The Man Who Has No Idea meets Roselina Salemi and who, between clicks and likes, escapes the network of numbers to reach the font of ideas
Those connected to a network of incalcuable emotions, thoughts, words, colours, images, sounds, both on and off-line, leave the power to inform but not to judge,
condition, control or monopolize our sensations, possibilities and ideas.
“We all talk about quality, but we are surrounded, even besieged and dominated by numbers. Social control is numerical, and it’s not just in regard to the pandemic.
It’s more subtle when it comes to our thoughts, ideas and the sharing of them.
In the age of social media there is only one way to measure immediately the popularity, consensus, and consequently the marketability of a joke, a title of a hashtag.
Likes, followers, subscribers to a YouTube channel, are tools that legitimize or sink a profile, an idea, a photo.
The real truth: we are held in the grip of “likes”, to exist we must be liked, we must constantly monitor likeability and feed it.
The network is always hungry. The numbers must grow.
To exist you have to post. Studies of social ethics and critical analysis of the network are springing up here and there, but they rightly don’t have great social visibility”.
“No one questions why: should everyone like our ideas? Are ideas good only if you like them? Apparently yes.”
What if we don’t want to support this? Without having anything against impressive algorithms and still stupid chat bots (my bank’s virtual assistant tells me
“I don’t understand” two times out of three) can we find space for ideas we like without caring about likes and followers?
Artificial intelligence is not as neutral as many believe.
It’s still a human setting (instructing) the parameters of AI and writing an algorithm that’s sexist, racist, politically minded and or a liar”.
No one questions: should everyone like our ideas?
The ideas are good only if you like them? Apparently yes.”
The Man With No Idea meets clicks, likes and Roselina Salemi is also published in Il Fatto Quotidiano.it
