Source: International Mission Board, January 14, 2019
In 1949, Father Roberto Busa approached Thomas J. Watson, the founder of IBM, with a simple proposal: let’s bring words to your computer! Busa recognized God’s ultimate creativity and dominion over all creation. And he challenged Watson to take the computer beyond pure computational power and make it work with text.
Busa was motivated by a desire to digitize the works of Thomas Aquinas so they could be accessible to anyone with a computer, but the result was that digital text revolutionized communication. Busa once said, “Since man is a child of God and technology is a child of man, I think that God regards technology the way a grandfather regards his grandchild.”
I wonder what God thinks of his technological grandchildren today? Is he pleased with the way we have used our God-enabled creativity to create the tech that is impacting this world?
Let’s take a quick tour of five technology-enabled trends and explore their implications for Christian mission.
1. Uberization
2. Blockchain
3. Surveillance
4. Artificial intelligence
5. Internet of things
» Read full story and consider each trend’s implications. I learned a lot!