22 Dec In the sights! Motorcycle Diaries # Episode 1: The Accordion Player
In the blog series “Im Visier”, I report in stages on human elevations, social road damage, economic highways, technological developments, global political stunts, personal combinations of bends, encounters in leather and wonderful pit stops.
IN THE VISIER! # Episode 1 The accordion player from Carinthia and the church of artificial intelligence.
At 33 degrees I crossed “the Windische” on my triumphal march to Italy.
This pass is located at 1110 meters above the Adriatic Sea, on the border between the municipalities of St. Stefan and Paternion in Carinthia. The districts of Villach-Land and Hermagor meet here, which means that the village is divided into two districts, although it only consists of three houses and a church.
Before descending from the summit, I noticed a small church hidden in the forest. The bells called me to stop. The sight promised peace and shade.
The engine stopped, the leather suit entered into a wet and salty liaison with my skin. Swelling, I heard music on the footpath to St. Anton’s Church.
Behind the front door, a wonderful world of blue, red, gold and beige opened up. A church room of guests and clergy. A Carinthian original sat in front of the altar, immersed in his accordion playing, the sound was wonderful, the songs rustic. The carpet was red, the floor was stone, the altar was made of wood. Atmosphere. Elysium.
The game lulled me to sleep, my body recovered, my mind settled. Contemplation.
Sunk in the middle of the pews, I listened to the songs about a seemingly simpler, lost time for just under an hour. Folk songs about God, mountains, people, work, love and home. Geography is destiny. Certainly technology too.
This wonderful setting made me think in depth about the debate about AI and its social consequences, which is currently at its peak.
How will global society develop just beyond the present if we turn to a monotheistic technology such as artificial intelligence?
What if we turn technology into theology, like wine into water?
And trinity to digitality?
We do not yet know exactly how it will unfold, but one thing is clear: the response is all-encompassing and concerted, involving all stakeholders in the global community, from the public and private sectors to academia and civil society. In its scale, scope and complexity, this transformation will be an unprecedented experience.
Is there still a balance between horror and potential? Is technology a self-cursed curse or is artificial intelligence a man-made blessing?
We will see. Better still, we will act. In the spirit of digital humanism.
To the sound of “Pfiat Gott, liabe Alm”, I was reminded of a sacred building in Spain. A profaned church in Barcelona called Torre Girona. Located in the center of the campus of the Polytechnic University of Catalonia. Dedicated to science. Surrounded by smooth walls and thousands of students, inside the beautiful devotional architecture from the 1800s is an ultimate calculating machine that seems to have been invented by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz to prove God through a formula.
A supercomputer behind 5 meters high glass, as a visible, sparkling and thinking church core, which bears the name MareNostrum. MareNostrum, our sea! The name goes back to the name coined by the Romans for the Mediterranean Sea and is intended here in a figurative sense to stand for the central role of the system of science. The dual number system necessary for the supercomputer in the sense of creation goes back to Leibniz: zero for nothing, one for God.
He, Leibniz, was probably the first nerd in the history of mankind and the finder of the binary code. A universal password for theological, philosophical and mathematical interpretations of the world. The MareNostrum supercomputer is intended for research in the fields of biosciences, meteorology and environmental sciences.
MareNostrum, I thought, is a prime example of how successfully high-performance computers can be built today from standard hardware and free software and organized as clusters.
In this way, a sensible approach can be taken to wonderful church architecture, which unfortunately is often no longer used as such. AI also in the sense of church intelligence. Perhaps a way in which we can use the power of data and technology for the preservation of creation.
Final chord.
The music fell silent. Glances met. Words and muesli bars changed hands. Refreshment for body and soul. Clear vision, the visor cleaned.
We continued towards the Mediterranean, a triumphal procession.
