2017-03-29 13:59:00

Connected World: exploring our world with those shaping it


(Vatican Radio) The Sala Marconi here at Palazzo Pio was the scene Tuesday morning of this week for the presentation of a major new book by Prof. Philip Larrey, a US-born priest of the Rome diocese who holds the chair of logic at the Pontifical Lateran University.

Titled Connected World: From Automated Work to Virtual Wars: The Future, By Those Who Are Shaping Itthe work explores the consequences of the new digital age in conversation with leaders including Sir Martin Sorrell, CEO of WPP, Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google’s parent company Alphabet, Maurice Lévy, CEO of Publicis Groupe – and our own Chris Altieri.

Click below to hear our report

Ranging from the death of privacy to the rise of artificial intelligence, Connected World asks the existential questions which will come to define our age.

The Prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy, Cardinal George Pell, introduced the book to the participants in the presentation conference. “These conversations about the future are particularly appropriate to a Catholic university,” said Cardinal Pell, in reference both to the author’s position on the faculty of philosophy at the Lateran University and the broader Core Values project in which the Lateran participates, to the ethos of which Connected World gives expression.

“[In Catholic universities] we have conserved access to a millennial system of meaning, to a tradition of Godly reasoning, which still underpins – at least partly – our way of life,” Cardinal Pell went on to say.

Chris Altieri told the audience he thinks the book offers a profound and expansive look at the kind of thinking leaders in thought and industry are doing. The most fascinating thing and the most important thing about this book is its existence,” Altieri said. “We are being invited in, to hear people with enormous power and influence, think out loud,” he continued, adding, “we don’t get to do that every day.”

“I think that we have a signal service done to us here,” Altieri went on to say, “because we can see patterns of thought emerging, and we can understand intellectual trends – the way that fashions, that vogues in thinking, beyond just terminology, but real patterns of thought – are emerging and converging to create the world in which we live.”

Connected World by Philip Larrey is published by Penguin books, and is available now in stores and online.








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