Aug 12, 2019
What You’ll Hear:
- Jacob became a Christian at a young age. At age 5, the Pastor came to their house to share more details and he gave his heart to Christ
- Jabob's first job was at a Fairway Grocery Store in Iowa
- Through college Jacob worked as interim youth pastors
- Jacob learned a lot of lessons working at a young age
- Jacob wrote his book after discussing the moral dilemmas imposed by virtual reality with a fellow theology student, for example whether it was wrong to kill someone in a video game
- "Humans were always far better at inventing tools than using them wisely"
- "Every technology will alienate you from some part of your life, that is it's job. Your job is to notice, first notice the difference and then every time choose"
- "One the one hand it's true that technology is morally neutral... but these tools we interact with do kind of nudge us in different directions"
- Unlike past technologies, today's digital technology is different in at least 3 ways, it's much more immersive, is more accessible and more addictive
- Technology is the creation and use of tools for work
- Transhumanism means as humans we have the ability to take control of our evolution and move beyond normal human limitations
- Posthumanism is about the destination of transhumanism
- The World Transhumanist Association became Humanity + and is the official side of this movement
- "We shouldn't just buy into this notion of progress undefined"
- Christians think this transhumanism issue doesn't apply to them, but when you unreflectively use technology and pursue this technological understanding of the world, you're slowly becoming more and more open to that way of viewing reality"
- "We're also closer to becoming transhumanists than we're likely to admit"
- "Morphological freedom is the right to determine what form you want to take"
- This logic is also used with LGBT issues
- "We live in a society that says your identity is something you select and achieve. We worship a God who gives us an identity by something that has been achieved by Christ on the cross."
- "Christianity says you are one with Christ, and that's not a loss, that's a good thing"
- "We can legislate things, but ultimately this is about what people want..we worship a God who's third person is the Holy Spirit who transforms us in our inner being and changes what we want and makes us desire Christ"
- "Augmented reality is an overlay of the virtual on the real world...Pokemon Go put this augmented reality in everyone's consciousness"
- Examples of augmented reality include Google glasses and smart windshields
- Mind cloning and mind uploading are about moving beyond the biological altogether
- There are 2 kinds of AI (artificial intelligence), narrow AI (weak) which are becoming more and more common, and strong AI (AGI or artificial general intelligences) which relies on more synthetic intelligence and more closely resembles human intelligence
- There are some careers that are more likely to be automated than others.
- "Even as we increase automation... we need to make sure that human skills are not falling by the wayside"
- "If God took on flesh to redeem us...then maybe escaping the body isn't the route we should take"
- Placemaking is improving the place that God has put us as opposed to escaping
- Being embodied in the physical world means being rooted in those physical places
- The book is available on IVP website or Amazon and other retailers
- Contact jshatzer@uu.edu