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Marta Peirano: "You don't know if you can leave your 15-year-old son alone with the networks"

2022-05-27T13:49:11.287Z


The journalist, specialized in technology, proposes in a new book a reorganization in neighborhood communities in which networks have a relevant role and different from the current one


Marta Peirano, essayist, photographed in Madrid on May 24. Claudio Alvarez

The journalist Marta Peirano (Madrid, 1975) has been reporting on technology for 30 years.

As a result of that dedication, in 2019 she published

The Enemy Knows the System.

Manipulating ideas, people and influences after the attention economy

(Debate editorial)

,

which has been a success with its 10 editions.

Now, in her fourth book in Spanish —

Against the future.

Citizen resistance against climate feudalism

(published on June 9 by the same editorial) - analyzes how citizens can do much more to stop and adapt to climate change: above all, rethink how we organize ourselves as communities, starting with the neighbors .

Social media, she says, should play a different role in that battle.

QUESTION. 

How are digital platforms and the food industry alike?

RESPONSE.

 They have developed an addiction with strategies that are not so different.

With sugar there is a formula, mixing it with salt and fat, which is used to trick the brain into thinking that it is consuming something nutritious without it being true.

They combine this with making the product smaller: lots of fries instead of one fat potato.

It is very similar to what happens with the mobile, which has copied strategies from the gaming industry.

They depend on your data, they want you to generate more.

It is crucial to understand that mechanism to have another relationship with food or technologies.

Q. 

We used to watch TV when we didn't know what to do.

R. 

Yes, but not at work, at the institute.

One layer of complexity that mobiles add is that, unlike a slot machine, they are well regarded.

You can spend all day on your mobile and no one will say: “Look at that gambler”.

They will say: “How much work”.

Q.

 That has changed.

A.

 It depends on the context.

There are families who say: "Mobile phones on the table, no."

But I see on birthdays, especially teenage girls, all of them with their mobile phones.

They teach or send things.

They could each be in her room.

Something is lost in this mediation of a tool that only allows one type of activity.

Your social language is redesigned and you do not know how to develop your own language that depends on the people you are with.

As if you lose colors in life.

We live in a world dominated by something that is not the internet: social networks.

Our political fragility is linked to our inability to relate.

Q. 

It is like being dominated by food with a lot of sugar.

R.

 Yes. In Spain less, although it affects us.

But food is regulated.

The networks, not yet.

When you buy a bag of something in a supermarket, you know that it has gone through a process that ensures that you are not going to die.

Whereas with platforms, as their actual behavior and strategies are opaque, you don't know if you can leave your 15-year-old son alone with those platforms.

I don't know how long the regulation will take.

Q. 

You talk about “feudalism”: digital and climatic.

Why?

R.

 There has been a process of privatization of telecommunications infrastructure, they have invaded all industries.

Everything is data industry.

Now the most important part of these infrastructures is being camouflaged, bought or developed by a small number of companies that are also non-European.

During the pandemic they have become even more integrated: health, education, media.

When I think of feudalism, I think of this sequestration of critical infrastructure that we need for the challenges of the future, especially for climate ones.

P.

 You write that changing the diet is an essential measure to combat climate change.

R.

 I try to understand why we are unable to take the necessary measures to reduce our chances of raising the global temperature by 2 degrees.

We forgo the most interesting solutions: they are cheaper, require less systemic change, less infrastructure development, and would have less impact.

The diet meets these requirements.

P. 

But you have to change the will of millions of people.

R.

 It is not an infrastructure and it is very cheap: you just have to stop eating meat.

We can all afford it.

If we only ate half of it, the impact would be enormous.

Q.

 A key benefit would be community resource management.

Use the example of the community laundry room in Denmark as a meeting place.

A.

 It transcends resource management because what those rooms do is get you to coordinate with your neighbors, which is what we've lost.

This room brings you back to where you are.

Create a suitable framework for you to talk to your neighbor and that is not "it's good for me" or "your children go to school with mine", but rather "we have a common goal and let's see how we get there".

The problem is that we no longer live in a community of resources, but in a society of services.

We are fragile and we are sold to Elon Musk sending us to Mars to work.

P.

 What role should social networks have in this new world?

A.

 I see an energy in crypto communities that I don't see in social networks.

Suddenly, they put together a meme and it becomes something you have to believe in, say that it's very cool, that you're going to buy a Ferrari with that money so that it goes up.

That community, which is purely speculative and does nothing for the rest, can be created around resource management.

It reminds me of the forums at the beginning of the internet, there were people who knew a lot about computers and programming and people who didn't and wanted to learn.

Communities of local things can be generated.

Q. 

How?

A.

 Networks are essential.

The technologies that enable networks can serve other functions.

We cannot depend on Twitter to manage a political, climate or energy crisis.

They are advertising platforms whose goal is not to help us solve those problems.

Q. 

Why haven't communities improved in the pandemic?

R.

 It was the perfect circumstance, although terrible, for the blocks of buildings to generate communities.

However, the only thing that happened was that most people went out on the balcony to make noise and everyone ended up spending more time

online

.

Q. 

How to recover those spaces?

R.

 It has become very difficult to be a community.

It is difficult to break the ice, you have to try many times.

Everyone is sheltered in their individuality, what cell phones do, which is to isolate.

All of this removes your abilities to communicate or they are reduced.

Now with the pandemic it has been seen.

Your only ability was to go out on the balcony and act the idiot or applaud others because it is a threat of community.

People put notes on elevators, took a picture of them, and uploaded them to Instagram.

We have lost a place to meet with neighbors and negotiate something concrete, not abstract.

Q.

 The neighbors are a challenge.

A. 

It has taken me seven years to get to know all my neighbors.

I made it a personal project.

It's not a matter of falling well.

It's not about that.

Our political fragility is linked to our inability to relate to people who live in the same space as us.

P. 

In the networks we find people like us.

We prefer it.

A.

 In the process —which some see as progress and I don't— to a service society, we have lost responsibility for our own lives.

We have won other things, but lost a lot.

Above all, the ability to get to know each other and help;

your community is not the people who like that Smiths record, but the people who lose power at the same time as you.

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Source: elparis

All news articles on 2022-05-27

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