The Human Person and Technology – Episode 8

Bio - Who is Twyla?

Technology – in aesthetic medicine, communications – is all around us. We breathe it, we live it, we are shaped by it. But are we becoming freer, happier, wholer persons – or is technology enslaving us and emptying our human dignity?

We discuss these issues with Twyla Gibson, a Senior Fellow and Adjunct Assistant Professor at the McLuhan Program in Culture & Technology at the Faculty of Information Studies, University of Toronto.

Twyla is an award-winning writer with credits in film, television, print, and interactive media. She recently completed a study for the Canadian Biotechnology Secretariat on Genetic Information and Privacy. She is currently an associate at SOMA Film & Television and senior research associate at Robert D. Katz, C.S.W. Her academic research centers on ancient Greek philosophy (especially Plato); the philosophical and religious foundations of culture and technology; orality and literacy studies; communication and media studies; bioethics (the Hippocratic roots of medical ethics), and peace studies.

• When is the use of technology (communication technology or otherwise) enslaving me rather than freeing me as a person?
  Read Ethics in Advertising, 10.
  And Ethics in Internet, 3
• If technology is not good or bad in itself, but rather it becomes good or bad through our use of it, how do we discern when and how to use technology appropriately?
  Read Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2293.
• Am I basing my sense of self-worth on my friendships and relationships or on what the media dictates I should do, be, or look like?
  Read Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2289.
• How do I carry out my responsibility to the common good as a Catholic and citizen?
  Read Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1913-1915.
• If these are times of cultural transition, how attentive am I to the changes happening around me? What are the values that help me discern whether technology is being used for the good of all humanity?
  Read Pastoral Instruction Aetatis Novae, 3

• The documents on the Pontifical Council for Social Communications website.
• The Decree on the Media of Social Communications Inter Mirifica, of the Second Vatican Council.
• The documents of the Episcopal Commission for Social Communications (English) and Commission épiscopale des communications sociales (French) of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops. 1 2
• Read excerpts of our guest’s Twyla Gibson’s study, Plato’s Code on the McLuhan website