Like many other journalists who cover technological information (he has been doing so for 15 years at La Vanguardia), Francesc Bracero (Seville, 1964) has felt at certain moments anguish due to the speed at which new developments in that field occur, because the speed of the changes, and that led him to want to understand how it got here. So he began to delve into books and the Internet, to compare stories and data until he deciphered what determined the transition from analog to digital society and who is behind the homus tecnologicus that we have become.
He now shares all that knowledge in Bicycles for the Mind (Península), a book that, according to its subtitle, is a journey from the first PC to artificial intelligence “designed for people who don't understand technology,” in the words of his actor. She confesses that her inspiration came from reading El infiniti en un junco (Siruela), the essay in which Irene Vallejo takes the reader on a journey from papyrus to the digital book to explain the significance of the invention of books.
Why did you choose Steve Jobs' phrase 'bicycles for the mind' as your title?
The book has had three titles throughout the writing process. I think the latter reflects very well an idealized concept of computers as machines that have allowed us to expand the capabilities of our brain to provide great advances to humanity.
His book presents technological advances as the fruit of privileged minds and geniuses. How much is reality and how much is personal fascination?
I hope I have reflected reality, although the book contains my personal vision. It is true that there are characters that fascinate me, but the reader will discover some great unknowns, with incredible stories, who have made decisive contributions to the way we live today.
After delving into the history of so many innovations, have you detected any common denominator? What made them possible?
We owe many of the technological advances to the humanistic vision of its creators. Persistence in carrying out an idea is essential.
Of all those interesting stories, which one has surprised you the most? Who do you think was the most visionary?
It would be easy to say Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, but there are striking stories from people not so well known, such as Bill Atkinson having the idea of hypertext that makes the Internet possible while he was high on LSD. I am also fascinated by Claude Shannon, the man who first built a machine capable of learning, a mechanical mouse called Theseus, and who also developed the theoretical basis of digitalization.
One aspect that the book highlights is that in the advances of technology, it is not always the person who has the idea who carries it out. He details that several successful products associated with Apple are actually proposals from engineers at Xerox Park or Bill Gates. Why does so much happen in this sector that the one who innovates is not the one who finally succeeds?
Human knowledge is cumulative within a scientific discipline and each generation benefits from what the previous one discovered, but in technology all this is multiplied. Patents protect creators, but it is very difficult to prevent someone from finding new ways to innovate based on the discoveries of others.
After documenting the entire process, where would you say the leap from analog to digital occurs?
I hadn't thought about it, but perhaps the calculator was our first step in a world that was going to become digital.
And of all those you review, what would you say has been the technological development that has most transformed our lives?
Internet, without a doubt. It has changed our world completely. Its union with mobile telephony has been the definitive leap.
The positive and exciting image that he transmits when talking about the development of computers, the Internet or the iPhone is broken when he talks about social networks. Why?
The negative consequences of social networks in aspects such as political polarization around the world and the generalization of misinformation are indisputable, and this occurs because they are designed to obtain maximum economic benefit. Those who run them simply respond to their shareholders, never to their users.
He writes that the spirit of social networks is far from that which inspired the first visionaries of digital technology. How would they be designed by them?
Wrong or not, those early visionaries wanted to change things to improve people's lives. A resource that Steve Jobs used to employ to recruit valuable professionals was to put them in the position of continuing with a boring job or going with him to change the world. I don't know how they would change the networks, but I think they would be more responsible than the current ones.
He claims that the permanent attack on privacy is a toll of digitalization. Isn't it too high? Doesn't that dismantle the argument that technology is neither good nor bad in itself but depends on the use to which it is put?
I don't think so. The permanent attack on privacy is today a toll of digitalization due to the misuse that many of the actors involved give it, but there are different ways of doing things.
The book also addresses the imbalance between users and technology corporations. “On the user's side of the screen there are only people, with a brain and a mind. On the other, thousands of experts working to incline us to certain commercial and even electoral behaviors.” It has a solution?
The first step to counteract it is to be aware of how these corporations operate and, every time we interact with them, think about how they may be taking advantage of us to try not to give them advantages.
Regarding AI, he says that people's lives will be better if their limits are well marked. Do you see it possible to put doors to the (technological) field?
Of course, limits can be set. There is the demanding law that the European Union is preparing, slowly. My final vision is that technology is and will be very positive for people if it is created and deployed from the concept of bicycles for the mind that Jobs proclaimed.
