Are Apps Making Us Better Or Worse?

Interintellects Vidhika Bansal and Rosano invite you to reflect on the pivotal role technology plays in our lives, the trade-offs of its everpresence, and finding balance in the digital world.

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Post-salon update: read takeaways from our conversation.

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Nowadays, so many goods, services, and experiences are just a tap or click away.

Need a ride to the airport? There’s an app for that. Want dinner delivered to your doorstep? There’s an app for that. Looking for someone to go on a date with, or maybe even “the one”? There’s an app for that too. (You get the idea.)

As apps and other digital experiences continue to become increasingly present in our lives, it becomes hard to deny their influence — both good and bad — on how, and maybe even who, we are.

We know technology has changed us and our interactions with others, but in what ways? What societal patterns existed before software ate the world? What do they look like now? What might we want them to look like?

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Some questions we might explore in this salon:

• Are the various digital experiences we interact with getting better or worse? 
• Have we become more or less connected than we were before? How so?
• How does hyperabundance change our relationships with one another?
• In what ways has our use of technology evolved during the pandemic?
• Where and how might we create healthy connections digitally?
  
• How can we build a greater consciousness for how interfaces affect us?

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Suggested pre-salon reading + watching:

The five years that changed dating (The Atlantic)

Screens doubled as babysitters during lockdown. What now? (The Guardian)

Appocalypse: Can you imagine a world without apps? (WWDC 2017 Snippet on Youtube)

Are neighborhood watch apps making us safer? (Quartz)

Does technology cut us off from other people? (Berkeley’s Greater Good Magazine)

Further reading:

Neil Postman: Amusing Ourselves to Death

Alex Danco: The Audio Revolution

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Additional notes

Image attribution: Photo by Hugh Han on Unsplash

If you have any difficulty participating due to financial reasons, send us a message and we’ll buy your ticket.

Hope to see you there!

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