Book Launch: Virtue in Virtual Spaces
Thursday, September 26, at 5 pm
Geddes Hall, Coffee House
Celebrate the launch of Virtue in Virtual Spaces: Catholic Social Teaching and Technology — the latest book in the Institute for Social Concerns’ Enacting Catholic Social Tradition series published by Liturgical Press.
About the book
At its best, the internet channels the world into a global village of sorts, where digital citizens learn from each other, explore new modes of creation, and help others work through dilemmas in both physical and virtual spaces. Virtue in Virtual Spaces argues that the internet doesn’t have to be the cultural wasteland of click-bait, partisan politics, and vulgar content that we see too often today.
Technology has tremendous potential for good because of the inherent goodness of human creation and creativity which can be achieved through the development and use of technology. The authors draw from writing on virtue ethics and Catholic social teaching to demonstrate this potential goodness of technology. Eight of the main themes of Catholic social teaching are used to build a framework for designing technology to promote human flourishing. In this book, readers will engage with the philosophies behind their favorite social media platforms, examine how the design features in these platforms shape habits and imagination, and gain dialogue-based skills to bring virtue back into virtual spaces.
About the authors
Louisa Conwill is a Ph.D. student in computer science and engineering at Notre Dame. Her research focuses include computer vision, human-computer interaction, and technology ethics. She has a particular interest in how the teachings of the Catholic Church can inform technology ethics.
Megan Levis Scheirer is an assistant professor of the practice with the Institute for Social Concerns and Notre Dame’s College of Engineering. She holds a Ph.D. in bioengineering from Notre Dame. Her research interests relate to questions concerning how technology shapes the cultural understanding of what it means to be human and how technology can be designed to encourage virtue and the common good. She’s also working to bring character formation into engineering curricula.
Walter Scheirer is the Dennis O. Doughty Collegiate Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Notre Dame. He is a global technology leader, serving as the chair of the IEEE Computer Society Technical Community on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence and as a board member of the Computer Vision Foundation. Scheirer is also a cultural critic and historian, commenting on the social context of emerging technologies from the realistic perspective of a technologist, and promoting technology development informed by Catholic social teaching that upholds the common good.
About the series
Enacting Catholic Social Tradition is a series dedicated to the systematic application of Catholic social teaching to real-world problems and issues. Written for both academics and pastoral practitioners who want to draw on and learn more about the rich resources of Catholic social tradition for the practical work of justice, the series aims to strengthen the capacity of the Church to respond lovingly and well to the demands of the Gospel.