On Virtuous and Virtual Communities: Civic Flourishing in the Digital Age

About the Speaker

Dr. Shannon Vallor is the Regis and Dianne McKenna Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Santa Clara University in Silicon Valley, a consulting AI Ethicist supporting Google Cloud AI, and a member of the Board of Directors of the Foundation for Responsible Robotics. Her work investigates how human character is being transformed by rapid advances in artificial intelligence, robotics, new social media, surveillance, and biomedical technologies, and has appeared in journals such as Ethics and Information Technology, Philosophy & Technology, and Techne. She is also the author of a 2016 book from Oxford University Press: Technology and the Virtues: A Philosophical Guide to a Future Worth Wanting.

Location

Fort Howard Theater at St. Norbert

Start Date

10-18-2018 7:00 AM

End Date

10-18-2018 8:00 AM

Description

Dr. Shannon Vallor reflects on the broken promises of the digital era, the flawed assumptions about technology and society that have endangered us all, and the urgent need to rebuild a digital age of communities--both physical and virtual--that are founded on a more sophisticated and virtuous relationship to technology, power, and human progress. As Professor Vallor notes, in the first decade of the 21 century, Silicon Valley technologists promised a new era of unprecedented civic flourishing, free-flowing knowledge, and a global resurgence of democratic values, fueled by the power of the Internet to connect us all. As the second decade of this century nears its end, democratic values are in a steep global decline, with authoritarianism gaining new ground in Europe, America, and the Pacific Rim. Conspiracy theories, myths, and deliberate falsehoods increasingly pollute the information environment. Deep and widening civic fractures have emerged in the most digitally connected societies on Earth. Her question is, quite simply: What happened, and what can we do to fix it?

Shannon Vallor

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Oct 18th, 7:00 AM Oct 18th, 8:00 AM

On Virtuous and Virtual Communities: Civic Flourishing in the Digital Age

Fort Howard Theater at St. Norbert

Dr. Shannon Vallor reflects on the broken promises of the digital era, the flawed assumptions about technology and society that have endangered us all, and the urgent need to rebuild a digital age of communities--both physical and virtual--that are founded on a more sophisticated and virtuous relationship to technology, power, and human progress. As Professor Vallor notes, in the first decade of the 21 century, Silicon Valley technologists promised a new era of unprecedented civic flourishing, free-flowing knowledge, and a global resurgence of democratic values, fueled by the power of the Internet to connect us all. As the second decade of this century nears its end, democratic values are in a steep global decline, with authoritarianism gaining new ground in Europe, America, and the Pacific Rim. Conspiracy theories, myths, and deliberate falsehoods increasingly pollute the information environment. Deep and widening civic fractures have emerged in the most digitally connected societies on Earth. Her question is, quite simply: What happened, and what can we do to fix it?