Join us for a lecture in the Illinois Forum on Human Flourishing in a Digital Age Speaker Series with Antón Barba-Kay.
Time Change
We live in an age of hyper-awareness of generational differences. Digital technology accelerates our sense of time in a way that both undermines traditional age categories (like "child" or "elder") and hypes up differences between new categories (like "Gen Alpha" and "Boomer"). On the one hand, one's age matters less than ever--everyone is the same age online. And this has put pressure on longstanding ways of establishing the authority of adults over children. On the other hand, the divergences in sensibility and upbringing between an average Boomer and a Gen Zer are likely the largest ever to have been expressed within one human lifespan. It is not new that people should feel that their children are very different from them, but it's plain that these differences have nonetheless continued to accelerate. What are the ultimate consequences of this disorienting acceleration? What does it teach us about the nature of time itself? How can we take our time again?
About the Speaker
Antón Barba-Kay is a Distinguished Fellow at the Center on Privacy & Technology. He is also Senior Fellow at the Institute for Practical Ethics at UC San Diego. He was formerly an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Catholic University and Robert Aird Chair of Humanities at Deep Springs College. In addition to his scholarly publications in nineteenth-century German philosophy, his essays about culture and technology have appeared in The New Republic, The Hedgehog Review, and The Point, among other magazines. A Web of Our Own Making–his book about what the internet is and what a difference it makes–was published in 2023 by Cambridge University Press. He earned B.A.’s at St. John’s College and the University of Cambridge, as well as a Ph.D. from the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago.
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://philosophy.illinois.edu/academics/illinois-forum-human-flourishing-digital-age