Current technology is a nonstop machine for making content, it has made the big television or film production companies adapt to now be the big providers of digital platforms, good and false information, now it happens every three seconds to one minute , on average, a new video on YouTube, a tweet, a new photo, a new documentary, a new video game, a new series, web clicks, Facebook likes, cell phone geolocation, our account data of networks, our emails… the world today is a world of “Data”.
The question is to reflect on what filters we use to select the information that reaches us, in a world where everything is consulted with the “Google God”, in many of our daily decisions we are guided by artificial intelligence. How can we really know what information is being directed specifically at us? Unless the Internet user knows about laws, fundamental rights regulations, or neuromarketing and propaganda, they will hardly realize how they are being deceived to consume fictitious advertising, or simply consume false information.
We sometimes make transcendental decisions in our lives, with information that is not even authentic, original. There is a lot of talk about creating a “Curatorship” of information selection,
This is a problem that large companies are already facing, from the same technological giants there is so much information that they produce inside that they do not know how to select among so much data.
I really like Michael Bhaskar’s analysis, who talks about Curatorship as a filter for so much information, stating that digital information grows four times faster than the world economy, and that each person alive today has more than 320 times more information than was in the library of Alexandria. Information saturation is generating very high costs.
Saturation has to do not only with information but also with consumption and the so-called “material saturation”, which generates anxiety and a need to have everything quickly.
All this avalanche of consumption and anxiety are phenomena that have been increased since the COVID-19 pandemic, where the saturation on health issues, sale of medicines, antiseptics, disinfectants, face masks, turned many into specialists. Pages full of doctors who gave advice and recommended medications, and again we ask ourselves, where are the Quality and truthfulness filters?
If anyone doubts about who are the great generators of wealth today, and saturation in every way, let’s look at Amazon sales just last year, they exceeded 33.4 billion dollars in 2021. The accounts show a profit net of $33.4 billion, a big difference from the $21.3 billion it managed to raise a year earlier, giving its shares on Wall Street a 13 percent boost.
In the first quarter of 2021 alone, the world’s largest video platform YouTube generated $7.205 billion in ad revenue during the period, an annual increase of 43 percent. In the same period of time, in terms of revenue, the company said it obtained 7,709 million dollars, which represents a growth of 16 percent compared to the first quarter of 2021.
I only hope, dear readers, that this weekend you can see all the videos you are missing from YouTube, all the new series premieres, if you have time left to read the books you bought this week, and if you celebrate Father’s Day with your children , all the new video games out there, not to mention all the deals that are on the big consumer platforms.