Applications and social networks are free only ostensibly. We do not pay for them because the product is different: Our time
2020-12-16 21:37:50
Albana Murra
Irene Vallejo / Just like your child feels the impatience of desire - I love him now - but can not understand the reason for the rush. What is the use of speed, when the pleasure lies in fun, extension and being slow. How inexplicable your rude urgencies, hurries, sayings seem: let go, we will never reach this way. Experts of delays, in every game, in every climb of stairs, in every excursion, like a story that never ends. Your child feels that love seeks temporary glory. If you love someone, give them your peace, do not rush, you lose the concept of time.
Undoubtedly, the man of merriment within you has a number of competitors: every moment, the technological tools with their greedy screens to snatch our watches from us. The tech giants are eager to catch the eye in the fast-paced market. Apps and social networks are only ostensibly free. We do not pay for them because the product is actually: our time. Fascinated by sliding images and addictive stimuli, we donate information about our tastes, movements, opinions, dreams. The more the better: we feed the minute banks and a data system that companies will sell and turn into publicity and personalized propaganda. We are the ones for sale.
In the 1970s, before the advent of the Internet and the first telephones, an author of children's literature, Michael Ende, wrote a visionary fable about the plunder of our precious time. Residents of a large city are visited by some mysterious men, dressed in gray, Time Saving agents. These persuasive people promise fat benefits to people who deposit their saved hours every day: instead of half an hour, they dedicate a quarter of a day to each client; reduce contact with their elderly mother; better yet, a mother who stays in asylum but is free, where she is cared for; she does not miss a single day singing or reading close to her asylum friends. The thieves of the time quietly invade society, without exerting any force. Anxiety, urgency and an obsessive rush overwhelm people, who blindly follow the advice of those in gray suits, which moreover make them believe that it was their decisions.¨ A difficult business, to bleed other people's time, second by second. We get it, we need it, we want it. You have no idea what your time means. But we know and we suck it up to the skin. And we always need more and more ¨. Only Momo, an orphan girl living in the ruins of the Roman amphitheater, and the magical Casiopea turtle manage to unmask and tear the gray costumes of the bankers of the time. And we always need more and more ¨. Only Momo, an orphan girl living in the ruins of the Roman amphitheater, and the magical Casiopea turtle manage to unmask and tear the gray costumes of the bankers of the time. And we always need more and more ¨. Only Momo, an orphan girl living in the ruins of the Roman amphitheater, and the magical Casiopea turtle manage to unmask and tear the gray costumes of the bankers of the time.
Përballë përpjekjeve tona për ta dixhitalizuar shkollimin, guru-t informaticienë të Silicon Valley po i rrisin fëmijët e tyre pa ekrane. Në kolegjet private, të shtrenjta fëmijët i bëjnë llogaritë me laps, tabela të zeza. Diçkaje i vjen era e kalbur në Kaliforni, kur kuzhinierët nuk i lejojnë familjet e tyre të shijojnë ushqimet që ata vetë i kanë gatuar.
Në mitologjinë klasike ekzistonte një hyjni që quhej Momo, si vajza e Ende. Legjendarja Momo mishëronte talljen e parëndësishme përpara të githëve, përfshirë dhe banorët e Olimpit: thoshte me ironi që krijimi i qenieve njerëzore ishte i mbivlerësuar. Sipas gjykimit të saj, zotat duhet të kishin parashikuar një derë të vogël që do të lejonte kundrimin e ideve dhe ndjenjave tona të sinqerta dhe të vërteta.
He did not imagine that thousands of years later, we would donate so easily, vital data on our health, our political ideas and our secrets, the authentic seeds of control.
Today this loophole that Momo dreamed of exists, it is precisely certain enterprises that open them to steal our time and intimacy with the key to our imprisoned hours.
Irene Vallejo Spanish writer, in 2020 won the Premio Nacional de Ensayo award for her book ¨El infinito de un junco¨, the fifth woman to win this award. The first female philosopher to win the Celia Amorós Prize in 2006.
* The article was translated into Albanian for Tiranapost.al, by Albana Murra.
