New York Encounter: Technology is costing us our humanity, experts say

Technology is robbing us of our humanity, turning humans in some respects into “disembodied” minds, Paolo Carozza, professor of law at the University of Notre Dame, warned Saturday during a panel discussion at this year’s New York Encounter.

Such a notion might have sounded like science fiction not so long ago. But this “disembodiment” — or “forgetting the centrality of the human body,” as Carozza put it — defines who we are as a culture today, thanks to technological advances that have made things increasingly and enticingly convenient, he said.

Carozza, serving as moderator, was joined on the panel by Christine Rosen, author of “The Extinction of Experience: Being Human in a Disembodied World,” and Notre Dame law professor and bioethicist O. Carter Snead, author of “What It Means to Be Human: The Case for the Body in Public Bioethics.”

Held at the Metropolitan Pavilion in New York City’s Chelsea neighborhood, New York Encounter is an annual, wide-ranging cultural conference organized by members of the Catholic movement Communion and Liberation. The three-day event, which is free and livestreamed online, concludes Sunday.

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