The release of a series inspired by a William Gibson novel is an opportunity to return to reflect on the consequences caused by the breaking of the barrier between science fiction and reality. As long as Metaverse, AI, augmented reality and their predecessors – such as “cyberspace” – remain literary creations, cultural experiences or expensive “video games”, never mind. Much wrong, however, when such concepts are “believed to be true” and placed at the basis of political and legal choices capable of influencing the real life of people as happens in the incredible “Resolution” of the European Parliament on the need to give legal value to the “Three laws” created by Isaac Asimov for his “Robot Cycle”, in the equally culturally wrong draft regulation on AI prepared by the European Commission or in the recent idea of enacting “special laws for the metaverse” which is nothing if not a normal service of the information society and as such subject to the already excessively existing legislation.
The factors that have caused the breaking down of the wall between reality and fiction are different and operating at different levels. At the base, there is the irrepressible desire of people to live in the “future”, to escape from reality and to transform their individual claims into law. These drives are cleverly exploited by Big Tech thanks to the infantilization of human behavior by deluding its customers that being able to buy everything, to be able to say anything while pretending to be heard and having the latest “smart” watch means “being innovative”.
Amazon Prime
What is Inverse, the series by William GIbson that anticipates (again) the future
by Emanuele Capone
On this plateau due to the necessity of the market, the pillars of the political fiction are based on “new technologies” (which, however, are now moving towards forty and therefore should rather be called “differently young”).
A pillar is certainly the incompetence of the ruling class, including the community, which in an unstoppable compulsion to repeat systematically looks at the finger and does not even notice if there is the Moon somewhere. This is the case – just to give a few examples – of the battery charger directive, of the incredible national debate on the “single network” that has been going on since the “Rovati Plan” or the hallucinating and hallucinatory rhetoric on “predictive justice” which in the silence of civil society is spreading in the world of justice also in Italy. All these are evidence of the fact that political and regulatory objectives are determined elsewhere and that parliaments and governments are reduced to a simple executive function.
The second pillar is the widespread perception, in general media and intellectuals, that we can talk about complex topics without specific preparation. There are multiplying (more or less) old sages and new experts who claim to explain very complex phenomena based, at best, only on their limited knowledge of the way in which messages are published on a social network or by “dramatizing” – in the sense of transforming in short story— the stories of those who at the time were considered nerds or rather, “losers” and who instead changed the world.
The third pillar, less evident but equally solid, is the unscrupulous strategy of large and small consultancy structures, always looking for “new” problems to “solve” – by paying, of course. So, green light for the deluge of bulletins, studies and white paper to prove to be cutting edge and to offer “solutions” to problems never seen before (but only because we have turned away). It doesn’t matter if the expensive project for the “virtualization of the customer experience” or for the “blockchain-powered payroll management” will end up like the Vasa. What matters is the cash flow that moves the process, not the result.
The subjectification of the algorithm, the “society of machines” and the “domination of platforms” are the hypocritical excuse for shirking one’s individual responsibility, placing the blame on evil pagan divinities against whom the poor and defenseless human being can do nothing.
This instrumental collective self-absolution can only be opposed in one way: by remembering that human facts are the responsibility of the perpetrator, not an “avatar” or software, no matter how complex.
Adopting this simple criterion would tear down all the plasterboard superstructure that hides the unsolved problems that no one wants to seriously solve, from the responsibility of software producers, to the inevitability of mass state control, to the failure of the “digital rights” narrative and to the loss of role of states in defining and protecting national interests.
In retrospect, however, when faced with such issues, it is not surprising that the reaction is to prefer science fiction. This, at least, has the undeniable advantage of being conjugated to the future tense when the problems will be someone else’s problem, that is, who will remain with the match in hand without the possibility of giving it to someone else.