Even before our current beginnings in the world of artificial intelligence we mere humans were in grave danger of drowning in seas of data, much of it directed at our minds and wayward passions. Today the risks and perils are higher by several orders of magnitude as we are manipulated by both markets and innumerable dangerous ideologues, some of them very rich and powerful.

Everywhere our own personal data is stolen from us electronically in our new panoptic world, personal data that, despite wink-wink reassurances, could very well be increasingly used against us in untold numbers of ways. Everything said and used in a podcast, for instance, could serve as a convenient personal legal indictment in the wrong hands. Especially as regimes and values “evolve”.

And yet few seem to care. They meet all of this with a shrug, while others cite such warnings as evidence of reactionary madness.

And our grandchildren? It will without doubt all become immeasurably more dangerous for them.

Worse, the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ Himself, is, practically speaking, being eclipsed by oceans of data and words. Who will have time for Him when there is so much to see and do on this Internet? Thus, irony of unspeakably dangerous ironies, the Word is increasingly lost in words —and images.

I had to take up the study of music to get myself off of this damned thing and to return only briefly to observe and report. What you will do to get out of this ‘hyper reality’ and back into creation, the real reality, will be up to you. But you had better think about it while it is still possible to extricate yourself from the quicksand of misdirections. Your grandchildren will need you to be grounded in the really Real.

Stephen Hand, editor