About Me....

Currently a 1L, aka a first year law student, I will happily be jumping ship at the end of this semester. My destination? Theology school. More specifically, a master's degree in theology, to be followed by a Ph.D. I will likely explore my reasons for doing so in various posts, so please follow along.

My impetus for re-starting this blog is my upcoming wilderness quest, which I am fashioning as a silent retreat. Four days, three nights, me, a 10' by 10' patch of land, in the wilderness. Alone. Except for the wild animals. I will be supported by a community praying for me, but I do not know if I will be soothed by their prayers when things -- creatures? -- go bump in the night.

I contemplated blogging about my experiences and preparation for some months before I actually began to type. I also thought about praying and meditating daily long before I actually began to put my thoughts into actions. I kept thinking to myself, 'Gee, I should really start meditating regularly. I need to prepare myself for my retreat!' And then days would go by, and weeks -- and I would not have meditated. Life got in the way, I had too much schoolwork, I was too tired -- a litany of common excuses. Then, I went to Mass on Ash Wednesday, February 17th. As I sat in the pew, an overwhelming feeling of hypocrisy washed over me. I thought, 'Who am I to talk about loving God? I speak constantly of how much I love theology, and God, but when is the last time I prayed? When is the last time I sat with God in silence? How can I hold myself out as someone who wants to make God, and the study of Him, her life's work -- when I can't seem to find the time to sit, in silence, and listen?'

As my employer, a former Navy officer, would say, "Whiskey tango foxtrot, over?" Or, in more colloquial terms, "WTF?"

I felt a painful disconnect between the way I was living and the way I wanted to live. All I talked about was my love for God, but my interior life was barren. I knew I had to make a change. I figured keeping a blog would help me be accountable. If I committed to a spiritual practice, I would be less likely to break it. So, here I am. A theological neophyte. Committed to God, yet unsure of my faith and the power of my commitment. Nevertheless...here I go.

A Note on the 2007 Postings

I originally began this blog as an assignment for a compulsory Computer Science class. After abandoning it for some years, I decided to re-purpose it as a blog documenting my spiritual life. With a nod to Bernard Lonergan's transcendence, in which one continually strives to surpass, yet encompass, all one was before, I decided to retain my Computer Science posts intact. Though the subject matter is entirely different, the CS posts reflect who I was and what I was doing at a particular stage in my life. Not a Lonergan expert, I cannot claim that is what Lonergan intended when he described transcendence. Nonetheless, the past remains, and I wish to acknowledge this blog's beginnings as well as its future. Let this post, then, mark the curtain between the old and the new.

Futurism

I think Ray Kurzweil is a little...optimistic, if optimistic is the right word. "Crazy", maybe. It could very well be because I'm not nearly as immersed in the world of rapid technological change as he is, but a lot of his ideas just don't seem realistic. For example, he says, "Computers will disappear. Displays will be written directly onto our retinas by devices in our eyeglasses and contact lenses"...by 2009. Not even two years from now? I don't know if it's that I think we won't have the technology to do something like that by then, or that I think the computer industry has a large enough stake in preventing computers' disappearance, but I think computers are here to stay, at least for another decade or so. Maybe eyeglass devices will be in addition to computers. Really, who knows? I wasn't paying attention when the wireless headsets came out -- the really tiny Bluetooth ones -- but those probably seemed pretty out-of-this-world when they were first imagined.

As far as Bill Joy's theory that humans will make machines that are smarter than humans, and that will therefore be able to improve themselves to the point where humans will no longer be necessary, I think that is giving machines too much credit. Yes, machines can be "taught" to "think" and accomplish tasks by themselves, like Stanley the robot car, but everything Stanley did was a result of programming. He could not do things his creators had not programmed him to do; he could not think independently and come up with new ideas or better ways to do things. I think a key component of humanity is the ability, as a species, to think independently; not that every member of the species must be able to do so (I still think brain-dead people are human, even though they cannot think for themselves), but as a general rule, I believe this holds true (also with animals).

To sum up, I think both Kurzweil and Joy think too highly of machines.

I am very hopeful about the world I will live in for the next thirty years. Yes, we do have some fantastically complex and difficult issues that will need to be fixed, or at least dealt with: terrorism, war, nuclear threats, human rights abuses, pollution, apathy; but assuming we (as a human race) don't blow ourselves up or otherwise kill ourselves with weapons of mass destruction, I think we have a great opportunity to do good and improve people's lives for the better. If we do die off as a species, I am certain it will be because of something (or things) we bring on ourselves, not havoc wreaked by rogue machines we are smarter than we are.

I think the technological revolution in which we are living today is similar to past technological revolutions, just to a more extreme, rapidly-advancing degree. I do find myself longing for the days when people actually wrote letters, and often wish I didn't have to carry a cellphone around all the time -- it would be nice to really get away from everything for awhile, without everyone panicking because I didn't answer my cellphone for a whole hour -- and I'm only 23! What prevents me from believing in doomsday scenarios such as those advanced by Kurzweil and Joy (admittedly, Kurzweil doesn't think his is a doomsday scenario, but I consider it so) is the simple recognition of the fact that throughout history, people have feared technological advances, yet we as a human race are still thriving. It is somewhat similar to the fears over immigration: people are so convinced that illegal Mexican immigrants are going to be the death of this country and constitute an awful flood of humanity that must be stopped at all costs, but the Irish and Russian were also once considered a similarly foreign, unassimilable group, and they have integrated perfectly well into this melting pot we call America. I don't think things are ever as scary as the hysterical, fear-mongering-to-bring-in-higher-ratings media would have us believe. Cynical? I prefer to think of myself as possessing an untarnishable optimism about the state of humanity.

I am fascinated to see what the coming years bring, both in technology and otherwise, and just hope I will be able to keep up with all the latest advances!