AI = Artificial Intelligence

I’m reading Dan Brown’s book, Origin.  I’ve read and enjoyed his other books, Inferno, The Lost Symbol, The Da Vinci Code, Angels & Demons, Deception Point, and Digital Fortress.  The story of this latest book takes place mostly in Spain (and a few other places) and includes Brown’s fictitious Harvard professor of symbology and religious iconology, Robert Langdon, who has held a prominent place in Brown’s previous books.  The whole story takes place in a single night!  Brown writes on one of the first pages of the book:  “FACT:  All art, architecture, locations, science, and religious organizations in this novel are real.”  This “FACT” alone makes this book both captivating and intriguing. 

I have seen some of the art and architecture referenced in the book and I have visited many of the locations named. When Brown writes about “The Szechenyi Chain Bridge—one of eight bridges in Budapest—spans more than a thousand feet across the Danube.  An emblem of the link between East and West, the bridge is considered one of the most beautiful in the world,” I find myself remembering sailing by that bridge on the Danube.  When Brown writes about the architecture of Antoni Gaudi, or the art of Gauguin, I recall having seen samples of the same with my own eyes.

Even when Brown introduces “Winston,” an almost human form of “Artificial Intelligence” I can relate.  I use AI all the time these days and so do you. [Artificial Intelligence is the ability of a digital computer to perform tasks commonly associated with intelligent beings like the ability to reason, discover meaning, generalize, or learn from past experience).  I just wish I had a “Winston” (or perhaps a “Sara” or a “Sue” with a British accent) instead of Safari, Google,  or an Alexa, Echo,  or Siri.  “Winston” is the top of the line (and non-existent at the moment) in AI and I sure could use somebody like him in this age of forgetfulness.  You see, I have come to rely on Artificial Intelligence—and have finally taken my grandchildren’s advice:  “Google it, Grandad, Google it!”  “Just ask Siri, Grandad!”  When I can’t remember a name, a date, an event, a fact, I ask Siri or I google it and have an almost immediate and accurate response.  I do not have an eidetic memory—I can’t remember everything I know I know—I need all the help I can get.  The Psalmist asked long ago, “From whence cometh my help?” and then answered his question, “My help cometh from the Lord.” Has the time come when we might say, “My help cometh from Siri, Alexa and Google?”

Dan Brown’s novel focuses on two of the fundamental questions of human existence:  Where did we come from and where are we going?  Is it Science that gives the answer?  Or is it God who provides the answer?  You’ll enjoy reading this book.

Ummm, my great granddaughter asks:
 What awaits me tomorrow?

One Of 87 Million

The privacy notice appeared so briefly on my Facebook Timeline last night that I barely had time to read it through.  I can’t find it this morning  and I’m beginning to wonder if perhaps I only imagined it.  No, I’m convinced the post was real [it can be found] and to tell the truth I was half-expecting it.  It told me that my personal information on Facebook was one of the 87 million (including Mark Zuckerberg’s) gleaned by Cambridge Analytica.  Using its database (including my stuff) collected from Facebook this data analysis firm attempted to influence the 2016 election in favor of Donald Trump. 

Now the interesting thing is that I never logged on to the app (removed in 2015) that was used by Cambridge Analytica [according to the privacy notice from Facebook].   “However,” the Facebook privacy note continues, “a friend of yours did log in.”  Friendship goes a long way, they say, and it certainly proves true in this situation.  Unbeknownst to me or my “alleged” friend(s), his or her logging on to that app may have given away my personal profile, birthday, my FB ‘Likes,’ hometown, and perhaps even some of my posts and messages.  Yes, friendship, especially on Facebook, goes a long, long way!

In spite of this recent breach into my personal privacy,  I still celebrate my Facebook friends and I’m grateful to have them as part of my online community.  There is always a “cost” and a “risk” involved in friendship and in the building up of community, whether on a website or in real life.  There cannot be a friendship of any significance without taking the risk of revealing one’s self.  There cannot be a community unless its members are willing to pay the cost of making themselves known to one another.  

Most of my life has been committed to the belief that we are called to fulfill a divine destiny—the building up of friendships and the development of a beloved community.  We were created to live in unity with one another.  It is the only way we can live, grow, and thrive as human beings.  But this life together requires a willingness to be vulnerable, to be open, to take risks, to pay the costs and whatever else it may take to bring it to fruition.  

Whenever I use my credit card to make a purchase, whenever I deposit money in a bank, whenever I get a driver’s license, my “privacy” becomes subject to computerized scrutiny and subject to possible misuse.  It is part of the new world in which we live and it certainly makes us aware of our vulnerability.  Perhaps, in the long haul, it will help us and lead us on to our destiny.  

Community (a Life Together) is necessary to navigate the rapids
of life and of our time.  It means paddling together, and
we can't paddle together unless we know something about
each other.

Fading Brain Power

It happens, so they say.  It happens to everyone.  At a certain age you begin to FORGET.  You don’t forget what happened forty years ago.  You forget what happened four minutes ago or what it was you were going to pick up at the store when you get there, or you forget somebody’s name when you encounter them at the store.  I watched my elderly friend, George, go through the same kind of thing, but it seems to me he was much older than me when it began to happen.  He used to say that having lived so many years he had so much on file in his brain that it just naturally took him a little while to find the right file cabinet and then to find the right folder.

When I talk about these “fading brain power” moments with someone younger, they usually attempt to comfort me by saying they do the same thing.  But it isn’t the same thing—because I can and do remember vividly how it was when I was their age.  I would occasionally forget then, but I never forgot the way I forget now! No, this is something different and it is affecting not only me, but a good many of my compadres of similar age.  

Everyone knows from dealing with older folk that this fading memory thing—this forgetfulness thing occurs.  For some it is a real catastrophe (Alzheimer’s, etc.) and for others it is just a slow erosion.  But be of good cheer—the glowing protein of the jelly fish is here! Prevagen, a brain power supplement has come to our rescue just in the nick of time. It is aggressively advertised (showing up on my TV screen 8 or more times last night).  Prevagen is the “best seller” among brain supplements at the moment.  It is said to strengthen the brain, boost brainpower and help an elderly person maintain a healthy cognition.  It is reported to help with memory loss and to improve concentration.  It is a miracle drug!  Baah! This is all fake news.  The pharmaceutical company (Quincy Bioscience) is making millions off elderly people with fading brain power.  

Fake news wins sometimes—and Quincy Bioscience won September 28, 2017 when a lawsuit lodged by the New York Attorney General and the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection was dismissed by a federal judge.  The complaint was “The marketers of Prevagen preyed on the fears of older customers experiencing age-related memory loss.  The critical thing these marketers forgot is that their claims need to be backed up by real scientific evidence.”  By the way, Prevagen is rather pricey, costing more than a week’s worth of groceries, and according to the NY AG “provides none of the health benefits that it claims.”  It irks my soul and my fading brain power when Fake News wins!  More power to the glowing protein of the jelly fish!

Empty chairs and empty tables--but I still remember George and
Earl for their wonderful (though fading) brain power.  Ah! the
stories they could tell!

The Blame Game

Mark Zuckerberg is a Millennial, a Harvard dropout and one of the world’s youngest, richest and most famous men. He is 33 years old and has a net worth estimated at $46 billion dollars.  He is a computer programmer, Internet entrepreneur, and philanthropist.  He is the chairman, chief executive, and co-founder of the social networking website Facebook.  He is an amazing young man, normally seen wearing flip flops, a grey T-shirt and a hoodie, similar to the attire of Apple founder Steve Jobs who wore jeans and a black turtleneck shirt.  His dress code seems to irritate some, even prompting one government official to mockingly wonder out loud (into media microphones, of course) if Zuckerberg would wear a decent shirt for his appearance before the US Senate committee yesterday.

Zuckerberg was called to testify about privacy issues in relation to the  data mining firm (Cambridge Analytica) which gathered personal information from 87 million Facebook users in an attempt to influence the 2016 election.  You may recall the Senate also held hearings with the CEO of Equifax and others regarding the cyberattacks that harvested personal information from an estimated 148 million Americans not very long ago.  Privacy is a serious issue in this new technological age and the issue must be addressed.  On the other hand, Fake News, Russian meddling in our elections, Hate speech, Terrorist propaganda and other manipulative infringements using Facebook and other platforms are equally as dangerous as the privacy issues.  These, too, must be addressed.  

I noted that the majority of senators and representatives are over 60-years of age.  There is nothing wrong with that in and of itself, but there is something wrong with it when dealing with the new technology and with a 33-year-old.  Those of us over sixty years of age cannot fathom the depths and nuances of the new technology no matter how well-informed we try to be.  We are “out of it!”  Facebook is not an American “thing”—Facebook is a community connecting over 250 million people all over the world!  That fact alone is mind-boggling!  How it all works, or  how such a thing can be held together is beyond me!

But what was most mind-boggling to me yesterday was hearing a 33-year-old billionaire take the blame for the privacy scandal as it relates to his domain—Facebook.  “We didn’t take a broad enough view of our responsibility, and that was a big mistake….It was my mistake, and I’m sorry.  I started Facebook, I run it, and I’m responsible for what happens here.”  Have you heard recently any US senator or representative say the same?  The Blame Game is a biblical thing—it began way back in the very beginning of time—and it continues!  

Maturity

The child, the adolescent, the young adult, the middle-aged, and the old man ask the same question, “Who am I?”  Age does not quell the question; age does not answer the question.  Who am I at 13?  Who am I at 25?  Who am I at 50?  Who am I at 75?  At the age of 75,  I answer the question each morning I awake and find myself still kicking with great excitement,  “I am!”  Perhaps that response, “I am!”  is a sign of maturity, of becoming an adult, of growing up, or maybe it is just the fact that I have grown old and am grateful to be able to get out of my bed.  What is maturity?  Is it becoming an adult (whatever that is)?  Is it growing up (whatever that means)?  Or is maturity simply growing old (those growing old know what growing old  means)?

Those “who treat ‘adult’ as a term of approval,” wrote C.S. Lewis, “instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves.  To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptom.  Young things ought to want to grow.  But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found out doing so.  Now that I am fifty I read them openly.  When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”  

Then there is Maya Angelou’s words to her daughter, “I am convinced that most people do not grow up…We marry and dare to have children and call that growing up.  I think what we do is mostly grow old.  We carry accumulation of years in our bodies, and on our faces, but generally our real selves, the children inside, are innocent and shy as magnolias.”

I think Thomas Wolfe in You Can’t Go Home Again does a good job of defining maturity. “He had learned some of the things that every man must find out for himself, and he had found out about them as one has to find out—through error and through trial, through fantasy and illusion, through falsehood and his own damn foolishness, through being mistaken and wrong and an idiot and egotistical and aspiring and hopeful and believing and confused.  Each thing he learned was so simple and obvious, once he grasped it, that he wondered why he had not always known it…Just by living, by making the thousand daily choices that his whole complex of heredity, environment, and conscious thought, and deep emotion had driven him to make, and by taking the consequences, he had learned…,” to live into maturity and to say to himself and to the world, “I am!”

Ummm!  Growing up?  Growing old?
Maturity?

Orthodoxy = “Right Opinion”

Yesterday I wrote about the Eastern Orthodox Church and today I want to say a word about  the meaning of the word orthodoxy.  Orthodoxy is derived from the Greek word orthodoxia, which means being of and having the “right opinion.”  The word means adhering to the correct or accepted creeds when used by religious groups. There are Orthodox Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, and Muslims. The word catholic used in Roman Catholic Church has both a Latin and Greek root:  catholicus and katholikos.  Both roots can be translated as “universal,” or “according to the whole,” which comes close to being of and having  the “right opinion” or orthodoxy.  Have you ever met a person who is not orthodox—someone who feels, believes and  thinks that they do not have the “RIGHT opinion?” 

Orthodoxy is used as opposed to heterodoxy (“other teachings, ideas, expressions”) or heresy.  People who deviate from orthodoxy by adhering to some other teaching, idea, or expression are called heretics, and those who break away from the main body of the “orthodox” to form their own group of adherents are called schismatics. There are other “orthodoxies” other than religious ones.  There are scientific, artistic, social, political and economic orthodoxies.  Orthodoxy can and is used to refer to any commonly held beliefs (dogmas) in any field which is being challenged by heterodoxy (“other teachings, ideas, expressions”).  

The word orthodoxy is also used in a broader sense to mean things other than beliefs or ideas.  A new way of thinking, or a new expression, or a new way of doing something is often referred to as “unorthodox” while the old way or normal way is referred to as “orthodox.”

Are you among the “orthodox?”  Are you a “schismatic?”  Or are you a “heretic?” There are many Christians who are not connected to the Eastern Orthodox or Roman Catholic Churches who claim to be more “orthodox” than the Orthodox.  Currently in our political, economic and social situation we are being told by those who believe they have the “right opinion” that those who oppose them are heretics (unpatriotic, anti-tariff, bleeding hearts, etc.) and/or schismatics. 

An Orthodox Easter

Once upon a time, long, long ago, on a mystical island far, far away, I experienced an Orthodox Easter.  It was an extremely moving experience about which I understood very little at the time, but it left an indelible mark upon my soul.  Through all the years since, I have sought to understand that Easter experience of long ago on the island of Crete and to learn something of the Eastern Orthodox Church. 

Today, my Greek and Russian brothers and sisters (Eastern Orthodox) are celebrating Easter.  Their celebration is a week later than that of the Western church simply because (to make a long story short) they follow the Julian calendar rather than the Gregorian calendar.  I greet my Orthodox brothers and sisters this morning with the traditional Easter greeting  “Christos Anesti”—“Christ is Risen!” I can almost hear the response, “Alithos Anesti”—“He Has Risen Indeed!”  I join my Orthodox friends this morning in singing the ancient Easter Hymn, Christos Anesti:  “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and to those in the tombs, granting life.” “Kalo Pascha" (καλό Πάσχα)—Happy Easter! 

The Orthodox see things a little differently than the Western churches (and I write, “churches,” because of the many differing views among  Christian  churches in the West).  Timothy Ware in The Orthodox Church, describes the Orthodox understanding of the Resurrection as “when the tomb burst open under the pressure of divine life.”  He says, “Orthodoxy interprets the Crucifixion primarily as an act of triumphant victory over the powers of evil (death), the West…has tended rather to think of the Cross in penal and juridical terms, as an act of satisfaction or substitution designed to propitiate the wrath of an angry Father.”

Ware also suggests that the Orthodox see “the whole ‘aim’ of the Incarnation as the sending of the Spirit at Pentecost”—“and the whole purpose of the Christian life as nothing else than the acquisition of the Holy Spirit.”  Orthodoxy says that salvation and redemption mean  deification—the human person has been called to become a god; and the reason God became human is that we humans might become god.  Isn’t that interesting?    

That Orthodox Easter experience of long, long ago, on a mystical island far, far away, profoundly influenced my life and my faith.  I’m so grateful!  “Alithos Anesti!  Kalo Pascha!”

"Dance,  then,  wherever you may be,
for I am the Lord of the Dance, said He."