IF ONLY to be able to talk in the same wavelength as the young ones who are usually techies, I thought of familiarizing myself with some digital terms that would somehow capture the things I wanted to tell them. And I discovered at least two terms that seem to serve the purpose.
One is the term, algorithm, which in the digital world means “the set of ‘rules’ a search engine may use to determine the relevance of a webpage, and therefore its search engine ranking.”
In other words, if we are a search engine, like Google, and we want to search for a particular product, we should come up with some formula such that we can get the relevant particular webpages in their proper ranking, with the first one as being the most relevant for our needs.
The other term is matrix, which again in the digital world means “a vast sea of computing resources that can be visualized by the user, is accessible at many levels, and is lit up more intensely in the areas of greatest activity.”
With all the many and complex information, data and things being fed into our brain because of the new technologies, we need to have some means to be more keenly discerning as to which ones have priority over the others so we do not get confused and lost and can still maintain a good sense of direction and purpose.
Knowing how to formulate an algorithm that is useful to us and to learn how to cruise in the very complex matrix of data is certainly an important and even an indispensable skill that we now need to acquire.
And we should make sure that in all the activities and operations we now do in our cyberworld, we should always give God the highest priority so as to avoid getting lost in that intoxicating environment.
Yes, God has to be given the highest priority for after all he is the Creator of the whole universe, including our digital culture, the author of what is real, the ultimate standard of what is true, good and beautiful.
We should be wary of the strong possibility of being seduced by some worldly values that, while having their legitimate place in the sun, can only lead us to a lot of dangers when not inspired, rooted and directed towards God.
We should never forget what Christ once said: “For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his own soul.” (Mk 8,36) Let us always remember that we are meant to be with God from whom we came and to whom we belong in a way that is so intimate as to enter into a living communion with him.
We cannot deny that the new technologies can hijack our sense of religion, our love-characterized relation with God and with everybody else, such that we end up not only indifferent to God and to others but also hostile to him and to everybody else.
It’s true that we have to be immersed in the things of the world, since they in fact are the means for us to enter heaven to be with God in our definitive state of life. But we should be properly immersed in them.
And that means that while we are immersed in the things of the world, we should also be immersed in God. In fact, the more immersed we are in the world, the more immersed we should also be in God. Otherwise, there is no other way but to get lost.
We need to devise an algorithm that will always lead us to God regardless of what we are doing in the world. We also need to know how to handle the matrix of information, data and other resources so that we would always be led to God.
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Fr. Roy Cimagala is the Chaplain of the Center for Industrial Technology and Enterprise, Talamban, Cebu City (roycimagala@gmail.com)/PN
