In addition to its fictional narrative side in which Alessandro Baricco explores the possibilities of literature almost more than it recounts, on more than one occasion this Italian author, as a good philosopher, faces the task of the essay, of the critical review away from the approaches of mere creative invention.
This aspect was openly manifested in his work Los barbaros. And on this occasion the principles of that essay on barbarians are reviewed, which stripped the miseries of the current world of the immediate, of prefabricated needs and tastes. It is not that The Game is a second part, but in a certain way there is an evolution in the perception about what continues to happen in this unstoppable revolution that unfolds a reality combined by networks on our global world, under the disturbing augury of Artificial Intelligence .
We recently talked about the book «Fake News. The new weapon of mass destruction«, A disturbing essay. but for Baricco this is only a derivative of our becoming immersed in the technological, and not always so distant from what our subjective condition capable of the greatest conceptual constructs has always supposed.
Rectifying is wise. And in parallel with philosophies. So Baricco brings a point of rectification in The Game. Perhaps those barbarians who appeared back in 2008, the year of publication of the first mentioned essay, were not the menacing elements willing to destroy everything. More than anything because all of the above, the abominable twentieth century full of wars and any previous era mired in fundamental controversies about all kinds of essential rights and freedoms, did not point to something better either.
Thus, according to the current Baricco, loaded with new reasons and perspectives, it can be understood that the era of technology follows an inertia that is not always annulling, plagued with risks, yes, but probably as a sign of the ability of our civilization to unite currents of thought or ideologies. To end up falling into the worst of the possibilities is then a matter of personal decision in a maremagnum of opposing versions.
The media are giving up space in the face of the currents of opinion more or less directed by some and by others among so many networks, probably looking for a selective adjustment by the technological giants and yet, from whose platforms new voices always end up emerging that are contributing new ideas.
Thus, in this coming and going of ideas, intentions, fake news, attempts at manipulation and other bad arts, critical thinking, despite everything, continues to appear on each new occasion. Until perhaps one day we will entrust everything to AI, that Artificial Intelligence that can convince us, which Gran Hermano, of the benefits of letting us be swayed by his plan to balance everything or to destroy everything.
Because worst of all, the most perverse side is that in this delivery to the digital, in that way of communicating and interacting like a lost profile between the networks, we end up considering our existence as that game that always ended with the blinking letters «game over '.
You can now buy the book The Game, an interesting essay by Alessandro Baricco, here: