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Ed Spivey Jr. 3-20-2023
An illustration of the upper half of someone's head. They're wearing glasses and a tired expression. There's an abstract drawing of a brain (with one half made to look like circuitry) above the head. There are icons of a plane and luggage to the sides.

Illustration by Ken Davis

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE HAS been raising a lot of eyebrows lately and, to my surprise, it has nothing to do with “guar gum” or Red Dye No. 40, the ingredients that make most things artificial. (Is somebody working on organic, free-range intelligence?) The main concern — other than a complete takeover by machines — seems to be that AI could write term papers for high school kids. I’m sympathetic to that concern, but from the students’ perspective. If I’d had that kind of help in school, I would have earned more than just the one A in typing class.

Most reporting has been about ChatGPT and Bing, Microsoft’s AI search engine, which still has some bugs, including combative responses. But who cares about that when you just want to find good airfares?

Emily Beth Hill 9-30-2022
Side profile of two hands resting on an open laptop; the screen shows an image resembling surveillance footage of a congregation taken from the rear of the church

Illustration by Anson Chan

I WAS SITTING in a large auditorium full of market researchers. A speaker suggested that, by selling wrinkle cream, we were helping to make the world a better place because women would feel better about themselves. I looked around the room, thinking, “Is everyone buying into this? Do people really think this is true, or do they see that it’s just a corporate pep talk?”

I had worked in the world of international market research for nearly 10 years. Though there were a few moments like this one when something just didn’t feel right, in many ways I still didn’t see the issues I see so clearly now — marketing techniques are the air we breathe.

I eventually left my work in marketing to pursue a master’s in social justice and a doctorate in theological ethics. I began to investigate how marketing practices negatively impact how we live as human beings and how we think about marketing in the church. In contemporary society, we tend to view marketing techniques as neutral tools that can be applied in different contexts — whether for businesses, nonprofit fundraising, or church communication. But can we adapt tools that have been developed in the context of capitalistic profit maximization to the mission of the church? Are there fundamental differences in how the church views and relates to human beings?

I had worked in the world of international market research for nearly 10 years. Though there were a few moments like this one when something just didn’t feel right, in many ways I still didn’t see the issues I see so clearly now—marketing techniques are the air we breathe.

Sharaf Maksumov / Shutterstock.com

FOR 20 YEARS, Alex Jones, a radio show host and founder of the Infowars website, has been spreading one off-the-wall conspiracy theory after another, and, for the past decade, social media have amplified his voice and his reach to a level his predecessors on the “paranoid Right” could never have imagined. In early August, Facebook and Google-owned YouTube finally took measures to effectively ban Jones from their platforms. But the way they did it raises more questions than it answers about the possibility of restoring respect for truth to public life in the United States.

Way back in the dying days of the 20th century, Alex Jones started his career ranting about the old conspiracy standbys, such as fluoride in our drinking water. But then 9/11 happened, and Jones took his act to a whole new level, claiming that the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were really “inside jobs” unleashed by the secret government to launch a global war and suspend civil liberties.

In days gone by, such a theory would have been passed around on mimeographed fliers, and mainstream journalism, shackled by considerations of fact, wouldn’t have touched it. But the social media era has freed us from all that. Now anybody can say anything, and everybody can hear it. Suddenly Alex Jones had an audience of millions for his Facebook pages, his YouTube channel, and his website; this success seemed to egg him on to ever more outrageous pronouncements. Finally, he hit rock bottom with the claim that the Sandy Hook school shooting was faked (to provide a pretext for seizing Americans’ guns) and all those grieving parents were only acting.

Image via RNS/Reuters/Jonathan Drake

A deal has fallen apart to undo the North Carolina law known as the “bathroom bill,” in a sign of the state’s bitter political divide.

The state’s legislature was called into a special session on Dec. 21, to consider repealing the law known as HB2 after months of pressure, including lost jobs and canceled sporting events and concerts.

Image via JP Keenan/Sojourners

The ongoing five-game series, played in Seoul and livestreamed nightly on YouTube, is a surprisingly high-publicity contest for a computer system that wasn’t supposed to even be possible for another 10 years. Sedol and the founders of DeepMind were front page news in South Korea on game day. More than 90,000 people worldwide watched the livestream during its first match on March 9 — and at least that many saw AlphaGo win.

If it goes on to win the whole series, AlphaGo will do what many have long considered impossible: beat humans at their own best game.

Ed Spivey Jr. 7-10-2015
Google

Illustrated by Ken Davis

IN THE FEW months remaining before our lives are completely taken over by computers, there’s still time to join the Resistance. Or start one, since most of us are unaware of the need to do so. I personally haven’t noticed because I’m waiting for my first heart attack to teach me how precious life is.

You’ve probably missed the warning signs because you’ve been too busy tweeting or friending people on Facebook. These seemingly innocent acts—designed mainly to reduce productivity at the office—are helpfully consolidating personal data for the ever-watchful mainframes to harvest later. And when the computers finally reduce us to a subservient species, unfriending them won’t save you.

Just to be clear, I’m not talking about the federal government’s massive monitoring of our phone calls, an effort that revealed most human conversation is not worthy of the monthly fees charged by Verizon, AT&T, or that new prepaid service called Boost, which I first thought was a nutritional supplement for old people. (The guy behind the counter looked at me funny when I asked what flavors it comes in. And when he tried to explain “pay as you go,” I was confused. With nutritional supplements, you pay, then you go, a little later.)

BUT THE GREATER threat is the increasing pervasiveness of artificial intelligence, probably the worst artificial substance ever created, if you rule out Cool Whip.

QR Blog Editor 10-22-2013
Memac Ogilvy & Mather Dubai/UN Women

Memac Ogilvy & Mather Dubai/UN Women

Gender inequality is an international issue. Striving to empower women and call attention to the sexism of popular opinions worldwide, U.N. Women released a series of ads using text from Google real searches. The ads show women's face with their mouths obscured by the text of the searches, visually silencing their voices.

From unwomen.com:

 “When we came across these searches, we were shocked by how negative they were and decided we had to do something with them,” says Christopher Hunt, Art Director of the creative team. The idea developed places the text of the Google searches over the mouths of women portraits, as if to silence their voices. 

“The ads are shocking because they show just how far we still have to go to achieve gender equality. They are a wake up call, and we hope that the message will travel far,” adds Kareem Shuhaibar, copy writer.

Katherine Burgess 10-08-2013

Craig Parshall, senior VP of the National Religious Broadcasters speaks on Thursday, Oct. 3. RNS photo by Katherine Burgess.

Todd Starnes did not think he had violated Facebook’s community standards when he posted about “wearing an NRA ball cap, eating a Chick-fil-A sandwich, reading a Paula Deen cookbook and sipping a 20-ounce sweet tea” and generally being politically incorrect.

Workers at Facebook thought otherwise, blocking the host of “Fox News & Commentary” for 12 hours before issuing an apology.

Starnes and other conservatives say the incident is part of increasing viewpoint discrimination from organizations such as Facebook and Google. They  want these new media companies to protect their freedom of speech.

Christian Piatt 9-27-2013
Stephen Hawking, by NASA HQ / Flickr.com

Stephen Hawking, by NASA HQ / Flickr.com

Renowned scientist and author of such books as A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking suggested recently that it is conceivable in the future that we may be able to upload the contents of the human brain onto a computer so that the information may, in a sense, become immortalized. He readily conceded, however, that such a task was well beyond our current technological capacity, and he offered some measured words of caution for those who sought to read too much into this potential.

When asked if this meant that there was potential for the mind to live forever through an alternative medium, he was dismissive. Such talk of human immortality, he said (and in particular, the very notion of heaven), was the stuff of fairy tales for people “afraid of the dark.”

Then in the same week, TIME Magazine featured a story about Google on its cover, highlighting a new company it has recently launched called Calico. The new enterprise is perhaps the most ambitious of what Google commonly calls their “moonshot” projects, as its aim is to prolong the human lifespan potential, and perhaps eventually solve the “problem” of death.

All of this was particularly interesting to me in the context of the conversation between Richard Dawkins and Jon Stewart on a recent episode of The Daily Show about whether science or religion was more responsible for hastening humanities apparent self-destruction.

Brandon Hook 9-27-2012
Director Wes Anderson

Director Wes Anderson's new film will be "The Grand Budapest Hotel."

The world's most dangerous hiking trail, some underwater streets, skyscrapers cleaning our air, and having a cold brewski with President Obama. And then 2,601 people collaborated on a song. Today's links of awesomeness are pretty awesome.

Tom Ehrich 7-25-2012

Forget Wall Street. Today's "best and brightest" are heading to California's Silicon Valley and New York's Silicon Alley, and to a few other tech-startup hot spots.

Thousands of aspiring engineers, web developers, designers and marketers live in dormitories, work in open-floor bullpens, attend coding competitions to enhance their skills, and work hours that defy body chemistry. It sounds like fun.

Some work on projects that make a positive contribution to society; some are coding games, entertainment apps, and schemes to monetize friendships.

They take stock for pay and wait for the magic letters "IPO" to appear. Meanwhile, their employers fight for their loyalty with free food and party-on office cultures.

The brass ring they chase looks like Marissa Mayer, the 37-year-old former Google star who was tapped to lead Yahoo out of its extended doldrums. Like any public person, Mayer is painted in stark colors: as both immensely talented and merely lucky, an inspiring leader and a rude monster, likely to succeed and sure to fail.

FOR MORE THAN a decade Google Inc. operated with a simple unofficial motto, “Don’t be evil.” And for a long time, the search-engine giant really seemed to be a company driven mainly by the desire to provide a truly excellent service in a manner that put the needs of the user first. Well, that slogan may have been good for a super-geek startup, but it doesn’t seem to work so well for the publicly held global empire Google has become.

Here are a few recent examples of Google behavior that is somewhat less than “not evil.” In March of this year, the company launched a new “privacy” policy that basically consists of warning you that you’re not going to have any. In April, the company was fined by the FCC for privacy violations committed by its infamous “Street View” cars. Apparently, in addition to collecting photographs of random sites on Google Earth, those cars have also been collecting data from unsecured home Wi-Fi networks. Google has also been charged with anti-trust violations for entering an agreement with Apple, Intel, Adobe, Intuit, Pixar, and Lucasfilm to never recruit each other’s employees.

The “don’t be evil” line worked well for Google back in the late 1990s when it could compare itself to Microsoft. That company, in its heyday, was an unabashed incarnation of evil in the best old robber-baron style. It routinely did things like programming your computer to sabotage its competitors’ software. Meanwhile, Google’s main competitor in the search business, Yahoo, was making headlines for turning over dissidents’ web activity to the Chinese government. In those days the ethical high ground wasn’t hard to reach, and Google seized it.

Joshua Witchger 4-05-2012

Google Street view goes to inside the White House. Painting walls by whipping hair. President Obama gives the Vulcan salute in the Oval Office. Woody Allen's new film. Marshall amplifiers. The Beatles' sons. And a remix of the Pixar film Monsters Inc
 

Duane Shank 3-02-2012
Photo by Tischenko Irina/Shutterstock.com.

Photo by Tischenko Irina/Shutterstock.com.

One of my must reads is the Sunday New York Times Book Review. There are too many books being published that I would love to read, but don’t have the time. So, I rely on reading book reviews as one way of keeping in touch with what’s being written.

Last Sunday, the Review ran an essay on how books affect Washington policy makers. Lawrence Summers, former director of the National Economic Council, says that a good review can often summarize what’s necessary for a policy maker to learn. He was quoted as saying, “If you tell me that the policy makers are reading the reviews, not the books, I don’t take that as evidence that the books aren’t influential.”

While I don’t fancy myself as a policy maker, the sentiment is also true for the rest of us.

Learn about two such new titles that may have an impact on public policy inside the blog...

Carrie Adams 1-17-2012
Internet. Blackout. Image via Wylio http://bit.ly/wQpju4

Surfing the Internet during the 2011 Blackout, Oceanside, Calif. Image via Wylio http://bit.ly/wQpju4

You’re on the Internet right now.

Maybe you’re on your phone, or your iPad, or even your desktop at work (it's OK, your secret's safe with us). No matter what your choice of access media, if you’re reading this, you’re on the Internet.

Most of us take Internet access for granted. (Who can remember life before Google?) A seemingly endless, free-to-all source of information, knowledge and distraction, the Internet drives and facilitates transactions both inconsequential and global, simple and complex.

Certainly the Internet has a seedy underbelly, from spammers and basement-dwelling sport hackers to illicit businesses and toxic enterprises.

But who polices it? Who’s the Internet Sheriff?

Joshua Witchger 11-18-2011

Two Muslim Americans resopnd in different ways to TLC's All-American Muslim; authors honored at 2011 National Books Awards; solar organizations introduce Occupy Rooftops; how cloud seeding effects water shortages and weather systems; Google's new music store; and much more.

 

Jeannie Choi 8-05-2011

1100805-moveHere's a little round up of links from around the Web you may have missed this week:

  • These videos will surely make you want to travel the world: Move, Learn, Eat.
  • Any Bon Iver fans? I missed their D.C. concert, but here it is recorded.
Christine Sine 7-15-2011

The other day I read some interesting statistics about how social media is shaping our lives . It is interesting to see the response to this and recognize the different ways in which we grapple with deluge of social media in relation to our faith. There are lots of resources emerging to help us maintain a strong and vibrant faith in the midst of this. I wanted to highlight a couple that I have found very useful

Jeannie Choi 12-10-2010

Hackers. Slow Motion. Snow. Here’s a little round up of links from around the web you may have missed this week:

  • Random Hacks of Kindness: a two-day competition of more than 1,000 software engineers solving problems that arise during humanitarian crises.
  • Restaurateur Jean-Gorges Vongerichten’s half-Korean wife, Maria Vongerichten, has a new PBS show called “The Kimchi Chronicles,” in which she eats her way through South Korea.
  • What happens when you put a slow-motion camera on a fast moving train? Watch.
  • Jim Wallis says it best: DREAMS should not be illegal.
Jeannie Choi 10-29-2010
Van Gogh. SF Giants. All Saints' Day. Here's a little round up of links from around the web you may have missed this week.