Benedict talks to bloggers

The pope had a few words for, well, me, a couple days ago. He asked bloggers to basically make the internet less machine and more human being. Less Matrix, more Neo.

From Vatican Radio:

The need to give the Internet a soul and humanize the dynamics of the digital world was at the heart of Pope Benedict XVI's message Saturday to participants in a conference on modern means of mass communication.

Promoted by the Italian Bishops Conference, "Digital Witness" draws together experts in information technology, social networking, web journalism and blogging to focus on the language we use and the way we communicate as Christians in the online society.

Pope Benedict told participants that the task of every believer who works in media, is to ensure the "quality of human contact, guaranteeing attention to people and their spiritual needs". "This is increasingly urgent in today's world", he said, at a time when Internet appears to have a "basically egalitarian" vocation, but at the same time, "marks a new divide", the "digital divide" that "separates the included from the excluded"

And this is my favorite:

"The dangers of homologation and control, of intellectual and moral relativism are also increasing, as already recognizable in the decline of critical spirit, in truth reduced to a game of opinions, in the many forms of degradation and humiliation of the intimacy of the person"

This continues his theme of actual truth, not just cleverer opinions. He also addresses the viral nature of the internet. Which reminds me of this movie I watched the other day with my fiance called "Untraceable." It's about a psychopath who creates an elaborate system whereby his victims are killed live via the internet -- and more quickly the faster the hit count rises (in other words, more quickly the more people log in to watch).

The film comes to a pretty cynical conclusion: that tens of millions of people would log on to watch a live homicide, driving the victim that much more quickly closer to death, if given the chance.

I don't know if that's true, but it speaks to the voyeuristic nature of some of the stuff you can find on the internet. Not just porn, but hardcore wipeout stuff. And I don't mean stuff like Fail Blog, which sometimes is pretty funny and to my knowledge has never shown anyone getting fatally wounded. There is, aside from the sex trash, some pretty violent stuff out there that can just further desensitize the population. The pope is wise to address this.

But basically, he's inviting bloggers to bring a little more God into the blogosphere. Hope I can help a bit.