We live in a complex moment, where time is so busy that there is no room for reflection. Despite the advent of technology, are we more fragile today?

If everyone speaks at the same time and noise occupies everything, it is difficult to listen and even more difficult to understand by going deeper: we are then more vulnerable to manipulation; if everything is occupied by tasks and haste, if there is no space or empty time to provoke a detour: we will follow the inertia of repeating the same old thing; if technology helps us as well as adds new needs and makes us addicted to it: we end up connected even when we sleep; if quick fixes are encouraged in digital life: anxiety for every concern grows waiting for buttons and not for thought; if the prevailing logics are mostly competitive and numerical and focus on the ‘self’: we become more solitary and distrustful of the communal. Yes, when this happens, we are more fragile.

You say that the hyper-visualisation we suffer makes us not producers but products of the network. Are we condemned to be an instrument of techno-capitalism?

We are not condemned, but we are oriented towards being a product. Although the dress-label that digital technology brought offered written on it ‘more time, more democracy, more knowledge’, we overlooked the fact that its structure put capital at the controls of a handful of companies that accumulate enormous power, seeking not ‘more value’ but ‘more profit’. The key has been to create a space of apparently free socialisation where the ‘I’ becomes the protagonist and is exhibited as a product. On the one hand, the need to ‘be’ and ‘come back’ is created; on the other hand, we and our data are the ‘in exchange for’.

Are we moving towards a more individualist society or a society of the sum of individualities?

If we are talking about a digitalisation governed by monetary forces such as the current one, it does encourage a more individualistic society and insofar as people are identified as competitors, it hinders links between equals and leads the collective to something numerical, or to emotional identification in opposition to another group. There is therefore more than a sum of individualities because a digital structure designed for this purpose is imposed.

A new form of censorship is being generated, linked to the excess of information; how can we get out of this situation?

I think it is important to warn against the illusion that this generates: excess is not the same as ‘the multiplicity of voices’. Excess speaks of a saturation that makes it difficult to see. Too much light also blinds. It happens that delegating to the highest numbers is favoured. As a result, a form of value has been reinforced that promotes ‘the most watched’ as the most important, overlooking the fact that a high audience does not necessarily congregate positive values or contrasted information. In fact, sometimes it is the most controversial or the most scandalous that fuels these high numbers. To get out of this situation, we need to stop the hegemony of this cumulative ‘value’ and revalue the contexts that provide rigour, scientific contrast and ethics.

Permanently exposed, the value of things is measured in likes, followers, views, impact on the network. Who sets the value of things today?

For years now, a scopic value has been established - that is, based on visibility and public attention - which seems to equate with capital, whether in the form of audience, followers or likes. This numerical value is quick and emotional, but above all it is a ‘market value’ that superimposes the most seen as the most valuable, avoiding other forms of value that require ‘another time’ and that are not easily operationalised or predictable. I am thinking of reflection, ethics, justice, creativity.

Can this hyper visualisation of idealised models lead to personal frustration?

It is paradoxical that in the face of the immense number of connected people, we speak of idealised models that here are instead homogeneous models, that is to say, not of plurality but of stereotypes reinforcement and simplified worlds. Perhaps that is why it can be an incentive to aspire to achieve them, because they are concrete and epidermal – even though appearing to be is not the same as being. To achieve them sometimes you just have to silence the ethical voice. And of course it's frustrating, both for those who don't share this way of being/living on the internet, and for those who play the game by recreating an image of life and not necessarily living.

You talk about three aspects that mark life today: acceleration, expiration and excess. We have talked about acceleration and excess of information, what about expiration? Everything is ephemeral: who takes responsibility if everything passes quickly?

The outdated is the basis of constant updating and, in a way, the heart of disinformation. Aware that what is said today, whether true or false, will be replaced by another piece of news tomorrow, there are those who circulate it for some purpose, knowing that few will check the information, and that responsibility will be diluted among the excess of voices. It is therefore extremely important to have media that guarantee truthful information that is not subject to the logic of expiration, saturation and speed.

Is there a strategy to deactivate the collective and promote the idea that there is no solution to the challenges of the present?

The social structure naturalised with the networks where everyone enters from a personal profile around which their own universe revolves, orients interaction towards an individualistic and instantaneous positioning from the purest capitalist logic that chooses quick achievement, here and now, hindering commitment to what requires more time, more listening, more ‘others’. Community deactivation is the ‘default’ encouraged by techno-capitalism. On the other hand, awareness of social problems - which are always collective - also requires collective work, it requires taking care of the links between people. I don't know whether it is a strategy, but there is a clear relationship between the models of the world that are mobilised case after case.

With what you are explaining, do we run the risk of social nihilism when we realise that there is nothing to be done to achieve change?

It is a social risk, insofar as to achieve change we need to deal with complexity collectively, take care of ourselves, imagine and plan, but also undertake work that we cannot easily exhibit and that requires getting out of the pose and breaking with the dynamics of the present. If our energies are exhausted in advertising our projects and not in working on them, everything plays in favour of the world, politics and even war made like a spectacle. Becoming aware of this risk is the switch to mobilise ourselves.

We need to reflect: how can we do this if we are not able to stop and we continue with preconceived ideas? How can we turn towards the slow thinking that you suggest?

It is so important to stop that all initiatives could be put into practice: to disengage, appreciating that there is a lot of addiction in this inertia, to rebuild links that matter and to take care of ourselves, or even to get fed up and leave. The solutions are diverse, contextually and collectively, and it is worth trying them. However, I would argue that what is at stake is not slowness as a goal, but slower thinking that ‘needs to be slow’ because it is an instrument of the awareness, allegiances and imagination that change brings.

Another issue is precariat: can a prosperous society be built on the economy of enthusiasm?

When enthusiasm is instrumentalised to make work profitable by denying payment or considering that the worker is already paid with the satisfaction of ‘doing what he/she likes’, precariousness is legitimised as a ground for abuse. There is a risk that those jobs that entail passion can only be for those who already have resources and can afford to work in exchange for symbolic capital, such as affection, prestige or visibility. A prosperous society is sustained by paying its workers and penalising these abuses.

Speaking of precariousness, I remember your book Fragile, in which you expose the relationship between techno capitalism and patriarchy, and feminism as a response. What do you mean?

Women have usually been in these unpaid or poorly paid productive spheres, so the relationship between the feminised and the precarious has been frequent. From this relationship I draw a parallel between patriarchy and techno capitalism: both rely on turning oppressed subjects into agents responsible for their own subordination; they encourage enmity between women and rivalry between workers; they isolate in the domestic sphere and in connected rooms; they legitimise the sufficiency of payment with affection in one case and visibility in the other. This parallelism would also allow us to assess how feminism can be a propositional example that helps to confront the forms of self-exploitation that techno capitalism encourages. And to do so through awareness raising, sisterhood and mutual care, collective articulation.

You speak of collective empowerment from intimacy. How can we build that collectivity?

Unlike collective bonds that are inherited or assumed without being thought through, the collectivity that is born out of the awareness of shared harm and oppressive intimacy has great political force. For feminism, sharing what hurts us and has been educated to remain silent helps to empower: ‘It happens to me too’, ‘I am not alone in this’. It is a twinning that is present in all collective consciousness of inequality.

Don't you think it is necessary than to generate new narratives to achieve the transformation you mention? And in this sense, what role does art play?

We are living an explosive moment in the creation of narratives that reflect the plurality of identity visions that we are experiencing. Cinema and series would be an example. Although there are other problems that hinder the transformation of the imaginary. In the last century, art has been an allied territory for feminism and political demands for equality. Among other things because it allows us to speculate on what is possible and to test other imaginaries; but also to give shelter to the complexity of the contradictory when we rebel against the identities that limit us but which are also part of who we are.

There is a lot of talk about including technology in schools, don't you think it is also necessary to promote creativity, the values of the commons, art as an instrument of empowerment?

Not only do I think creativity and values education are essential for education, but they are especially essential for dealing with technology and a world that normalises living mediated by it. In fact, I think it is more desirable to go for a creative and reflective school than one that is full of technology but without opportunities to think for themselves.

Last question: the future. We live in a dystopian world where utopias rather than looking towards the future become retro-utopian. Where do you situate utopia?

A human utopia is impossible in a world where everyone survives in front of its-own screen/mirror. Perhaps a first step would be to affirm: ‘Not this anymore’. There is no utopia or improvement in a planet in decline if everyone lives in their virtual world like guinea pigs enclosed within walls where the fields are projected. Utopia lives in the collective motivation for mutual care and not for war, in the primacy of a responsibility and ethics for the planet and for life, in superimposing politics and citizenship on the domination of capital, recovering the value of knowledge and listening, of the recognition of errors, of the passion for meaningful action, also social.

See, «Es imposible una utopía humana en un mundo donde cada cual sobrevive frente a su pantalla/espejo»