Bradley Conversation: The Question of Technology and the Question of the Human

This event will be an in person conversation, and a podcast recording session, featuring Mike Sacasas, director of the Christian Study Center of Gainesville, and Lee Vinsel, a professor in the Science and Technology Studies Department at Virginia Tech.

Here’s what they will discuss: Debates about technology and its place in our lives tend to be characterized by the enthusiasms of the techno-enthusiasts and the anxieties of the techno-skeptics. These debates are often driven by gut-level determinations about whether “technology” is a generally positive or negative force in human affairs. But even when the debates are more nuanced and considered, certain underlying assumptions tend to be veiled by the focus on the technological. Chief among these assumptions are normative presuppositions about what it means to be human, what constitutes human flourishing, and the nature of the good life. The question of technology is ultimately the question of the human. This conversation will explore the terrain marked out by this question and how our implicit answers shape our evaluations of technology.