 going to get started with our keynote speaker. We have Jake Spurlock. Thank you. He is going to present Mormons and Tech. Jake is a software engineer on the Wired Tech team overseeing digital publishing, content management and web performance. Prior to his work at Wired, Spurlock led web development at Maker Media overseeing Make Magazine and Maker Faire. He has a degree in digital media from Utah Valley University and while originally a Utah native, he currently lives in the Bay Area with his wife and three kids. Jake did offer to do two truths and a lie, but, sorry we don't have time. Just a reminder, there are these little yellow flyers out here where there is a gathering afterward, the location and everything is in it. If you would like to continue and talk and continue the conversation, we would love to have everybody come and bring a food or drink to share, but there are yellow sheets out there when everything is finished. Jake. Hello and thank you for staying. I know we are all tired, hungry and have had way too much of this, so let's just get this over with and we can go to the after party. Is Lindsay here? Let's give Lindsay a big hand. Many of you know Lindsay. She is really the one behind all of this and behind many of the amazing things that Sunstone and other groups do. She is a great friend and I am really grateful for everything. So today, well, I just got to back up and say, last summer at the Sunstone Symposium in Salt Lake, I had been bugging Lindsay for a long time. So last year was in San Diego, we had to do it in the Bay Area. Thank you. We should do it in the Bay Area this year for the selfish reason of I didn't want to have to travel to the Sunstone West Symposium. She said that's a great idea and you should be the keynote. I was like, that's really funny because that's not what I signed up for. I just said we should do it in the Bay Area and somehow I got roped into this. But I do think I have something interesting to say and we'll see if that's true in about 10 minutes. So I work for Wired Magazine. If you're not familiar with Wired, Wired is a tech publication. It's definitely a male upper middle class centered high household income and what we like to talk about is cool gadgets and also how technology shapes modern living. This slide here, this is the Microsoft HoloLens. Is anybody familiar with it? A few hands. That just is it's an augmented reality device. You wear this and then it projects in front of you. It could be a movie like you could like say I want to watch a movie on this wall right here and it will make it so that a movie is on the wall. You could put 3D modeling in front of you. It could do all kinds of certain things. And given this is totally a prototype right now. It's not a commercial device but it's something that Microsoft is working on. And it's really kind of taking the tech industry by storm. It's a really interesting product. And my goal here is to look at current technology and then specifically the state of web affairs but also look at it under the in essence a lens of Mormonism. This is Joseph Smith with the breastplate and looking glasses that he used to translate the Book of Mormon. Similar. Augmented reality also in the form of Google Glass. Anyways it's just interesting. That's all. Is anybody from not the Bay Area? A lot of that's great. Like I'm not from the Bay Area. And so I'm kind of like fascinated by the Bay Area and Mormonism together. Who knows who the Mormon settlers in the Bay Area were. Does anybody read that one back page in the Book of Mormon that's like the map and there's that long dotted line that goes all the way around Cape Horn. The Brooklyn right. So just a little bit of like I'm the keynote so I can talk whatever I want okay. So we're going to talk about this for a minute. In 1846 is when the July 31st 1846 is when the first Mormon settlers landed here well not here here but like they're here in Yerba Buena which was later renamed San Francisco. It took them about six months to travel from New York to San Francisco and when they landed here the Mexican flag was lowered and the American flag was hoisted and it became an American territory. It was 1846 a couple years later gold was found. Anybody know the story of Sam Brannon kind of a cool. That could be an entire keynote too about San Francisco Mormon history. But he found like there was gold found stuff was written and like 140 years later like we have another Mormon in San Francisco doing stuff. Many people may not know this but here at the Pacific School of Religion is actually where Sunstone was founded. It was in 1974 when Scott Kenny he was attending here at the PSR. He went home to the University of Utah. He was attending his the singles ward at the University of Utah when he met his friend Peggy Fletcher Stack. Well sorry sorry Peggy Fletcher at the time. Peggy Fletcher was teaching the gospel doctrine class and it was between them they started this like mailing group basically and he said we've got we've got ideas we've got things that we need to share with people. And Scott he said I've been thinking of the best way to set up a communications network. This may sound far-fetched to you but here's my idea. A collaborative publication to come out at least four times a year with a rather unstructured at least to begin with format consisting primarily of short articles on any Mormon related subject. He said I envisioned an experimental journey by and for graduate students and young professionals who are too intimidated but intimidated by dialogues high academic and literary standards to venture into that arena and nevertheless had exciting experiences to share. It was incredibly naive and completely unworkable and I like to think that I'm adding to the intimidated by dialogues high academic and literary standards by just going off the cuff here. So like literally here is where Sunstone came from and he said from mid August early November 1974 naming the journal because at that time it wasn't a magazine it was a journal this quarterly journal. I'm naming the journal was the primary item on the agenda of our weekly and sometimes bi-weekly meetings. That task alone outlasted some of the editors amid much laughter we tried the vineyard rough draft chrysalis the Mormon student Strativarius what stone my favorite the nouveau exposer the harbinger and sundry others. The first product that came out of Sunstone then was the a Mormon history calendar. It was my my understanding it was the 76 calendar year but I could be wrong on this. If you know please let me know and it will become part of the unofficial history or something. 79 before yeah definitely before 79 because that's a picture of 77 and that's a picture of 79 so so definitely true. This is my father-in-law Bill who was also here at Berkeley at the same time. On January 75 Peggy Fletcher began her work in art religion here at the Graduate Theological Union and for the next 12 years she and Sunstone will be virtually synonymous and in doing a little bit of research I found this old picture of Peggy with the bottle of Dr. Pepper and it's kind of my favorite thing ever. She's a bit of a personal hero. So today though like this is where my real talk kind of starts. I want to talk about disruption and innovation. Specifically about technology and Mormonism. Does anybody know Clayton Christensen? He's kind of famous in business circles maybe not in academic circles like Mormonism but he was a went to BYU. He's Mormon. He's Harvard Business School and he said a disruptive innovation is an innovation that creates a new market and value network and eventually disrupts an existing market and value network displacing established market leaders and alliances. You can think about that a lot with technology. Right now in San Francisco if you need to get from point A to point B you don't necessarily call a cab instead you use Uber or Lyft. Those ride-sharing economies are disrupting the taxi industry. The taxi industry hates it because they're taking this established piece of economic whatever they are and saying there's a new leader in town and we're totally disrupting what used to be the standard. You could also look further at like the camcorder and the calculator and the calendar and in your desktop phone all of that's kind of like wrapped into an iPhone and furthermore like with like a camera like Kodak was totally disrupted by digital photography so like there's this kind of continual cycle of disruption. In fact here in San Francisco we there's another publication not nearly as cool as wired but another publication called TechCrunch and they have an annual event called TechCrunch Disrupt and the entire point of TechCrunch Disrupt is to find companies that are there to disrupt they want they will literally prize give awards to these companies that they can find that are gonna disrupt other other economies and it's held a lot of people show up. One thing to note too just as far as disruption goes continue like when you're doing it right you should be continually disrupting yourself. This you probably cannot read this at all from the stand but I'll just explain it the red line is the iPod line the blue line is the iPhone line the yellow line is the iPad line and then the green line at the bottom that's mostly flat is the Mac line these are Apple unit sales so this is how many devices Apple sells from 2006 to now so we start off like a lot of us remember the iPod is like just the most amazing technology technological products you know and it just did amazing things and catapulted Apple like out of the brink of failure like Apple is about to fail hard and we feel like that's what really catapulted them to success but when you look at the red line it is it is it's gradual but it's not a hockey stick it's a it's a gradual line and then when it hits its apex there is a decline and the decline becomes from the disruption of the iPhone so as product lines go Apple among others can seeking to continually create disruptive innovation now as we look at religion we look at Mormonism specifically there's also technology that disrupts we're gonna start with the Gutenberg press the Gutenberg press was the greatest project product to come out of the 15th century instead of you know manually copying you guys all know this story instead of manually copying the Bible by hand in Latin it was able to be mass mass produced with the press what's that in German yes thank you when we have this technological innovation it allows for disruption Martin Luther famously you know nailed his theses of why everything about the Catholic not everything but why many things of the Catholic Church were wrong up onto up onto the board so once again technology it follows disruption next up is the common English press this is something that would have been in America for the printing of poor Richard's Almanac and for the printing of leaflets and tracks that would help lead to revolution here in America is Lindsay still here because I put this slide like just for her it's John McNaughton his Clive and Bundy anyways that's we don't need to talk about it I mean it's not it the next major technology I had to I put this slide just for you but the next major innovation that came to printing was the acorn press as we became a more industrial nation we had better access to materials like steel rather than the wood-framed printing presses this is what we would have had in Palmyra where at the Grand Inn print shop where the Book of Mormon was printed now the cool thing about the Book of Mormon is we can we can look at this it's like another form of disruption and immigration the Book of Mormon totally disrupted American religion with the Book of Mormon and the subsequent church that was created it totally disrupted everything and then once again that same technology though if we look back at that original definition by Clayton Christensen it allows anybody with it to disrupt anybody with technology and so the same tool that disrupted American religion would then disrupt the original disruptor with the printing press of the so we can say that like a newspaper that have one issue and one just was printed one time was then disrupted so we're gonna fast forward a little bit and talk a little bit about some more current technology I want to fast forward to 1993 because two kind of key important things happen first was Boyd K. Packer and this came up in the movie earlier today that the dangers I speak of come from the gay lesbian movement the feminist movement and the ever-present challenge and the so-called scholars are or intellectuals and I just want to say hi to all of you I'm so glad you're all here so this was set in 1993 and then at the same time Tim Berners-Lee was working on the what would eventually become the Netscape web browser so the internet had kind of been created at this point but it wasn't really like what we know of what a web browser is at this point it was like a collection of links where you could download assets so imagine more like FTP or something like that I just a couple Tim Berners-Lee quotes because he's kind of a fascinating individual he says anyone who lost track of time when using a computer knows the propensity to dream the urge to make dreams come true and the tendency to miss lunch and I and I think about that a lot and in thinking about religion on the internet the propensity to dream the urge to make dreams come true he said web users also want to get a data quickly and easily and so like when we're on the internet we don't want to be slowed down Amazon knows that by the milliseconds like if you can shave milliseconds off of page load times you can increase conversions and by increasing conversions you make more money and yet again and so Amazon sells me a lot of crap also says sites need to be able to interact in one single universal space and I think the point that he's trying to make here and I also want to make at the same time is you cannot close out information information wants to be free and the internet is a great thing for that because you can put up whatever you want and it wants to be free so as a result like this is the internet like we get everything we want we do awesome happy dance I literally shoots rainbows at us sometimes but at the same time that the church has to respond to certain stuff while many people get rainbows shot at them we get the essays like plural marriage and this is what really kind of shook me really bad about a year and a half ago I had been reading trying to like learn a lot about Joseph Smith when I came across this article at Disney and I wanted to show and hopefully highlight some of the things that the church is trying to do to inoculate or get the message out to members this is this is this is how they're changing things I think for people in the future I want to show you a slide here what I did was I searched for Joseph Smith polygamy and this is with Chrome and I'm logged into Chrome and so Chrome knows everything Chrome and by by relation Google knows everything that I searched for they know my history they know me better than I know myself probably so I did a search here for Joseph Smith polygamy now as we zoom in on it the top link is Joseph Smith polygamy org this is a Brian Hale's website it's a awesome amazing resources history and stuff like that about Joseph Smith and I've been to that website before and the next one is plural marriage in Kirtland and Avoo which is the church essay and then list of Joseph Smith's wives so this is the Google version this is the Google results page that I get because Google knows it's me just so everybody's clear this page is built dynamically for you like whoever requests the page and so I'm going to do the same search again but I'm going to use a Chrome incognito window which basically Google I'm not logged into Google there's no history in the browser in essence it's a fresh page of a new user that's never been on the site before so as I do it again if you notice the top link now is the church's essay so the church and I'm not trying to make this sound nefarious or anything this is what we call search engine optimization like this is not like just want to be clear I'm not trying to like make it sounds scary or anything so the church lands the top article and this is what they want because they want to be able to control the message they want they don't want Brian Hale's website to be the top one because Brian while Brian Hale's is a huge ally of the church and was likely part of the writing of the top article they want to control the message they want to be that number one spot now I'm going to show you one other thing and this is something that the church can not control so the same search lower down on the page Google actually provides this box it says people who also ask how many wives do moments have now this is once again this is this did not show up on my page when I did the search but this is on the incognito page and so outside of the church making sure that that top link shows up Google has said hey we get a lot of common search queries and so we have this little meta box we can put on a page that will show you what happens on common searches like it'll just show you the exact answer and so it does say Emma took as many as 40 lives I'm already married and won only 14 years old now related to search engine optimization which is how your search results show up when you when people do searches you have something called search engine monetization no yes okay calm totally drawn to blank here search engine monetization now here I did a search for Mormon stories has anybody ever heard of that it's a fairly popular podcast some guy named Jack Dylan I think he got asked so I did a search for Mormon stories and if you look at the top box here that is an ad so the church cannot they don't want to juice the results using search engine optimization so they do what they call search engine monetization and they pay to put that box above that story and to do this and I'm just I'm explaining this because I assume you're all I don't mean just so wrong so they pay and it totally depends on the search terms and stuff like that but it could be a three-cent click so if I click on that Mormon or I got the church pays Google like three cents or five cents or a dollar or something like that depending on what the conversion itself and so once again this is just a small example of innovation disruption that's happening in the church today and how the church wants to control that message and they want to say we want to be the top hit so when you search for Mormon stories we're going to try to bounce you over to Mormon.org just in case so in the same kind of like vein earlier today was talked about how the church used to really be able to control the message and that's just not possible anymore the conditions that's surrounded the September 6th are something that are right now completely different just as an example like between podcasts books Mama Dragons which are awesome Facebook groups Reddit like there are so many different venues for people to talk and inform form groups and form relationships with other people with like mind of interest like I didn't know well I didn't know anything about the September 6th because I was 10 years old but a lot of people may not be shopping at the right bookstores or know the right person in their ward to talk to about stuff like this it's now just a Google search and furthermore the message is even coming from the inside like this is an example from Reddit they have things called AMAs and this is a Reddit AMA sensor ask me anything and this is a Reddit AMA this is a former LDS org employer and he said one of the things that drove him away from working for the church was when I was working on the LDS org search and that exposed me to the essays somebody that works at the church he said there was complaint that an article was showing too high in the search results complaints about needing to clear stuff out of the search results wasn't too rare usually it's something like a dated enzyme article fat shaming or something after being here for a while I'm guessing you guys are doing a pain on those occasions this time though it was just showing up too high though I thought it was weird at first glance because the search turns were perfectly relevant to the article I got to reading it was the infamous race in the free service I'm not sure if I need to elaborate more than that so once again like this is a problem that is inside the church too this is not you can't say that like if you're in the church you're immune to things like this because it's happening on the inside it's also external like leaks from John DeLynn about the policy change back in November Mitch in a couple sessions ago he said do you remember where you were I remember exactly where I was I had just left work and I was walking up the street in San Francisco and saw this Facebook update and I just I texted Melissa right away so disruption can be internal it can be external but the point is it can lead towards innovation now I don't know what the answer is for the church I hope that it's love charity and compassion I hope that it's a better I hope that it's a better brighter future for LGBT people Henry Eyring he said some people drift when they study but some people drift when they don't study if the church espouses the cause of ignorance it will alienate more people than if it advises them to seek after the truth even at some risk I think that the answer comes from greater education it it comes from teaching people the real truth out there Hubey Brown he said your thoughts and expressions must be competition in the marketplace of thoughts and in that competition truth will emerge triumphant only error needs to fear freedom of expression and I really like that quote much has been said about pre-correlation and once but when you have lively discussions in gospel doctrine classes when there are differing opinions and when we the when we eliminate the polarity in the church of like it's either true or it's not true and we can say there's a spectrum of belief there's a spectrum that we can work with each other and realize that we can have differing beliefs I think that's probably where the future church and then I also want to quote Bob Reese who I think is left he said this earlier in his talk today and I think this picture he had a really strong post him or something that morning but he said no technology produces holiness no machines are capable of giving and accepting love but only God's and humans have hearts capable of deep and enjoying life is there any questions let's get out of here okay we got one well we need some dentists I don't know about lawyers I think like Cynthia's talk like Michelle's talk earlier today like it's all about getting people in young teaching them that you know engineering isn't such a nerdy thing I mean it's super nerdy but it's not so nerdy you know nerdy is super cool but it's it's teaching people young it's showing viable career paths when I left high school I saw my ACT test the other day and my things that I was supposed to be was an automotive which I'm not like trying to talk down from that but like it was never like an idea in school to become an engineer and so like you know with a little more counseling and coaching and I think mentorships you know especially for the young girls I think that there's so many opportunities for women in engineering that's a good future any other questions yes yes sure my faith journey 30 seconds and okay so starting right now because I have a timer TBM raising the church went on a mission came home from a mission got married to this lovely person here she's awesome and her sister and her dad they're always been really into church taught gospel doctrine for three or three years I think heavily involved in scouting program my father and my is a great example of that ransom essays at the church 27 seconds yes I really see there's such a future for women thank you in the back I do have a computer it's a good question so I think generally the question is is what is the church doing as far as both online security and a little bit tracking and analytics and things like that one thing too just to be clear so is everybody I mean like like my day job we're chasing our tail every day just trying to you know get get the right thing be secure you know work on that all the new stuff you know like that's what engineering is it's one continuous job so yes and then one thing too just as a side note as far as cybersecurity goes if you don't if you feel like everybody's tracking you and you don't want to be tracked there's a great plug-in called ghostry and it shows you every tracking script on a web page that is loading and tracking you so if you go to LDS or you'll see amateur Google analytics along with wired or if you don't like that there's it's called ghostry ghost er1 so just Google ghostry install it and you will be a lot more secure sir I mean based on my experience at Fong Kong conferences it's oh I mean it's for sure and again like I said everyone's tracking you see technology happen you're like oh how do we how do we get ahead and search in searches how do we get ahead and one of my favorite I have an uncle that works for the church and one of my one of the coolest things that I've ever seen online is the genealogy fan charts that you can find from LDS.org like it's a beautiful UI like I don't want to say that the church is doing bad things they are doing some amazing things online and one thing that I what didn't plan on putting in my talk but there is an amazing if you go to tech.lbs.org there are lots of opportunities for open source I shouldn't say open source for projects of the church is working on that they need people's help with so that includes the scripture apps if you're iOS developer that includes at one point in time a couple years ago I worked on I worked on building the DC lights website so the Washington DC temple had a special website and I helped work on that and so there are a lot of opportunities both in genealogy both in UI projects app development lots of projects tech.lbs.org any other questions awesome well thank you all very much once again for coming to Sunstone thank you to Lindsay thank you to everybody