprise. There was no time to strike committees or write policy papers before individual Freemasons had begun uploading what they considered to be the truth about Freemasonry. Masonry or Freemasons have always had a problem with openness. However the Internet has made Freemasonry a much closer and more public family. Many jurisdictions have found that a growing number of their candidates are coming from that group of young, educated intelligent computer users who would possibly have never found their way to Freemasonry without the help of the web.
Comments on the paper:
Bro Robert Cooper (Masonic author) expressed a concern about the ephemeral nature of information on the Internet, with the risk of losing much „written‟ material to future generations of historians. He considers that something needs to be done to store or preserve the material presently available on the Internet regarding Freemasonry – an enormous task.
The Internet as a public forum has been with us for over 30 years, and there is an in-depth article on the history of Freemasonry and the web in the transactions of the Quatuor Coronati Lodge No 2076 It was published in 2008 and entitled “An Historical Outline of Freemasons on the Internet” by V W Bro Trevor McKeown. He reports that usage started with bulletin board software and commercial email in 1978. The first Masonic website appeared in 1994. This started a popular trend but many were little more than „vanity plates on the information superhighway‟. Today if you search by Google for “Freemason” you will find over 10.2 million sites.
Then the educational potential was recognised, with sites dedicated to promoting Masonic education, with one of the first being the Pietre-Stones Review of Freemasonry, originally started in 1996 and with its site www.freemasons-freemasonry.com/ registered in 2003. Another such site was established by the Phoenixmasonry Research Society in 1999 – www.phoenixmasonry.org/ . Quatuor Coronati Lodge later established their website in 2003.
The author remarks that it could be said that the Internet took official Freemasonry by surprise. There was no time to strike committees or write policy papers before individual Freemasons had begun uploading what they considered to be the truth about Freemasonry. Masonry or Freemasons have always had a problem with openness. However the Internet has made Freemasonry a much closer and more public family. Many jurisdictions have found that a growing number of their candidates are coming from that group of young, educated intelligent computer users who would possibly have never found their way to Freemasonry without the help of the web.
Comments on the paper:
Bro Robert Cooper (Masonic author) expressed a concern about the ephemeral nature of information on the Internet, with the risk of losing much „written‟ material to future generations of historians. He considers that something needs to be done to store or preserve the material presently available on the Internet regarding Freemasonry – an enormous task.
Grand Lodge websites:
the following sites are also worth exploring:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_list_of_masonic_Grand_Lodges
www.masonicsourcebook.com
