Hacking Ourselves: From Life to Death

In this talk, I will first offer significant cases of health self-surveillance pursued through technology and, second, I will propose a possible reading of their profound reasons by arguing that, as paradoxical as it may seem, they are a kind of desperate way out of typically neoliberal imperatives of self-optimisation and, thus, individual success. More precisely, I will argue that there is a significant sense in which health self-surveillance pursued through technology, from the case of the quantified self to the case of self-biohacking, can free us from the burden of autonomy that, especially in neoliberal societies, means the unbearable burden of being the best. Indeed, if we can increasingly replace our autonomy with our (technological) automation, we can also increasingly replace our responsibility for our failure with technology’s responsibility for our failure.

About the Speaker:

Simona Chiodo is Professor of Philosophy at Politecnico di Milano. Her latest works focus on the relationship between technological innovation and human autonomy. Her most recent monographs are “Predicted Humans. Emerging Technologies and the Burden of Sensemaking” (Routledge, 2024) and “Hacking Death. Life-Extension Technologies and the Fate of Western Culture” (Routledge, forthcoming). She was Visiting Professor at the University of Cambridge and at the University of Edinburgh, Visiting Scholar at the University of Pittsburgh and spent research stays at Harvard University. She was also Academic Visitor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Toronto. She is a member of the Technology Foresight Centre of Politecnico di Milano.

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This is a talk with audience Q&A presented by the University of Toronto's Centre for Ethics that is free to attend and open to the public. The talk will also be streamed online with live chat here [to be posted].

About the Centre for Ethics (http://ethics.utoronto.ca):

The Centre for Ethics is an interdisciplinary centre aimed at advancing research and teaching in the field of ethics, broadly defined. The Centre seeks to bring together the theoretical and practical knowledge of diverse scholars, students, public servants and social leaders in order to increase understanding of the ethical dimensions of individual, social, and political life.

In pursuit of its interdisciplinary mission, the Centre fosters lines of inquiry such as (1) foundations of ethics, which encompasses the history of ethics and core concepts in the philosophical study of ethics; (2) ethics in action, which relates theory to practice in key domains of social life, including bioethics, business ethics, and ethics in the public sphere; and (3) ethics in translation, which draws upon the rich multiculturalism of the City of Toronto and addresses the ethics of multicultural societies, ethical discourse across religious and cultural boundaries, and the ethics of international society.

The Ethics of A.I. Lab at the Centre For Ethics recently appeared on a list of 10 organizations leading the way in ethical A.I.: https://ocean.sagepub.com/blog/10-organizations-leading-the-way-in-ethical-ai