Tech&Society: “The Experience of Life”
Aspen Institute España and Fundación Telefónica hosted the forth debate of the new Tech & Society Program on October 31st.
This short seminar explored some of the tensions in thinking about what it means to live responsibly amid rapid changes in both information technology and bio-technology. What are the limits of life? What are our responsibilities in balancing technological progress with responsibility to the human person? In what respects do technological innovations enhance or diminish the experience of life? Our moderated, text-based dialogue includes contemporary authors in the fields of digital information, bioethics, and literary fiction
The debate is a part of the new Tech and Society Program, a joint initiative between Aspen Institute España and Fundación Telefónica. The program aims to establish a forum for reflection on the big questions posed by advances in digital technology, and its widespread impact on multiple sectors of society, including human relations, politics, education, economics, and medicine.
Digital technology is radically changing almost all that we do, from the way in which we conduct business to how we educate the next generation, to the ways in which we remember to coexist in a democratic society. What are the most important technological changes and tendencies and in what we can we prepare to face them? What specific forms of technological change are improving our both individual and collective lives? What is technology´s impact in terms of political participation? How does technological development affect the work force, productivity, and the perception of health and of life?
Moderator
Todd Breyfogle (@ToddBreyfogle)
Todd Breyfogle, Director of Seminars for The Aspen Institute
Todd Breyfogle is Director of Seminars for the Aspen Institute, overseeing a number of seminar offerings, including the Aspen Executive Seminar on leadership, values and the good society—since 1950 the heart of the Aspen Institute’s humanities-based executive leadership development programs.
Todd moderates seminars for the Aspen Institute and has published and lectured widely on the great books, political philosophy, theology, literature, and liberal education. He serves on several non-profit boards, is a recipient of research and curriculum grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Arts and Humanities Research Board (UK), and the Templeton Foundation, and is editor emeritus of The American Oxonian, the quarterly publication of the Association of American Rhodes Scholars. He is the editor of Literary Imagination, Ancient and Modern (University of Chicago Press, 1999) and co-editor of Philosophy, Politics, and the Conversation of Mankind (Colorado College, 2016). Before joining the Aspen Institute, Todd was a Fellow and Program Officer at Liberty Fund (where he gained extensive experience organizing and facilitating great books discussions) and taught in and directed the Honors Program at the University of Denver. He has taught as an adjunct professor at the Iliff School of Theology and as a visiting lecturer in philosophy and religion at the University of Tulsa. He has lectured at universities in the US, UK, Canada, Romania, and India, including Oxford, Cambridge, Princeton, Dartmouth, Concordia, Wesleyan, and the University of Chicago. He currently chairs the board of the American Academy for Liberal Education, serves on the board of the Alliance for Liberal Learning, and in 2012 was elected to the Senate of the Phi Beta Kappa Society. In 2015 Todd was appointed by Queen Elizabeth II to the Order of St. John, an 11th century Order of Chivalry of the British Crown.
A Colorado native, he earned his B.A. at Colorado College (Phi Beta Kappa) in Classics-History-Politics. He attended Oxford (as a Rhodes Scholar), where he read Ancient and Modern History and Patristic and Modern Theology. He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago’s Committee on Social Thought (as a Century Fellow and Javitz Fellow).
