Resistance is Fruitful: A Renewed Media Ecology for the Digital Age
- Event Type
- Lecture
- Sponsor
- Department of Philosophy, Foundation for Excellence in Higher Education
- Location
- TBD
- Date
- Feb 11, 2026 5:30 - 7:30 pm
- Contact
- John Schwenkler
- jschwenk@illinois.edu
- Originating Calendar
- Illinois Forum on Human Flourishing in a Digital Age event calendar
Join us for a lecture in the Illinois Forum on Human Flourishing in a Digital Age Speaker Series with Brett Robinson
Resistance is Fruitful: A Renewed Media Ecology for the Digital Age
The rise of artificial intelligence has intensified long-standing concerns about disconnection, fragmentation, and the thinning of human experience. Drawing on thinkers such as Wendell Berry, Paul Kingsnorth, and James Carey—as well as emerging experiments in digital fasting and community-building—this talk explores how small acts of resistance can nurture deeper forms of attention, embodiment, and shared life. Rather than proposing a program of technological rejection, the lecture highlights simple, embodied practices that restore our sense of place and personhood in a world increasingly shaped by efficiency and automation. The invitation is to imagine resistance not as withdrawal but as cultivation: planting seeds of meaning and community that can grow even within the cracks of a digital age.
About the Speaker
Brett Robinson is an Associate Professor of the Practice at the University of Notre Dame's McGrath Institute for Church Life. In this role, he teaches and conducts research on media, technology and Church history. Brett is the founder of the Church Communications Ecology Program at Notre Dame, a program for Church leaders to engage more deeply with the challenges and opportunities created by the rise of digital technology and artificial intelligence.
Brett teaches courses on the history and philosophy of technology. He is the author of two books and numerous essays on religion, media and culture. His essays have appeared in Wired, Church Life Journal and Catholic News Service. Brett has also served as a producer on three documentary films that have aired on EWTN and in theaters nationwide. Brett is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame and has a Ph.D. in Mass Communication from the University of Georgia.
About the Illinois Forum on Human Flourishing in a Digital Age
Housed in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Illinois, the Illinois Forum on Human Flourishing in a Digital Age supports study and research into the possibilities for human flourishing in contemporary society.
The activities of the Forum combine philosophical reflection on human nature and the human good with practical reflection on the possibilities for living well, and for designing tools that contribute to human flourishing, in a world shaped by digital technology. Learn more: https://fhf.philosophy.illinois.edu/