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Bram and Bluma Appel Salon, Toronto Reference Library, 789 Yonge Street, 2nd floor, Toronto, ON
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Mark Kingwell, author of Wish I Were Here: Boredom and the Interface, joins a panel discussion on how the internet today is affecting civil society. The event is hosted by Toronto Public Library, and serves as the pre-conference kick-off for the 20th annual convention of the Media Ecology Association.
Mark Kingwell, Philosophy professor, University of Toronto
Mutale Nkonde, fellow at Data & Society Research Institute in New York City and expert in artificial intelligence governance
Taylor Owen, Beaverbrook Chair in Media, Ethics and Communications, McGill University
Bianca Wylie, open government advocate and co-founder of Tech Reset Canada
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.