The Viaduct: What Will Survive the 21st Century?
Hosted By
About Event
What Will Survive the 21st Century? by Ross Douthat
Digital conditions create harsh pressure on human institutions. Simulations replace embodied realities, virtual existence substitutes for real-world interactions, Artificial Intelligence threatens to make work and creativity and even thinking obsolete. The result is what evolutionary theorists would call a bottleneck: A period of profound pressure that threatens traditions, cultures and peoples with extinction. The future belongs to human beings and societies who find a way to be resilient against these pressures -- to make digital tools their servant rather than their master, to build institutions committed to human exceptionalism and grounded in material reality, to marry and start families in defiance of obsolescence, and to embrace a cosmic purpose for human beings in defiance of doomerism and despair.
Ross Douthat is the author of seven books, including The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success and Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious. He is a correspondent for 60 Minutes; previously he spent seventeen years as a columnist at the New York Times, where he also hosted the podcast Interesting Times. He is one of the most insightful observers of American politics, culture, and religion, and has earned a devoted following through considered, contrarian positions and a commitment to traditional journalistic virtues.
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Things to know
Itinerary
Special Instructions
Water will be available at the church but no other drinks or food are allowed inside.
Location
Knox Presbyterian Church
630 Spadina Avenue
Toronto, ON, Canada
About The Hosts
About the Viaduct
The Viaduct is a lecture series highlighting people and ideas that could transform our city.
Season Four is about intention. What would it take for us to choose our future in a world that constantly seems to present inevitabilities.
Each lecture will be preluded by live music played by local artists, from R&B to classical. We meet to be changed—by a sentence that rearranges the mind, a frame that lingers in the dark, a story that can only be told once.
About the Toronto Society
The Toronto Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge is building intellectual infrastructure to promote education, community, and cultural creativity for the next 100 years and beyond.
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