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.

Out with Selfies, In with Wonder

You can also read it in the Mercury News 

At the Montgomery Hill Observatory of Evergreen Valley College in San Jose, there is a public stargazing night on the first Friday of every month. It is here that a decade ago I first saw Saturn through the observatory’s 7” refractor telescope. I will never forget that magical moment. The “Lord of the Rings” planet 750 million miles or so away from the earth seemed so inviting that I wanted to reach out and touch it.

With Jupiter and Saturn gracing the night sky now, I decided to visit the observatory after a hiatus to renew my acquaintance with the two planets.

About fifty of us gathered at the observatory recently to take in the beauty of the starry sky. The line was long for the domed building that housed the telescope focused on Saturn.

What I witnessed, however, was unexpected and, frankly, shocking.

Most of the “stargazers” spent more time taking selfies than looking at the planet. Parents held their babies close to the telescope and snapped photos as the unnatural light of their smartphones lit up the dark interior of the building. They photographed the telescope’s view of Saturn, experimenting until the image was to their satisfaction.

What I found incongruous was that everyone acted as if this was normal, that unless Saturn was captured in the circuitry of their hi-tech gadgets, the physical experience of observing the ringed planet through a telescope wasn’t worth much.

It was the same with Jupiter in the adjacent roll-off roof building. Jove and his moons took a backseat to the selfies, to the document-by-camera excitement that gripped so many of the visitors. A remark I overheard put the selfies in perspective. A man turned to his spouse and said, “It’s already on Facebook and Instagram.”

The standalone selfie was apparently not worth much by itself, unless authenticated by social media and “liked.”

I managed to see Saturn, its ring tilted at a steeper angle than when I saw it last, magical and awe-inspiring as always. But the flash and whirr of the cameras seemed so pervasive that afterwards, when I looked up with unaided eyes outside, I half-expected to see the image of a partially-eaten translucent silver apple dominating the night sky.

The selfie syndrome is everywhere, not just at public events and tourist spots but in parks, woods, shores, malls, stadiums, restaurants, museums, even at graveyards and funerals!

How is it that we have so casually surrendered substance to shadow, real to virtual? Why are we so in thrall to our devices 24×7?

One reason is that smart gadgets and social media allow us to unleash our very human instinct for self-expression to a degree unprecedented in history.

But pushed to extreme, self-expression can devolve into narcissism. In particular, in the presence of the sublime and the transcendent, self-expression through selfies, rather than engaging through the senses, can be foolish and short-sighted. It is like ignoring the eternal for the ephemeral.

How to subdue this abnormal selfie craving? One way would be to renew our acquaintance with nature.

“The world is too much with us,” lamented Wordsworth at the dawn of the 19th century when the poet felt that people had lost their connection to nature because of their growing attachment to materialism. “Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:/Little we see in nature that is ours/…/For this, for everything, we are out of tune.”

Next time we go to the woods, the shore or the observatory, let’s leave behind the devices with the flickering screens so we can experience with our five senses the music of songbirds, the lullaby of surf, and the pageantry of stars and planets.

Holiday Giving

Mark Zuckerberg’s recent $500 million donation in Facebook stocks to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation created a stir in the world of philanthropy. The Facebook co-founder was following up on his pledge to donate half his wealth to charity as part of the “Giving Pledge” campaign inspired and promoted by billionaires Bill Gates and Warren Buffet.

Reading about mega-donations by billionaires can cause the average American to suffer from some kind of an inferiority complex. After all, in these difficult times, many Americans will be hard-pressed to come up with a $500-dollar donation to worthy causes.

A perspective comes from Ted Turner. Fifteen years ago, in September of 1997, the billionaire Cable News Network founder made a “spur of the moment” gift of $1 billion to the United Nations for programs to help refugees and children, clear land mines and fight disease. It was the gift that launched not a thousand gifts but several high-profile multi-million and billion-dollar gifts from entrepreneurs like Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and now, Mark Zuckerberg.

Talking recently to the New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, Turner said that people should not be overwhelmed or intimidated by the dollar amount donated by the rich. “You don’t have to have any money to make a difference; you can pick up trash walking down the street, and I do that all the time,” he said. “You can volunteer your time. You can be a big brother or a big sister.”

This is a deeply moving and practical dvice. The key words are “making a difference.” After all, anytime we donate even a dollar, we fervently hope that it will have the maximum impact for good in the recipient. The most common mistake we make is to think that unless our charity is a hefty amount quantifiable in dollars or pounds or euros, it will not make a difference, even though, intellectually at least, we know better. This is the unfortunate byproduct of minds brought up in a capitalistic environment. But hearing a capitalist like Ted Turner extolling charitable acts rather than dollars offers a much-needed reminder. Notice also the example Turner gives about doing something while walking down the street. Most often we think that removing thorns (or nails or sharp objects) from the path of pedestrians is the only worthwhile act of charity we can do. Not so. Pick up any trash. Sweep or gather fallen leaves in bags. Clear a neighbor’s driveway of snow. Smile at strangers. There are hundreds of acts of charity you and I can do simply by walking a few blocks in our neighborhoods. By being alert and observing what others are doing can also open up creative ideas for charity.

A few months ago, while stopping by to pick up some toiletries from my local pharmacy, located in a mini shopping center packed with restaurants, a bank, a fitness center, a dentist’s office and the quintessential Starbucks, I noticed an old man poking into the various garbage bins with a stick. As I watched, I realized he was looking for recyclable cans and bottles. Every time he located one, his face broke into a triumphant smile. His bag was about half-full with the collection.

When I came home, I collected all the bottles and cans I was going to dump in the neighborhood recycle center. Like everyone else, I have been doing this for years but I had no way of knowing where all these “capitalistic wastes” were going and exactly how they were being recycled. But now I had found a greater purpose for them.

Two nights later, around 8 PM, I waited for the old man at the same spot. I had almost given up when, about 45 minutes later, I saw him begin his round at the dumpster behind the bank. He walked slowly and patiently. I had time to read the sign nailed into the outer wall of the pharmacy: “No skateboarding. No Trespassing. Violators will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

When he came around, I offered him my collection. He seemed stunned for a moment and then thanked me profusely. “Not at all,” was all I could mumble as I quickly left. I was already feeling guilty in thinking that I was engaging in an act of charity.

I now see the old man once a week. We don’t talk much although I want to tell him the privilege is entirely mine when he looks me in the eye and says simply, “thank you.”

I am sure you have all seen someone at a gas station or a shopping center intent on making something out of the bottles and cans we carelessly toss away. We are talking at most a few dollars here but just the act of gathering your recyclable stuff and handing them over to a particular person isn’t something that can be quantified. Thank God for that. Do it and see how it transforms you and spills over into other areas of charitable and holiday giving.

Young Arabs Cross the Rubicon

“I do have an unyielding belief that all people yearn for certain things: the ability to speak your mind and have a say in how you are governed; confidence in the rule of law and the equal administration of justice; government that is transparent and doesn’t steal from the people; the freedom to live as you choose. Those are not just American ideas, they are human rights, and that is why we will support them everywhere.”

Those were the stirring words President Obama used at his Cairo speech in June of 2009. But eloquence and oratory cannot mask reality. As Egyptians rise is revolt against the kleptocracy of Hosni Mubarak, the Obama administration is desperately trying to adjust its sails against the furious wind of change sweeping Egypt. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton initially praised Egypt’s “stability” under Mubarak but now that the Arabs have crossed Rubicon, she is using words like “restraint” and “reform” and urging “transition to a democratic regime.”

Why does the United States so often finds itself on the wrong side of history, at least initially? Why does it so easily settle for Faustian bargains with autocrats like Mubarak? For the Muslim world, in particular, America’s policy has been driven by an irrational combination of oil, Israel and Islamic terror. Mubarak used the bogeyman of “Islamic Jihadists” (Muslim brotherhood in his case) to convince America that keeping him in power was the only option, and so our government obliged him with $1.3b in military aid every year. Not just the tanks and the fighter planes, even the tear gas and the rubber bullets being used against Egyptians bear the label “Made in America.” Only the water in the water cannons presumably comes from the Nile. Is it any wonder that ordinary Egyptians do not quite look upon America as a beacon of freedom and democracy?

In his second State of the Union address on January 25, President Obama equated Tunisian revolution with freedom. “We saw,” he said, “that same desire to be free in Tunisia, where the will of the people proved more powerful that the writ of a dictator. And tonight, let us be clear: the United States of America stands with the people of Tunisia, and supports the democratic aspirations of all people.”

What a golden opportunity the President missed by not including Egypt in his address! Extolling the virtues of democracy, the President said, “… as contentious and frustrating and messy as our democracy can sometime be, I know there isn’t a person here who would trade places with any other nation on earth. We may have differences in policy, but we all believe in the rights enshrined in our Constitution. We may have different opinions but we believe in the same promise that says this is a place where you can make it if you try. We may have different backgrounds, but we believe in the same dream that says this is a country where anything’s possible, no matter who you are, no matter where you come from.”

As my Egyptian friend Mustafa asked: “Does this mean that the United States reserves the right to experiment with democracy to enjoy its fruits, while Muslim puppets deny democracy to their people to cater to misguided American interests? This is nothing but arrogance and hypocrisy.”

American-Muslims, meanwhile, have thrown their full support behind Egyptians fighting unarmed for their freedom. During the Friday Khutbah in the largest mosque in California’s Silicon Valley, for instance, the Imam urged us to pray for their success in throwing out the pharaoh and preventing dynastic decadence. In solidarity with the Egyptian anger revolution, American Muslims have already demonstrated in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Boston. More protest marches are planned.

During the Tunisian revolution, President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and his sycophants cut off Internet access, particularly access to Facebook. As reported by Alexis Madrigal of The Atlantic, the Facebook security team at its headquarters in Silicon Valley discovered that Ammar, the nickname Tunisians have given to the authorities that censor the Internet, was trying to steal an entire country's worth of passwords. With the stolen passwords, Ammar was deleting Tunisians’ Facebook accounts!

After more than ten days of intensive investigation, Facebook's security team realized that Tunisia’s Internet service providers (ISP) were running a malicious piece of code that was recording users' login information when they went to sites like Facebook.

The security team coded a two-step response. First, all Tunisian requests for Facebook were routed to an https server. The https protocol encrypts the information sent across it (the “s” in “https” stands for “secure” or “secure sockets layer” (SSL), so it is not vulnerable to the keylogging strategy used by the Tunisian ISPs. The second technical solution was a "roadblock" for anyone who had logged out and then back in during the time when the Tunisian malicious code was running.

Facebook rolled out the new solutions to all of Tunisia five days after the company discovered what was happening, and access to the site was restored.

Hosni Mubarak also followed the path of his now-deposed fellow-dictator: He ordered the state-controlled ISPs to completely cut off Egypt’s Internet access. But Egyptians were not deterred. The air was charged with electricity and possibilities. The revolution had taken on a momentum of its own, and while Facebook and Twitter initially helped, Egyptians had already transcended the Internet.

Still, it is reasonable to expect that companies like Facebook will give special consideration to activists trying to overthrow repressive regimes. If the company wants to remain central to people's political aspirations, it has to come up with a powerful, long-term solution that can be activated at a moment’s notice when access to the site is denied by any country. From a hardware point of view, if dictators block Internet data pipes into their countries, perhaps multiple satellite connections as backups can be in place so that communication can continue uninterrupted in spite of latency issues.

However the technology evolves, the days of dictators who equate dissent with treason and oppress and torture their people are coming to an end. Muslim nations are beset by modern-day pharaohs. For the creativity of millions of Muslims to flower in freedom, the pharaohs will be overthrown, if not today, then certainly tomorrow. That is the lesson of Tunisia and Egypt.

Eliminating Desire

“Eliminating Desire” is the perplexing personal interest Mark Zuckerberg lists on his Facebook page. The Facebook founder has become an Internet icon as the number of users of his social network, already more than 550 million, approaches a billion. The company got tons of publicity when Zuckerberg was selected as TIME magazine’s 2010 person of the year. Facebook overtook Google as the most visited site in the U.S. in the past year, a phenomenon unthinkable only a few months ago.

But back to that desire thing.

In an interview, Zuckerberg explained: “I just want to focus on what we’re doing … I think it would be very easy to get distracted and get caught up in short-term things or material things that don’t matter. The phrase is actually ‘Eliminating desire for all that doesn’t really matter.’”

Now, whether history will judge Facebook to have been a transformational or a frivolous innovation is unclear. But that intriguing, enigmatic sentence bears reflection: “Eliminating desire for all that doesn’t really matter.”

The idea of what matters and what doesn’t is, of course, unique to each of us, shaped by faith, culture, passion, inclination. To a technologist like Zuckerberg, connecting people across the globe in a seamless digital network is probably all that matters. Everything else is peripheral. To a scholar, seeking knowledge, and adding to it if possible, is paramount. To a writer, unlocking the mysteries of the human heart is the point. And so it goes.

But then, desires find a way of weaving themselves into our goals and the effect is to scatter focus, as a prism scatters light.

One such desire is more like distraction but it has become so overpowering in our times that it is indistinguishable from what we call addiction, which is desire running rampant. It is our constant need for digital stimuli, one of its chief architects being, ironically, Mark Zuckerberg.

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, iPhone, YouTube, Texting, Email – such are the mind and time-sucking vortex of the Web, and many of us plunge headlong into it from the moment we wake up until a few hours of nightly shut-eye. (What some of us would give to dispense with sleep if that were possible!) Work is now in our pockets, literally, keeping us in a 24x7 state of connection.

But this state of affairs is also what makes Zuckerberg’s statement all the more intriguing. Here is a 26-year-old billionaire who has the means to fulfill any desire that glides into his mind, yet he is singularly focused on his goal. And while his goal may be to create an even more seductive vortex, we must give him credit for resisting desires that afflict most of us – more stuff, more money, more vacation, more everything.

The summit of all desires is, of course, the desire for “things.” Very few of us resist the siren call of materialism. If my neighbor has a 50” TV, why, I must have the biggest HDTV in the market. If he drives a Cadillac, I must drive a Mercedes. If his home has eight rooms, mine must have at least twelve. And if there is no one in sight who can compete with me in possessions or power, does it mean that I can rest? No! Like a shark, I must be constantly moving, even if it means to remain at the same spot.

The unbridled acquisitive instinct that lies dormant when the means aren’t there but blooms instantly when they are, is what causes so much despair and heartbreak. Wise travelers inform us time and again of seeing people in distant lands, whom we regard as dwelling in adversity, who get more out of life’s simple joys – family, friendship (real, not virtual), community, nature – than affluent people living in mansions and surrounded by stuff but surviving on Prozac and therapy. Yet all of us who engage in materialism in one form or another know that the charm of new purchases - a car, a pair of shoes, a watch – wears down in days, until we get the next new “thing” in a deadening cycle of diminishing sensitivity.

So, how to eliminate desire for “all that doesn’t really matter”?

Sometimes it is forced on us, as the Great Recession did, and continues to do. Many Americans have discovered that giving away stuff – clothes, gadgets, cars – and living with less clutter makes life more meaningful. Millionaires have discovered that instead of fretting about the first million begetting the next, they can lead a more satisfying life on, say, $40,000 a year. (Americans living below the poverty line will consider that a sign of affluence). It is no wonder that the top word that we searched for in 2010, according to Merriam-Webster, was “austerity.”

But reflecting on life’s purpose can also have a salutary effect. What exactly do we want out of life? Is it to be the envy of our neighbors, the toast of our societies? Is it to dazzle others with our knowledge, to make lesser mortals tremble with our power? Is it to climb the greasy pole of success on the backs of others? All these desires have shallow roots, however worthy they may appear. Perhaps it will dawn on us, if we can be alone with our thoughts, that happiness often flows from outlasting our impulses.

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone, said Thoreau. It is an insight we should put to use as we welcome a new year.

The Muslim scholar Al-Harith bin Asad al-Muhasibi (165 A.H – 243 A.H) left us with this instruction for achieving our dreams: “You will not achieve what you want unless you give up what you desire, and you will never achieve your dreams until you are patient with what you hate.”

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.