Mailnews_old

World
2018.03.21 22:10

3047_How old was Jesus Christ?

Views 566 Votes 0 Comment 0
?

Shortcut

PrevPrev Article

NextNext Article

Larger Font Smaller Font Up Down Go comment Print
?

Shortcut

PrevPrev Article

NextNext Article

Larger Font Smaller Font Up Down Go comment Print
austraLasia #3047

How old was Jesus Christ?

ROME: 7-8 April 2012 --  Thanks for responses to yesterday's item. They have been extremely helpful to the Rector Major and his appointed technical commission in arriving at the ultimate formulation of the Chapter theme in English.

Now, given that we are in a season of all things new, in the spirit of the Resurrection, you might wonder what I am about by asking 'How old was Jesus Christ?' This is not a trick question, nor is it a theological one this time, but I suggest you go to Google (in English, please, since I'm not sure this works in other languages for now, and the stress is on 'for now'). Also, go to the real Google, not some other adaptation of Google, and run the question as stated above in the search bar.

You should get, besides the usual list of Google responses (it suggests there are 491 million results!!) a 'Best guess for Jesus Christ date of birth is 4 BC' and reference to 2 websites.

So what, you ask? This is enormously significant. You haven't seen this sort of thing before!  Google, over the past few weeks, has been producing these 'best guess' results above a whole range of very direct searches, and producing 'parsed' information from semi or unstructured data of the kind found on many websites, but not in the subject-predicate-object form you find here (Jesus Christ (subject) has-date-of birth (predicate) 4 BC (object).  The significance is that there is not a bunch of human beings sitting down doing this kind of reasoning for Google. It is being done by a machine without human intervention, a machine which is able to draw inferences from scattered items of data and come up with reasonable answers. Now you'll have to go to the biblical scholars and theologians to find out if the inference in this instance is valid but that's not the point for the moment. Ask Google instead 'who was Pope Benedict's father?' and you get get a much more precise inference. And then note its only reference, freebase.com. Go to freebase.com and you will see it is described as 'an entity graph of people, places and things, built by a community that loves open data'.

Believe me, this is enormously significant. The semantic web has arrived if Google is creating and exposing structured data where there was none before, which seems to be exactly what it is doing. Last year Microsoft paid $100,000,000 to try to arrive at this point by buying up a semantic search engine called Powerset. Yahoo! too is working on it.

Now go back to the Rector Major's prescient AGC 411 letter on inculturation of the Salesian charism, and read the following bit (and maybe what comes after it):

"What, then, might it mean to 'leaven' the digital continent all through? It is a homely image but one that strikes home right now at a time when the World Wide Web, to take one example, is moving from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0, from a Web which has concentrated on linking people interactively to one which now seeks to link data meaningfully. This change is happening subtly under our very eyes, not unlike the secret activity of yeast in dough. Which of us has not clicked on a link to a major city to be then presented with a variety of options – lodgings to stay in, events to be part of, places to visit, and quite possibly according to our personal interests! Did the computer know those interests? Not as such, but it knew how to make a few meaningful connections. The answer lies in semantics, and only human beings can (and they do, and this is what we must not overlook) offer these semantics in ways that machines can interpret".

He draws a conclusion, ultimately, from this kind of thinking, one that the latest efforts by Google only make more insistent still:

Instead of being dragged unwillingly into the digital continent, we have a duty to be there effectively and efficiently. Today this means, amongst other things, taking care of meaningful structure, introducing meaningful connections into our documents and data. We can guide search technologies, for example, with documents focused more on semantic structure than how 'pretty' they might need to look, and especially with semantically prepared data. The former task belongs to every Salesian who 'tweets', emails, or writes! The latter, to those who have responsibility for the thousands of Salesian websites around the world.

Aldous Huxley told us in 1931 that is was a 'brave new world'. He was being somewhat cynical when he wrote that. The same Aldous Huxley, visiting the small Tuscan town of Sansepolcro, commented on the late Renaissance artist's 'Resurrection' (Piero della Francesca, 15th century) as the "best picture (he) had ever seen", an athletic Christ ready to step vigorously out of the tomb.


It is a brave new world!  Happy Easter!

List of Articles
No. Category Subject Views
2750 VIE 2771_Vietnam's Missionaries 321
2749 World 2770_Christmas Greetings 1520
2748 Pac. 2769_Fr Nick writes ... 520
2747 FIS 2768_A right proud little note from a right proud grand provincial! 334
2746 GIA 2767_Yokohama Salesian School celebrates 50 years 447
2745 World 2766_Pot Pourri 519
2744 AUL 2765_"...perhaps with the hope that God’s grace could be mediated by this new technology" 428
2743 FIS 2764_I dream of rainbows...St John Bosco's Relic lands in Southern Philippines 613
2742 Indonesia 2763_New Indonesia Delegation (ITM) launches 'Laura' 1152
2741 PGS 2762_Salesian Samoa's unique act of charity 584
2740 Cambodia 2761_We do not know each other ... but we know Don Bosco 353
2739 THA 2760_Bishop cancels parish Sunday Masses to encourage faithful to celebrate with Don Bosco 444
2738 PGS 2759_We carry forth your flame 1734
2737 THA 2758_Thai Provincial's report on the DB Casket continued ... 514
2736 THA 2757_Thailand: Don Bosco receives a "thunderous welcome with prayer and songs" 460
2735 FIN 2756_Peace Prize Award for Filipino confrere 508
2734 CIN 2755_Michael Rua - not forgotten! 355
2733 VIE 2754_Vietnam.... Mission Days with Fr Klement 321
2732 KOR 2753_Death of Fr Jack Trisolini, in KOR 360
2731 Pac. 2752_Australia-Pacific Quinquennium in Samoa 461
Board Pagination Prev 1 ... 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 ... 177 Next
/ 177