Things I write in English
Yesterday was a strange day, because I stumbled across an odd discussion on the Fediverse. It started with a Dutch person criticizing the history of the Netherlands, claiming that Dutch kitchens are small because the Dutch used to be barbarians who cooked on the floor.
Non puoi, in questi giorni, scrivere un post sul blog senza passare dall’Iran. È ovunque: nel rumore di fondo dei media, nei soliti editoriali indignati, nel déjà‑vu di una storia che abbiamo già visto recitare troppe volte. Il copione è prevedibile, le battute sono sempre le stesse, e proprio per questo l’unica cosa sensata da fare è attenersi a ciò che si sa, evitando con cura di comprare le menzogne più comode.
People who grew up on Terminator, or similar films, almost automatically imagine that if artificial intelligence ever “took power”, they would do so through an enormously destructive war, full of explosions, killer drones and ruined cities. In that fantasy, the seizure of power coincides with the apocalypse: the AI rebels, attacks humanity and, in doing so, paradoxically ends up destroying the very world it supposedly wants to rule. Yet, as the Noble Cassandra – a fictional character I created in one of my science‑fiction novels – very aptly says: “Control is not lost. Control is relinquished.” And this apparently abstract line, in fact, describes with some precision how things actually work.