New Beginnings
It's a matter of truth. It's a matter of freedom.
Look around: our feeds are full of content made by resourceful talents and creators.
Instagram is the most polished billboard ever made. A perennial show off of brands and people sharing how wonderful is everything they touch and see.
TikTok... TikTok seems to know me more than I do, bringing me around the world and making my hours pass like seconds.
X has become a successful propaganda machine, is algorithms driven by a man that may be a genius l, but that's also too close to the power to be trusted.
We're starting to play with AI. How to simply put it? It's a miracle, every query reminding us how complex we think we are and how predictable we actually are. AI will multiply our creative possibilities, sure, but will be the largest waste producing technology ever made.
In this frame, humanity will be even more precious. The capacity to discern the truth in a sea of machine baked content will be gold. I'm afraid it will be also of scarce value.
Polished conformity, trapping silos and algorithms: unverifed information will be the running water of the coming years.
And we are risking to navigate this ocean believing we know things. After all, information is everywhere. Truths are everywhere.
But actually the only thing ruling our lives will be distraction. Or, in often quoted Chuck Palahniuk's words:
Old George Orwell got it backward.Big Brother isn't watching. He's singing and dancing. He's pulling rabbits out of a hat. Big Brother's busy holding your attention every moment you're awake. He's making sure you're always distracted. He's making sure you're fully absorbed.He's making sure your imagination withers. Until it's as useful as your appendix. He's making sure your attention is always filled. And this being fed, it's worse than being watched. With the world always filling you, no one has to worry about what's in your mind. With everyone's imagination atrophied, no one will ever be a threat to the world.
This is exactly the bleding edge technology lullaby that enchanted our generation.
How can we stop listening?
Being more human. Escaping the notification slavery. Taking the time to understand who's feeding us with what. Refusing to be the hamster on a wheel of a closed platform. Embracing diversity. Opening the eyes towards a world that exists outside our rectangula black mirrors. Reowning our ways of sharing information with others using better, more open, technologies.
Many other answers come to mind.
All of that needed a blank slate, I needed one.
This weblog is my blank slate.
I already know I won't be consistent as I would like to be.
Life offline calls every second and every second counts.
Nevertheless the idea is keeping track of the better ideas in the open web community, taking notes about the antidotes to the poisoning powers of these years.