The promise of technology, topic of debate during the third day of the Congress of the Future

This Wednesday morning, as part of the third day of the Future Congress 2022, experts in various fields covered “The Promise of Technology”, discussing the role of digital space in society, how it can contribute to different aspects and what its dangers are.

Among them, the French journalist and essayist Bruno Patino, author of “The civilization of the memory of fish”, which considers that the addiction we have developed to our cell phones and screens It is not an inexorability but the result of an economic model that forces networks to constantly design instruments to attract our attention for longer.

Editorial director of the Franco-German cultural channel ART and a graduate of the very prestigious SciencesPo School of Journalism, Patino has a long career in the media behind him, both in the written press, on radio, television and on the Internet.

In his presentation, the researcher broke down the case of pedestrians addicted to mobile phones and who represent a danger on public roads. In cities like Honolulu, Hawaii, these “zombies on the phone” are not messed with and fined those who cross the street while staring at the screen of the device.

According to Patino, the first thing that the sanction for this dangerous practice tells us “is that” many of us are screen addicted, and, more than anything, mobile phone screen and network addicted. social partners that we consult on this subject. the screen. ; the second “is that this addiction is so great that it puts our lives in danger from time to time, since we can cross a city street without looking to see if cars are coming and if they can injure us mortally”.

“The third thing he tells us is about how we dealt with the technology issues: We often think that a law, a regulation or a political decision is enough to solve the problem”, which is not enough, he added.

Faced with this phenomenon, he alluded to the fact that he published “books on the attention economy, because I think that is what we are talking about today”.

“The problem is not the technology, but rather the couple who do digital with a certain economic model, which is the model of attention, of the big platforms, who earn their living through advertising. They have developed many living tools of neuroscience to build their services with the ability to rob us of as much time as possible,” he explained.

THE KEYS TO FACE THE FUTURE AND CLIMATE CHANGE

In turn, the Canadian economist Riel Miller, leader of UNESCO’s Global Project on Literacy in the Future, alluded to how little awareness human beings have to face the future.

“We are today dominated by the theme of finding solutions to problems, where the problems we project come from the past and the solutions we invent are those we already know, etc. we are trapped in an industrial solution form of technocratic thinking”said the American in his speech.

This, according to Miller, is due to the fact that as human beings we have a limited imagination, in the sense that we show the enormous capacity to invent and imagine through repetitions of past events.

“Knowing that the changes taking place in the world are based on the past, we can say that this is false. The dictionary of 10 years ago is insufficient to describe today’s world, nor is the dictionary of the next 10 years. years, which does not exist. What happens between the two? We invent things: what exists changes. The question of how to learn to live together is not only to manage in a static and unchanged world or simply to be tolerant and to be able to understand the other, but to be able to relate to a universe which does not stop generating novelties and to surprise us”, raised the expert.

“The real challenge”, then, “it’s changing our relationship with surprise”, he reflected.

Let’s go for a new day of #CongresoFuturo2022!
It’s time to analyze the path we took, the promise of technology was to help human beings, not to replace them. We need #Learn to live together?
Follow the live broadcast on social networks and https://t.co/wFq3VH2ZtN pic.twitter.com/uQgzOsw99q

— Future Congress (@futurecongress) January 19, 2022

During its third day, the Future Congress had as its second block “Disruptive Humanity”, with exhibitors like Alok Sharma, President of COP26 and British MP, and Luciana Tenorio, a Peruvian architect who has devoted the last 15 years to aerospace engineering.

It is a pleasure to speak at Future Congress, which brings together legislators, scientists and businesses, all with a vision for the future,” said Sharma.

In this sense, the British politician argued that “cooperation between these groups is key to tackling climate changeFor example, together we can develop clean energy, lower its prices and find solutions to adapt to it; A partnership between public and private finance can increase investment in climate action in developing countries and emerging economies.”