Digital streamlining

In Leaving the vampire's castle Mark Fisher had already warned of the toxic and destructive atmosphere that, alongside the expansion of social media, had poisoned the left. Fisher detected a dangerous tendency toward maximalism and culture war (above class warfare), the boasting of moral purity, finger-pointing, digital lynching, and a marked inclination toward overacting and spectacle.

For Fisher, and contrary to what the 2.0 emergence had foreshadowed, the new politics was practiced by atomized individuals without any connection between them and without correlation with any type of effective articulation in the real world. 1st Law of the Castle It's "Individualize and privatize everything."

In He's at the Vampire Castle now.Yasha Levine goes further and believes that social media not only multiplies toxicity, but is intrinsically harmful, as it is designed precisely to generate and amplify conflict, irritate, and accentuate differences. And an even more alarming warning: social media domesticates us. It disarms us with a false illusion of empowerment and connectedness, while anger weakens and exhausts us. And we fail to act. We have too much information and too little organization. At a certain point, information no longer equals power, but impotence.

And all in a brilliant gear – digital bubble – that specifically adjusts to our interests – algorithm – that finds us even if we don't look for it – personalized suggestions – and that has an infinite production and reproduction capacity –Auto Play Reels. Dopamine 24/7.

A hard reflection, which connects with another of the hits of the season, A strange spot in the sky, by Albert Lloreta, which speaks to us of the growing confusion and evident cognitive collapse... that paralyzes us.

Lloreta's disturbing post attributes collective blindness (and paralysis) to the fact that we have "accepted Silicon Valley as a mediator between reality and us" and describes the powerful technological hub as a "militant industry" that seeks to erode democracy, conventional states, and the common good to advance compulsive consumption and hate speech. By imposing an atomized, disconnected, and privatized network, it has perverted the essence of the early internet.

The cataclysm finds us hyperconnected, but, paradoxically, more isolated than ever, without spaces for real encounter and exposed to sharks like Peter Thiel – PayPal, Palantir, Bitcoin... – who believes that freedom and democracy are not compatible and openly speaks of democracy as "a system to be overcome."

However, it's not very realistic to think of a massive de-digitalization, and we'll probably have to settle for a certain digital rationalization: abandoning certain networks, reducing our exposure, taming the algorithm, silencing notifications, establishing screen-free zones and times, regaining physical contact, building real networks...

Now, artificial intelligence is putting pressure on the situation, and it would seem logical, given recent experience, to apply a basic precautionary principle. But no. It's surprising that now that a new school year with fewer screens is starting—after experiencing the serious consequences of a decade of uncritical school digitalization—we don't consider that, with the introduction of AI in schools, we will likely follow a similar process, but with even more dire consequences if we reverse it.

Incomprehensibly, educational authorities, with one hand, limit screen time while, with the other, hire AI trainers (?) to explain to teachers how to program courses, prepare lessons, grade student assignments, send emails to families, communicate with colleagues... without having to read, write... or... anything. We're doing well.

Just in case we still have time to discourage anyone from uncritically embracing AI, it's worth remembering that behind the ethereal name of artificial intelligence lies the stark materiality of "physical" data centers that require the massive destruction of natural resources. Water consumption alone, for example, is equivalent to the annual extraction of all of Denmark.

What's more, MIT has published its first brain-scanning study on ChatGPT users. The results are revealing: 83% of users couldn't recall a sentence typed a few minutes earlier, brain connectivity dropped 35 points, and the cognitive impairment remained present in subsequent sessions without AI.

It's all too clear. Of disturbing proportions and extremely shady management, artificial intelligence is ecologically destructive and cognitively lethal. I prefer to say it this way and write it down now, so that, five years from now, we begin to regret the feat.