The Cycle Repeats...

Every year it's the same thing. The Stake has set a goal to index a certain number of names by the end of Winter Semester. Stake leaders enthusiastically encourage members to board the bandwagon, through special Family Home Evenings, firesides, Sunday School lessons and the like. People are called to committees to convince their fellow comrades and countrymen to participate. After three months nothing much has changed. Upon being asked when the last time Molly M. or Peter P. logged on to fulfill their weekly pledge, they respond with an evasive, "Are we still doing that...?" As divine providence grants us increasing ease of connecting with our ancestors, we increasingly fill our schedules with IMing and Facebook pokings. How about we look up the relationship status of our Great Grandfather for a change?

Pseudo Privacy

The World Wide Web can sometimes be just that, a web. It certainly can capture us at our best, but unfortunately, our more forgettable moments seem to be even more sticky. In the age of Facebook and Twitter, what we say and do can be instantly available for the world to consume. However, text snippets, sound bites, and online photo albums only allow a glimpse into our complex lives. Without the context of these bits and pieces of our lives, swift judgments can fly, only to get tied up in today's social networking world. Not only do we need to hold judgment when we surf the web, but we also need to be more aware of what we say and do, because you never know who will be watching.

Obama gets hard lesson on talking to press

The Misinformation of the Sages

I still remember the day I discovered Google could count. I was in the Math lab at BYU and realized I had left my calculator at home. So instead of scrounging around for a piece of scrap paper to figure out what 45 * 6 was, I happily entered the expression in that brilliantly white text box and left Google to do the thinking. Google has become our surrogate brain, simplifying an entire research project into a couple of cleverly-worded search phrases and deciding where we are headed to dinner Friday nights. No doubt Google and the Internet have placed a wealth of knowledge at our fingertips, but I am afraid that our ability to reason and to wonder are at an increasing risk of going bankrupt.