In the first pages of this comic we find a scene that seems taken from the privacy of any family. A father and a daughter, a little girl. They are watching on televisionn “Star Wars. A new hope”. They chat about the movie and the father promises that, during their next joint session, they will watch one of the Harry Potter installments. They prepare to go out into the street and, at that moment, a fateful detail places us in the time in which this work is set: before venturing outside, the two put on a mask. The great avenues of Paris, which we all recognize after a thousand cinematographic and television references, are strangely deserted, in an image that seems taken from a dystopian story…
We are in 2020, on a planet paralyzed by the last of the great plagues that, since the beginning of history, have periodically afflicted humanity: COVID-19. The French cartoonist Philippe Squarzoni, through this short autobiographical sequence, takes us to a time that we all remember (although, most likely, we would not mind forgetting it). The pandemic not only represented a global health emergency, it was also a giant leap for the digitalization of the planet; Suddenly, for most of us, the only way to communicate with our friends and loved ones, to continue working, to maintain contact with the world, was through the mediation of the Internet. While other economic branches languished, technology multinationals multiplied their influence and profits, penetrating even deeper into our homes.
The author of this review believes that he was not the only person who felt briefly disconcerted when Google congratulated him for the first time on his birthday or when he realized that any casual search for information about an artist caused him to appear. , immediately, in a notable position when opening YouTube. Our lives are now routinely followed on the Internet for commercial, advertising and, of course, surveillance purposes. The control that a government and, above all, a private company can exercise over our existence makes Orwell’s visions ridiculous in “1984”. As Squarzoni explains to us – in what we could define as a comic-essay – this also has ecological consequences.
The data processing centers of the conglomerates that dominate the network require increasingly monstrous amounts of energy. Many will remember the wars that bloodied the heart of Africa during the last decade, and that have been associated with coltan, a basic mineral for the computer and telephone industry. Now the focus of geopolitical rivalry has been placed on the so-called “rare earths”, a series of very scarce elements that are considered basic for the most advanced technology, despite the fact that their processing is enormously polluting. Most of these materials are not reusable. All these disturbing factors are explored with magnificent clarity and lucidity in this comic that is, first of all, a warning about the invisible darkness that hides behind each click.