Slashdot Mirror
Why Is the Vatican at a Tech Conference? (bbc.com)
An anonymous reader shares a BBC report: As Bishop Paul Tighe sat down for our interview, he joked that not only is he probably the only priest at South by Southwest, but also the only person with grey hair. His presence here marks the first time the Vatican has attended the South by Southwest Interactive conference, and their panel - titled Compassionate Disruption - is one of this year's most talked about events. "In a world where increasingly [we're] not invited to part of conversations, I think if people are interested in having us, we're delighted to be here. "I want to learn and get a feeling for what are the things that are driving a generation of people who are in many ways shaping the world as we know it. He glanced around the room. "Really deep down, I see a lot of people looking for some sort of connectivity." That's certainly true -- though I get the sense for delegates here that means good wi-fi, rather than a strong sense of faith. So Bishop Tighe's mission is to get this industry to find real value in both.
He's going to realise why religions prefer access to children. Adults are a damn sight harder to bullshit.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Religions get nearly all their followers from the most ignorant/impressionable. Both Christianity and Islam have both have spent centuries actively suppressing the threat of their followers getting informed/educated. We can see this in the existence of things like the secret Vatican library, and Sharia Law that denies women the right to attend school. I mean it was only since 1992 that the vatican formally accepted the earth goes around the sun.
http://www.nytimes.com/1992/10...
The church are now under significant threat from technology as things like the internet have enabled information, knowledge and scientific research to flow far more freely then they can control. The bottom line is that people are leaving the catholic church in droves as they realise there's less and less credibility and need to explain things with "magic", so the Vatican realises they need to do something if they want to hold onto their gold palaces paid for by donations they continue to con out of of the poor.
>>https://cruxnow.com/church/2015/05/12/pew-survey-percentage-of-us-catholics-drops-and-catholicism-is-losing-members-faster-than-any-denomination/
It seems like this Vatican representative is filling exactly the same sort of role that Microsoft do at Linux conferences. i.e. trying desperately to figure out any small way that they can still appear to be relevant and to maintain their parasitic chokehold on a society that is increasingly aware of the fact that they add no value and their product is both expensive and crap compared to far better alternatives out there for free.