Connecting Reason and Faith on a Social Media Platform

Iconic Silicon Valley companies currently confront a credibility crisis of motive and trust. Helping spread fake news and propaganda, turning users into lab rats, mining personal data through addictive apps, stashing away billions of dollars in off-shore tax havens as disclosed by the Paradise Papers, suggest that under the veneer of connecting all and doing no harm, something more sinister is brewing in these Internet juggernauts.

Recent data reveal that on Facebook alone, as many as 126 million Americans were exposed to fake news stories during the 2016 U.S. presidential election, eroding our democracy. Russian operatives also created close to 3,000 fake Twitter accounts and over 1,100 videos on 18 Google channels. During a recent Congressional hearing, Senator Dianne Feinstein bluntly told representatives of Facebook, Google and Twitter: “You bear this responsibility. You’ve created these platforms.”

Americans are souring on tech titans who symbolize Silicon Valley and its increasingly questionable ethos. Not only are they accumulating wealth and power at an exponential rate, they are turning their companies into monopolies to silence discordant opinions and diminish, if not destroy, diversity.

Allow me to focus on Facebook. 

As the social media leader with over 2 billion active monthly users worldwide, can the tech giant remove our fears and restore our trust in the company, even if partially?

In his commencement address at Harvard this year, CEO Mark Zuckerberg expanded his company’s mission to include ‘three ways to create a world where everyone has a sense of purpose: by taking on meaningful projects together, by redefining equality so everyone has the freedom to pursue purpose, and by building communities across the world.” Zuckerberg defined purpose as “that sense that we are part of something bigger than ourselves, that we are needed, that we have something better ahead to work for.”

In other words, it’s not only about connecting all of humanity, it’s infusing these connections with a sense of purpose. Who can argue with that? The problem is that noble mission statements can often mask fiercer motives, especially when a company develops a global reach.

Yet it is plausible that the idea of purpose can transform the way we connect with one another in the virtual world.

Imagine that Facebook creates a platform that connects proponents of reason and faith, two ancient antagonists that have caused much sorrow in the world.

Let me clarify what I mean in a specific context: Silicon Valley.

According to a 2010 survey (the numbers could have only gone up since then) there are over 450 churches, synagogues, mosques and temples in the Santa Clara County alone, serving over 40% of the Valley’s 2 million population. The remaining 60% includes not only atheists but also those with complicated relationship to their faiths, particularly millennials who shun organized religion and pray in their own way but not in traditional places of worship.

If such a platform were created, could that be an example of the kind of meaningful project Zuckerberg envisions? Perhaps. After all, meaning, purpose and transcendence can flow from both the secular and the sacred. Any connection between the two can not only inspire fresh views on, say, stem-cell research and global warming but also deepen our understanding of how love, justice, suffering and forgiveness shape human affairs.

At the same time, we must also note that faith and reason can coexist within the same person. 

Perhaps no one exemplified this as persuasively as physicist Charles Townes (1915-2015). An article he wrote half-a-century ago in the IBM journal “Think” provides insights into the evolving nature of relationship between science and religion. After building the case that the two shared fundamental similarities - revelation in one is epiphany in another, for instance – Townes concluded that the two will eventually converge. “I believe,” he wrote in 1966 in The Convergence of Science and Religion, “this confluence is inevitable. For they both represent man’s efforts to understand his universe and must ultimately be dealing with the same substance.”

A devout Christian, Townes was one of the greatest scientists of the twentieth-century, winning the Nobel Prize in physics in 1964 for inventing the maser and the laser. He tempered his idea of convergence: “Perhaps by the time this convergence occurs, science will have been through a number of revolutions as striking as those which have occurred in the last century, and taken on a character not readily recognizable by scientists of today. Perhaps our religious understanding will also have seen progress and change. But converge they must, and through this should come new strength for both.”

Can Facebook facilitate this convergence in some way? It's difficult to say but what is clear is that this dialogue in the age of social media will not happen through staged spectacles between well-known cerebral atheists like Richard Dawkins and prominent theologians. It can only happen when practitioners of reason and faith can explore the connection between the two in a spirit of humor, humility and curiosity.

Even if a social media platform makes the flow of ideas between proponents of reason and faith easier, including those who see no conflict between the two, it does not mean it will remove our suspicion of Facebook, or of Amazon, Google or Apple, companies that are also vying for global domination, particularly when the call for regulation and antitrust probes against the Big Four is gaining steam in the Valley and beyond.

But it’s a start. The unexplored region between technology and faith beckons people with open minds seeking rational and spiritual truths. Done right, it may even be that algorithms will someday lead to epiphanies and clicks to catharsis.

Bing, Another Verb, Takes On Google

Taking on Google on its own turf is something only a foolhardy company would do. But that’s what Microsoft has done with Bing (www.bing.com), its latest attempt to compete with Google in the search arena. Live Search and other past attempts had badly failed but while “agility” is not normally associated with Microsoft, “persistence” is.

And that persistence seems to have paid off. Bing is a more user-friendly search engine and leaves Google in the dust in the visual department. A new image everyday invites you to explore the world in five broad categories - Images, Videos, Shopping, News, Maps and Travel. Having become used to the austere look-and-feel of Google for so long, Microsoft’s search screen may take a while to adjust to but it seems to draw users in once they make that tentative first click.

Of course, style can go only so far. Ultimately, it’s substance that wins. Here too, Microsoft shines. I typed in Thoreau. When my cursor hovered on the right edge of a link, it displayed a summary of that Web page. The first entry on the Bard of Walden was from Wikipedia. I did not need to go to Wikipedia immediately since “Hover” gave me a synopsis. The advantage is obvious. Now I can filter out spurious results, the bane of all search engines, by scanning the summary.

Since I am planning to travel in a few weeks, I searched for Malaria videos and was presented with an array of thumbnail still pictures. Simply by placing the cursor on one of these pictures started the associated video. This removes the annoyance of having to click “play” or go to a new page. When I moved the cursor to a different image, the previous one stopped and the new one began. Again, a built-in, intuitive filtering process that makes the search experience a pleasant and productive one.

Similar features abound. I am sufficiently impressed by the service to at least alternate between Google and Microsoft for now. Google has ignored all attempts by Microsoft to usurp its territory, and for good reason, since all such attempts had led to more embarrassment for Steve Ballmer. But now Google has to respond. And therein lies the dilemma. If Google introduces same or similar features in its search interface, the company will come across as a follower rather than a leader, a position it is unaccustomed to. There are many products that Google has launched over the years that fizzled. (Who uses its social networking service other than diehard loyalists?) But search is different. If Microsoft begins to gain mindshare through Bing and Google’s dominance dissipates, shock waves will pass through the technological landscape. In the end, though, more competition in search can only be a boon for innovation and user experience.

Bill Gates Reinvents Himself

The last day at work can be a melancholy business as well as the springboard for a new career. But what if the person in question is one of the most successful entrepreneurs the world has ever known? Is there any way he can reinvent himself to compare with what he has already achieved?

If anyone can pull it off, it is Bill Gates. Today is his last day at Microsoft. From now on, Gates will dedicate himself to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and to his stated aim to rid the world of deadly diseases and malnutrition through a combination of technology, medicine, money, management and expertise. That, plus improve the state of K-12 public education in the United States where a million kids drop out of schools every year, plus ensure that teachers have the right tools to motivate and inspire, plus …

“Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?” Robert Browning’s exhortation to attempt the impossible resonates with all but only a few get to experience it. Gates has the passion, the commitment and, of course, the resources to succeed but even if he is partially successful in his “Mission Impossible,” he will have touched people’s lives on a scale that may surpass what he accomplished through Microsoft.

Microsoft will continue to be a dominant technology player for years to come but the truth is that the torch has passed to a new generation of technology visionaries, epitomized by a company called Google. You can take on the new competitors, or you can take on an even bigger challenge – to prove through action that “every life has equal value.”

Is this the road less traveled by that, in the end, will have made all the difference? Who can say? What is clear is that Bill Gates has chosen to make a difference in the lives of people around the world who desperately need a helping hand simply to survive, and that transcends technology, software, and the demands of an unforgiving marketplace.

Microsoft Needs to Reinvent Itself

Microsoft’s decision to withdraw its offer to acquire Yahoo! was a sensible one. Throughout, the dialogue was shrill, the intention bad and the move desperate. Even if Microsoft succeeded, it would have been a pyrrhic victory. As long as the company continues to think of “Search” as the holy grail of computing, a game that Google plays to perfection, Microsoft will be playing catch up and fall further behind its nemesis.

It is critical for Microsoft to reinvent itself if it wants to regain some of its former glory. It is possible but it will require Steve Ballmer to set his priorities right. Forget trying to compete online with Google through acquisitions, even if the acquisition brings you Facebook. Not much will change. Instead, focus on the creativity of your company’s most brilliant minds to chart a new direction that will make “Search” only one of the Web's crown jewel, as opposed to its most lustrous and overpowering one.

As one with a flair for mathematics, Ballmer should know that while the brute force method can be used to solve a particularly complex equation, a powerful and intuitive solution awaits discovery by gifted mathematicians inspired to think along new and original lines.

Get off the beaten track. Forge a new trail. The revenue will follow if you can capture the imagination of young geeks as Bill Gates did at the dawn of personal computing three decades ago.