The Digital Mockingbird: Anthropological Transformation and the “New” Nature

Within a world-system characterized by processes and dynamics whose interconnections and interdependencies increase exponentially each day, we are passing through an extremely delicate and complex phase of global mutation. What we are witnessing is a radical overturn of the complex interaction between natural (biological) and cultural evolution. The ongoing paradigm shift and profound anthropological transformation create new dimensions, openings, epistemological implications that require new thinking and new thought, as well as different approaches and methods. We are the constitutive elements of a “new” Nature, from a structural, ontological and substantial point of view, in need of a New Humanism that must re-define certain categories (humanity, identity, dignity, Person, values, rights, etc.) in order to succeed in rethinking “being human” within a renewed and complex relationship with the ecosystems. The grand illusions of the hypertechnological civilization: rationality, control, measurability, predictability, and elimination of error; are reinforced systematically by the carte blanche delegated to technique/technology, reintroducing reductionist and deterministic approaches, analyses and explanations, exclusively based on technical knowledge and skills: that is, those which are guaranteed to best support precisely these very illusions. It is precisely this attitude which prevents us from being prepared, which dooms us to an eternal apprehension of black swans, little aware that our very lives are emergency; that they are infinite sequences of black swans. The present-day obsession with doing, designing, studying, and funding only what is “useful,” the insistent search for control and certainty in order to cling onto an illusory sensation of familiarity and reassurance in the face of the radical unpredictability and variability inherent to life and reality (“tyranny of concreteness”). With the advent of artificial intelligence, it has become of the utmost importance to reflect upon the relationship/interaction between man and machine, and the dangers posed by pursuing the simulation of human thought.