Think the early 80's. One of the most important events in Watchtower history was the release of Crisis of Conscience by former Governing Body member F. Franz. Slow distribution of this "apostate" book lead to a minor loss of members. Mid 90's and mass distribution of the same information via the Internet assisted in the rapid and significant drop of growth of Jehovah's Witness from 6 % to around 2% per annum. (http://www.jwfacts.com/index_files/statistics.htm)
Out of touch Governing Body members and head-in-sand Watchtower followers seem ambivilous to the affect future Internet developments will have on Watchtower growth. A glimpse into the future include:
- upgrading internet connecton speeds from dial-up to broadband to fibre optic cable
- youtube.com providing the ability to post personal video
- Google Street View (http://maps.google.com/help/maps/streetview/) providing mainstream technology of 3D video
- Apple itouch/iphone touch screen resizing
- Piclens (http://piclens.com/) Firefox plug in for rapid image viewing
Combine these technolgies and very soon the Internet will morph from static verbal information pages to virtual reality. What will be the result?
The Watchtower presents what most of us now recognise as an embarrasing, ignorant, illogical message. People fall for the message through slow, insidious indoctrination techniques. First is several months of pleasant study of a book containing high level doctrine. Next comes meeting attendance and "love bombing". By the time an interested person becomes aware of deeper and more offensive practices and doctrines that are primed and somewhat immune to the rhetorical fallacy
A reason the internet is affecting Watchtower growth is that prior to effective indoctrination a Bible Study can learn other sides of the story. Imagine how it will be over the next decade. After receiving the first Watchtower and before the first Bible study the student will use the Internet to access information on the history of the Watchtower Society and doctrinal flaws. But more, soon they will also be able to travel by video to their closest kingdom hall and zoom into a recorded meeting, see an elder present a talk discussing evil "worldly people" and how close their destruction is and then a Watchtower study where Witnesses answer mudane Watchtower questions by rote. Without the emotion of human interaction a Bible Study will see these meetings for what they are, indoctrination sessions. The chance of converting an RV to a Bible Study will be remote, progression to a publisher even less likely.
I was speaking to a 24 year old internet geek today and he was saying that he is too old to be of the internet generation. The next generation live the internet. My 16 year old daughter is always connected. This is the generation the Governing Body do not understand and have no idea how to control. Either born a JW or met in the territory, it will be impossible to prevent current students and future generations educating themselves and learning both sides of the story, and education is the greatest threat that exists for any cult. Whereas current static internet information pages have educated the studious, live interactive visual presentations will prevent even the simplest, most gullible person falling for Watchtower lies.