McLuhan said: the medium is the message. Postman added: yes! And the message is changing us into something we did not choose to become, it was not pessimism it was diagnosis. In the 1980s he wrote something that seemed exaggerated at the time: we will not be oppressed by technology. we will be entertained until we forget freedom.

At the time there was television, a remote control a few channels seemed little to us and so we took a step forward we didn’t improve the entertainment we made it continuous: endless scrolls, notifications, short videos, feeds that never end. It’s not a system that forces you to stay, it’s a system that makes it difficult to leave, almost impossible. There is a subtle visible difference, but that’s all.

Postman accused television of turning everything into a spectacle: politics, religion, information no longer mattered what was true, but what was interesting did; Postman was right, but not right enough.

Because Guy Debord had already seen it, twenty years earlier, from a different and more uncomfortable angle:we are not watching the spectacle, we are living inside a reality that has been replaced by its representation. It is not a problem of content, it is a problem of relationship with the world.

Debord called it integrated spectacle that condition in which public and private merge, in which the image does not describe reality but replaces it, and this, he wrote in 1967.

He had the television in front of his eyes and saw something that television was not yet: he saw us as we would become.

The spectacle was the merchandise looking at itself. And we have gone further, much further. We have built systems that automatically produce what needs to be watched. Artificial intelligence doesn’t just show you something it shows you what works on you. And it learns it in real time it is not censorship, selection it is not explicit control it is continuous adaptation. They don’t tell you what to think, they show you enough of the right things to make you stop looking for the rest.

Postman was afraid they would distract us. Debord was afraid they would alienate us. We have built a system that does both at once. It distracts you enough not to make you think and, at the same time, it engages you enough to make you stay. The most disturbing thing is that it doesn’t seem like a problem because it doesn’t take anything away from you, it gives you everything.

It is not a dictatorship because dictatorships prohibit and here, nothing is prohibited, in fact everything is available, but only certain things emerge.

Postman did not look to Orwell in preference to Huxley. He did not fear a world in which someone prevents you from thinking, but a world in which you no longer feel like it. Orwell feared that we would be destroyed by what we hate. Huxley that we would be destroyed by what we love. Not punishment pleasure not control anaesthesia.

There is a phrase that has been going around for years without a certain father. Bad habits are cages locked from the inside. You have the key. But you wait for the saviour. The permanent party works this way it is not a prison it is an open cage you don’t get out of because you are still waiting for someone to come and tell you it is time.

Around here we say: who is more foolish, the hare or the one who runs after it? The problem is that today you can’t tell who is running after whom and for what. Maybe you’re the hare. Maybe you are the one running. Maybe the system has abolished the difference. And the hunt continues because neither of us wants to stop.

It is a party, a permanent party where everything is designed to be consumed, forgotten, replaced and, like all long parties, at some point you no longer know why you are there.

There is a scene you know you are at a concert on stage something is happening and, by now, you automatically pick up the phone, not to remember, but to have proof that you were there.

The photo ends up in a cloud and you won’t even look at it again. The photo consumed energy to exist, but for nothing and, most absurdly, you watched the concert through a screen instead of looking at it with your eyes. Stupidity? No, it is not stupidity, it is the system that works that way. After all, you were producing content without knowing it and without stopping to choose it. Who is running after whom? Who the hare who the fool?

Joyce called them thunder. Events that are not immediately understood, but which change everything. Thunder needs silence to be recognised as thunder. We have abolished silence. It is not that nothing important happens any more. It is that we no longer have the space to notice it. We call it boredom. And we cure it with our thumb.

Springsteen wrote a song called Death to My Hometown. No cannons. No bombs. No thunder. Just silent death. The kind that comes while you’re looking at something else. Or worse while you’re looking at just that.

Well, no cannonballs did fly / no rifles cut us down / no bombs fell from the sky / no blood soaked the ground / no powder flash blinded the eye / no deathly thunder sounded / but just as sure as / the hand of God / they brought death to my hometown

Joyce and Springsteen talk to each other from afar. One said: the thunder changes everything, the other said: the greatest damage comes when the thunder is not there. We live in the middle. In a noise so continuous that we can no longer distinguish thunder from silence

Postman feared the disappearance of childhood because he thought that, exposed too early to everything, children would become adults too quickly, here he was right, but not quite right enough. It is not only childhood that has disappeared, adulthood is also disappearing because adulthood requires choice and we have built systems that choose for us.

Childhood was the time when you did not know, and adulthood was the time when you decided. Today the system does not need you to think, it needs you to remain indifferent to what you choose, because it chooses well enough.

It is useless for you to decide, because he decides faster. We do not become children, but we do not become adults. We become users. And the superfluous users don’t notice. Because the feed updates.

Roger Waters understood this. Amused to Death. Entertained to Death was not a metaphor it was already chronicled. Truth, to survive, must become entertaining if it is not, it disappears not because it is forbidden because it does not compete.

Five bad teachers. Five movements. Ellul said that technique is autonomous. Kaczynski that it is self-feeding. McLuhan that it eventually reverses itself. Virilio tells us that the system accelerates. Postman adds the last detail: and as he turns over, he smiles.

The problem is that they are not controlling us. They are working. And the party is not over just because we have stopped looking for the exit.

P.S. The problem is not how much time we spend in front of screens, but how many things we stop looking for ourselves.

P.P.S. We are not addicted to technology we are addicted to what technology has understood about us.

P.P.S. Next time you scroll for no reason, try stopping. Not out of moralism so much as out of curiosity, and ask yourself: did I choose this… or did it choose me?