MINNEAPOLIS LECTURE: Wish I Were Here

Walker Art Center, 725 Vineland Place, Minneapolis, MN
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Mark Kingwell will give a talk on the subject of his new book, Wish I Were Here: Boredom and the Interface, as part of the The Mack Lecture series. 

ABOUT THE BOOK

Offering a timely meditation on the profound effects of constant immersion in technology, also known as the Interface, Wish I Were Here draws on philosophical analysis of boredom and happiness to examine the pressing issues of screen addiction and the lure of online outrage. Without moralizing, Mark Kingwell takes seriously the possibility that current conditions of life and connection are creating hollowed-out human selves, divorced from their own external world. While scrolling, swiping, and clicking suggest purposeful action, such as choosing and connecting with others, Kingwell argues that repeated flicks of the finger provide merely the shadow of meaning, by reducing us to scattered data fragments, Twitter feeds, Instagram posts, shopping preferences, and text trends captured by algorithms.

Mark Kingwell is professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto.