Felicia Wu Song on How Digital Media Devices Influence Us and Our Communities

We find ourselves surrounded by a technological atmosphere today. The devices and media that we consume are so integrated into our lives that we often don’t even notice their presence. Moreover, we don’t consider how these digital tools are influencing us as people and as communities. My guest on today’s show is Felicia Wu Song and she shares much wisdom and insight on this issue through her book Restless Devices: Recovering Personhood, Presence, and Place in the Digital Age

Felicia Wu Song (Ph.D., University of Virginia) is a cultural sociologist of media and digital technologies, currently serving as professor of sociology at Westmont College in Santa Barbara. Her publications include Virtual Communities: Bowling Alone, Online Together, and articles in such scholarly journals as Gender & Society and Information, Communication & Society.

Show Notes

  • Felicia helps us to understand what it means to live in a technological atmosphere.

  • There are two questions that we need to consider with the use of our devices: “What kind of people are we becoming with personal technologies in hand? And who do we really want to be?”

  • We discuss the growing technologies of AI and consider bioethics in regards to them.

  • "All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” - Blaise Pascal (I mistakenly attributed this quote to Kiekegaard in the episode)

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