Last night I got to talk to my brother in Thailand on the phone for a half an hour at 3 cents per minute. He had internet access and was using a headset connected to his computer, dialing through Skype, and rang the house phone where I'm staying with the Havard's here in Mishawaka. The audio quality was no worse than any landline call you would make across the street, not choppy, no lag, no echo. Wow! He has also been using his account on Flickr to post a ton of awesome pictures from the trip. Check out the nice feature of how Flickr organizes by date the picture was taken. If you click on a particular month you even get a thumbnail for each day.
A couple nights ago I went to Theology on Tap to hear John O'Callaghan speak about "The Church & Science and Technology - Are Science and Technology the Enemy?" He didn't refer directly to the Catholic Church at all throughout it, but referred more implicitly to the body of Christ which the Church consists of. I'd like to summarize my experience of it rather than a comprehensive overview of all of it. Regarding the ethical dilemma of creating technologies that may be used for evil, there are two things to consider: We need to remain concerned about the big picture and not just the work on our desk. I work in a small division currently which forces me to be aware of the business opportunities and risks rather than just the programming that has been assigned to me. This needs to be equally true of our moral ethics. The relationships we experience in our work are quite possibly more important than our work may be. We struggle with whether the variety of e