To illustrate the benefit as well as the danger of technology in education, in his keynote address Fr. Nicolás shared an anecdote from the mid-1990s, when he was serving as Provincial in Japan. “A couple of Jesuit professors from Sophia University told me, ‘The Internet is wonderful. You get so much information so quickly and so easily.’ And at the same time, each said, ‘But I have to confess that now I read less, I think less, and I spend less time discerning what to do.’ If professors say this, what can we say of the students?”
“Why don’t we meet?”
“I am sure you know cases like I do,” Fr. Nicolás also noted, “of young men who connect through the wireless telephone and make friends that way; they have several friends like that around – they never meet, but they always talk on the phone. Then suddenly, one good day, one of them feels like they are going deep enough and suggests, “Why don’t we meet?” At that instant, the other one ends their contact. Because meeting brings problems. Therefore, we keep relationships at the superficial level. This is a very serious flaw in our modern relationships.”