University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign philosophy professor John Schwenkler is the director of the new Illinois Forum on Human Flourishing in a Digital Age, housed in the philosophy department. The forum — which offers an undergraduate course, graduate fellowships, a speaker series and seminars — aims to examine the challenges and opportunities of living in a world shaped by digital technology, and to explore how digital tools might contribute to human flourishing. He talked with News Bureau arts and humanities editor Jodi Heckel.
What is meant by human flourishing?
This is not a question with a simple answer! But it helps to start from the recognition that human beings are one among the many kinds of living things. What it is for a living thing to flourish will depend on the kind of living thing it is: so the flourishing of a dog, for example, is different from the flourishing of an amoeba or an oak tree. With human beings, our flourishing is not just about our having healthy bodies but also about being able to use our minds well and to live with one another in human societies that are flourishing in their own right.
What are the most significant ways that digital technology has changed how we live? Are there other historical technological changes that are analogous to the current period of rapidly advancing digital technologies?
The effects of digital technology on human life have been enormous — and they are just beginning, as artificial intelligence technology is likely still in its infancy. I would put them in two categories. First, there are broad economic effects, such as improved telecommunication and the use of computers to do various kinds of work much more efficiently than it could be done by hand. Second, there are the effects on how we think, feel and relate to one another, as so much of our daily lives are mediated by digital devices like smartphones. In the end, I think it’s likely that the digital revolution will have as big an impact on human society as the industrial revolution and the invention of agriculture did, and as big an impact on the way we think and relate to one another as the inventions of the printing press and the printed word.
What are the opportunities and risks associated with the pervasiveness of digital technology?
The most obvious opportunities are economic ones. Digital technology can help us get a whole lot more done than we could without it, and the rise of AI promises great benefits to scientific research and general economic productivity. But there are also personal, cultural and intellectual benefits, such as the ability to connect (albeit virtually) with people around the planet, and to have access to enormous collections of films, books and works of art. On the side of risks, along with the possibility that AI is going to put many people out of work, I worry a lot about the important things that we lose when we spend so much time on our screens. I worry that this experience diminishes our relationships with one another, impoverishes our experience of the physical world, undermines some of the necessary foundations of a healthy political life and simply causes us to waste a lot of time that would be much better spent in more meaningful pursuits.
How can we ensure we are using digital technology in ways that make our lives better?
This is another challenging question that I think each person needs to answer on his or her own. But my simplest advice is just to use much less of it than we usually do. This follows advice that Aristotle, one of my favorite philosophers, gives in the “Nicomachean Ethics.” There, Aristotle says that good moral characteristics are usually a middle ground between two extremes: for example, like courage is in between timidity and being overly rash. He also says that if you are tempted toward one of the extremes — which he calls “vices” — then the way to combat this is to try leaning into the other one. Given that most of us are likely to spend way too much time on our devices, the solution is to take a shot at spending way too little! Hopefully this will end us up in the middle ground, right where we should be.
How can philosophy help to think about the effects of digital technology on society?
The digital revolution is new and ongoing, but the risks and opportunities that it brings are of a kind we have encountered before, and philosophy has been there in those encounters. Therefore, it helps to learn from what past philosophers have thought when they’ve encountered technological revolutions, and how their thinking stood up to reality. Additionally, philosophical reflection on what’s required for a flourishing human life is perennial — since humans haven’t changed that much in the past 3,000 years, neither has the relevance of philosophers’ arguments about what makes our lives go well.
Editor's Note: This story originally appeared on the University of Illinois News Bureau website. Photo by Fred Zwicky.