Phil Knight was one of the few who didn’t record it. It was February and the owner and founder of Nike sat lounging in the front row watching LeBron James surpass Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s 38,387 points, the NBA’s all-time record. A photo of all the spectators behind the basket (and of Knight) went viral. Almost everyone raised the mobile phone, today an extension of the human body.
This week a video of the New Year’s Eve celebration in Paris was released. Black mirror sensations. Champs Elysées filled to the brim. Of people, but also of smartphones, to immortalize fireworks dancing above the Arc de Triomphe. “No one enjoying the moment,” the @HumansNoContext account spread on X. There are no hugs wherever the eye can see once the countdown to 2024 is over. And most importantly: there is no empathy. Only devices above any head.
There are schools in Barcelona where many parents have stopped recording their children singing Christmas carols. The centers announced that they would record them. Mobile phones in your pocket, goodbye to the swarm of fireflies, and enjoy.
Memories can become distorted. “Memory can change the shape of a room, it can change the color of a car,” says Leonard in Memento. Therefore, memories are interpretations. A recording prevents them, so they could justify the use of the cell phone. But this is not the reason. As in school, in Paris they were aware that they had better recording. These are acts that do not escape television broadcasts. It makes no sense, then, to start recording when it is certain that the event will be remembered on YouTube, for example, otherwise what moves the majority is that Instagram like that fills us with self-esteem.
“Natural intelligence will be replaced by artificial intelligence that will help people, not to achieve happiness, but to pass time.” Word of Antonio Gala, in an interview in 1991, which was viralized last week on Instagram by a fan account of the writer.
Gala said many more related things that this cut does not include – there are ten hours of interviews on Canal Sur. “To aspire to superhumanity is letting humanity slip through our fingers,” she says. And she did not believe that uncontrolled technological progress was synonymous with well-being: “Paradise and technology are opposite words.”
A reflection on technology and its conception is timely to advance in humanity, in hugs, in empathy.
