PANEL DISCUSSION: Taking The Bait

Avon Theatre, 99 Downie Street, Stratford, ON
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Tickets and details

Mark Kingwell, author of Wish I Were Here: Boredom and the Interface, will join the panel discussion Taking the Bait at the Stratford Festival. In Othello, Iago successfully manipulates and dupes not only the general but everyone around him; the panelists will explore how we shape the successful lie, and how our contemporary society has dulled our faculties for critical thinking. Following the event Kingwell will be signing copies of his new book. Books will be available for purchase.

PANELISTS

Huda Hassan, PhD candidate, Women and Gender Studies
Mark Kingwell, philosopher, University of Toronto
E.B. Smith, company member
Jennifer Stewart, assistant director of Othello

MODERATOR

Desmond Cole, activist and freelance journalist

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.