I wanted to build the great media of the future. He thought that the internet would become the technology that would revitalize journalism. But the future ended up destroying me.
What happened?
With PlayGround, created in 2008, we managed to position ourselves in the ranking of the 10 media with the most video audience in the world in just seven years.
Such a success.
To combat large-scale disinformation in social networks, Silicon Valley platforms decided to manage with artificial intelligence the monitoring of information that was previously human.
They have solved little or nothing.
After automating such essential decisions as the management of veracity and quality, AI chose the easiest path to combat fraudulent journalism: to stop giving importance to journalism in general.
Now we watch videos of kittens.
The responsibility of making the most important decisions of information and democracy was given to an algorithm. And so my company ended. How could my bet on the future destroy me?
And so he also began diving into the history of the future and became a writer.
In the 16th century, with the birth of modernity, a new time was created: the future, which brought with it the creation of capitalism, a system in which money was invested to earn money in the future and get into debt in the future.
And the mechanical clock appeared.
That fueled the mistaken belief of an objective and linear time that always went forward, thus creating the false myth of the future and progress. The illusion that, thanks to technology, science and the economy, society would get better over time.
We continue to believe in it.
Today our whole society is a clock of colossal proportions; but the sunrise is not the same every day, nor is the palpitation of our hearts uniform or linear, and nature has no straight lines; on the contrary: it is sinuous and changing.
How did we live the time before?
Our ancestors did not believe that time was objective or linear, or that it was getting better. To think about tomorrow, they used words like becoming, which means ‘to come falling’, or destiny, a time ruled by forces beyond our ability.
They didn’t care about the future.
Time was relative and circular, always linked to natural cycles: it was born and died, and then was born again. Ideas that would be ratified by modern physics, such as the theory of relativity, quantum physics or thermodynamics, which advocates entropy and the circularity of space and time.
Becoming as evolution triumphed.
Thanks to what I call capitalfuture (the union of future and capitalism); the way of doing time linked to nature would die in people’s minds in favor of a time that only looked forward, towards infinite economic growth.
Today, no one bets on the future.
Certainly, six centuries later no one believes in the promises of the future. The climate crisis, the threat of AI and the breakdown of the social elevator say otherwise.
But here we go.
Our entire society is still designed according to that fictitious time: five-year business plans, future stock markets, the Ibex 35, the plans of companies and governments for “sustainable” growth… We have decided to continue being deceived by the future because we cannot stop believing in capitalism.
What are the consequences?
Believing that the future would be better than our past and present made us forget the negative effects of our actions. If tomorrow is better than now, why worry about the environment or people’s mental health?
An idea that has reshaped us.
The climate crisis or the overpopulation of our species are the result of this naivety: believing that all our innovations would end up bringing us a utopian future.
How can the myth of progress be eradicated?
We must realize that our Earth and our bodies have limits. Degrowth is the only solution.
This is what the Nobel economists say.
The repercussions of AI are too dangerous to be left in the hands of companies in Silicon Valley whose mandate is to grow economically without limits. But today we are all condemned to innovate without control in order not to be left out of the game.
Any other ideas for not living on installments?
Paying attention again to a time that is not governed by the clock, such as nature’s solar cycles and internal rhythms. Listening to the heartbeat, our inner clock, will bring us back to the present. Salvation has no mystery: it is here and now.
