Since 1987, the World Mobile Congress has stubbornly embedded itself in the imagination of Barcelona residents, practically reaching the existential weight of the enormous and horrifying towers of the Sagrada Família. The Mobile's presence in our lives has a certain charm, as there are few events to which the citizenry has dedicated so many discussions and digressions without ever setting foot in the place. This servant is no exception; the only contact I have had with the famous congress is what I have been able to read in the press, as well as the constant presence of cheerful herds of congressmen getting drunk in the restaurants of Ciutat Vella and tumbling out of their doors, to the greater satisfaction of our eminent Guild of Robbers (and the misfortune of those Barcelona residents who still enjoy sleeping without so much shouting).
All of this are minor contingencies; because what is important here is that the omnipresent John Hofmann (one of the most famous bald men in the history of Catalonia), does as Juan Antonio Samaranch did when he shouted that each Olympiad was better than the last, as well as certifying that Barcelona continues to be one of the world's congress capitals. It is demonstrated, in short, that our authorities live happier every day designing a city to visit (in other words, a Barcelona without Barcelona residents); I recommend to the dystopian novelists of the tribe that they hurry to write apocalyptic portraits of the city because, if the dynamic of so many congresses and the exile of natives continues, the image of a city inhabited solely by slick-haired men in corporate attire will become very real.
Be that as it may, the history of Mobile also implies paradigm shifts of global scope, such as the transition from telephony to the new empire of Artificial Intelligence. During the turn of the century, we greeted mobile telephony and the emergence of social networks with immense joy; Facebook allowed us to reconnect with our COU classmates, while Twitter and Instagram had the grace of making us seem much sharper and more handsome. According to chroniclers, the social network is no longer so interesting, because the pretensions of AI are based more on the transhumanist ideal of optimizing our cognitive capacity to the maximum. Typing a whats no longer has glamour; now what excites us is writing a text and having the almighty cloud turn it into a movie.
Typing a whats no longer has glamour; now what excites us is writing a text and having the almighty cloud turn it into a movieThe change is not minor. Social networks were still the mirage of a real community, although their individuals have ended up falling into the schizophrenia and infoxication of the logarithm and the false sensation that they choose content at will. But AI takes the change from social network to content creator to its maximum expression. Very soon, however much it may seem like science fiction, one will be able to come home and ask their virtual assistant to prepare a film about a bittersweet love story between Asian transsexuals, lasting 24 minutes and set in Caldes de Malavella; and it won't be long before the hyper-visualization of the world that images allow offers us to watch a Barça match with the mini-camera that Lewandowski will have embedded between his eyebrows.
Your humble servant is not a technophobe nor is he scared by all these inventions. As I recently heard the collapsologist Tyler Austin Harper say on the magnificent podcast The Gray Area by the great Sean Illing, humanity has faced many technological transformations that have produced a schism between those who thought that innovation would imply either the realization of a conflict-free utopia or the extinction of individuals. But history shows us, says Austin Harper, that even in cases of extreme tension due to technological gadgets as dangerous as atomic bombs, nations have known how to wisely regulate their dangers. In that sense, it is significant that the very inventors of AI have asked governments to regulate its scope and curb its most abusive uses.
The paradigm shift does not worry me because of the (understandable) fear of men and women who fear that, in the future, AI may replace our creative capacity. It worries me, on the other hand, that the most banal use of this new technological field will distance us even further from other human beings and that the apparent optimization of content produced by a machine that thinks for us will alienate us even further from the world. We will therefore have to follow the evolution of virtualism in future editions of this new Mobile without mobiles. And for those who want to sleep peacefully in Barcelona, don't worry; today the press announced that, after the congress, Barcelona will receive 30,000 springbreakers from the USA, ready to fill our nightclubs with beer and happily vomit it on the corner of our houses.
But don't complain, grumblers, we are the city where the new paradigm is brewing.
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