TORONTO LECTURE - Wish I Were Here: Boredom and the Interface

Gerald Larkin Building, University of Toronto, 15 Devonshire Place, Toronto, ON
View Larger Map ›

More details

Mark Kingwell will give a lecture on his latest book, Wish I Were Here: Boredom and the Interface. The event will is hosted by the Centre for Ethics, University of Toronto and will be held in Room 200, on the Second Floor of the Gerald Larkin Building.

Commentators
Lauren Bialystok (Social Justice Education, OISE, University of Toronto)
Molly Sauter (Communication Studies, McGill University)
Ira Wells (Victoria College, University of Toronto)

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.