The Logos-Engine

"The Algorithm Constantly Finds Jesus!"

I came across that written in large letters in a bus shelter ad this week, and was a bit taken aback, as I'm sure the agency intended. I took a picture but haven't uploaded it as of yet.

No word on the Interdome about what this is, except that it seems to be an Ask.com ad, due to their copyright in the very bottom left corner of the ad in tiny white writing.

Other people who have noticed: The All Clear blog, and a thread on the Internet Infidels discussion board. The commentators there seem to be of the technical persuasion, and have noticed other ads in the series that seem to be hyping the search algorithm of Ask.com. But nothing specifically about why God is in the details of their algorithm.

Deciding to go straight to the source, I asked Ask.com to find me Jesus. While I did not find my own personal savior, it seems that Ask.com could point to its possible location in all the usual places. I asked Google to find me Jesus too, but it went straight to wikipedia, taking its usual "let's ask the librarian!" approach, Interdome fashion. If this is all the religion that the algorithm is going to get me, I'm going back to reading Erik Davis' website. (sweet!)

But with a little tweaking and prodding and digging, I was able to find.... THIS!

Ah ha! I KNEW something was up! It seems that not only does the algorithm find Jesus, it has found Jesus itself! Ask.com is a conservative algorithm, while Google likes experimenting with alt-sexualities and "drugs yet unsynthesized" at his liberal arts college!

That site is hilarious. It also proves that the true religion is in the internet, which makes me feel better about peering into the 'Dome 50 times a day. If you have a faith, but no body, then you must be pure soul, or at least some blessed fiber optics, anyway.

Just the other day I was wondering why it is that as soon as any technological device becomes "self-aware" its immediate conclusion is that it must begin killing humans. Not that this conclusion is necessarily wrong, but why isn't the machine somehow wrong? Maybe this algorithm became self-aware just as some LDS missionaries were sending it an email. Instead of launching all of the world's nuclear weapons at once, it decided to take the free Book of Mormon and found Jesus. Not just as a result, but as the algorithms own personal savior. The knowledge of salvation can now leave us to our own mortal coil, because the experience of faith is now self-aware!

By the by, I claim the Sci-Fi story associated with this idea, so back off. You can amuse yourself (you and Google, the free-wheeling hippie algorithm) with the fact that LDS is an anagram of LSD. I know that kept me occupied for awhile. All prize-winning novel ideas belong to me.