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!
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!
