After a few days of the technophoric cacophony of the Web Summit, where everything is “disruptive”, “revolutionary” and “the future has already arrived”, we are now preparing to enter the thick silence of the Arrábida Convent, where tomorrow the 20th Forum on the Future of the Information Society will take place, organized by the APDSI Futures Group and whose theme this year will be “Institutions in the face of chaos in the era of AGI” (General Artificial Intelligence).
It’s like going from the frenzy of a luminous roller coaster full of promises, with thousands of participants and euphoric politicians, to a monastery in the middle of nature, dedicated to recollection and reflection, with around thirty very special guests.
At the Web Summit, technology was a parade. The stages shone, the slogans enthusiasm and the feeling that the world would be saved by a startup hovered in the air. There was energy, there was creativity, there was an idea, but there was also excess, superficiality and a certain dazzlement that numbs our critical sense. It’s the festival of innovation, with little pause to think about the consequences.
The Arrábida Convent, on the contrary, requires restraint, silence and introspection. There, the future is not a product, it is a dilemma. Technology does not enter the spotlight, but sits at the table to be challenged, discussed and dissected in working groups, from a geopolitical, societal and individual point of view. That is why this Forum has such particular importance. It’s not the celebration of what will come, it’s the questioning of what we allow to come in the future.
In the country, however, political fascination with technology is growing. A few politicians and leaders seem to confuse enthusiasm with vision and announcements with strategy. They adopt systems before understanding them, promote solutions because “they are modern” and surrender to technological vocabulary without realizing that each step in this field must be accompanied by prudence, ethics and reflection. Technology becomes a flag, slogan and promise, but rarely raises debate.
The speed of innovations exceeds the response capacity of institutions, which find themselves forced into changes that they did not have time to assimilate. And the citizen, lost among apps, algorithms and dispersed identities, stops being a subject and becomes a user and, even worse, a product at the service of technology giants.
Tomorrow, however, at the Convent, there will be no stages with LED lights, nor keynotes explosives, nor buzzwords repeated in chorus. There will be questions, hesitations and concerns, things that have been missing in other spaces. The Arrábida Forum has existed precisely since 2002 to restore density to the debate that technological foam tends to dilute.
And perhaps this is the essential point. Between the contagious excitement of the Web Summit and the gathering at the Convent, there is an interval where Portugal needs to find its place. Neither uncritical euphoria, nor fearful rejection and blind abandonment to the algorithm, nor naive denial of the inevitable. We need a balance between order and chaos on the path of no return to hyperdigital. We know it’s difficult, but it can only come from places like this, where silence forces you to think before acting.
The future of the information society requires this pause. It demands the peace of the mountains after the noise of the technology fair! It requires leaders who resist easy fascination and prefer uncomfortable lucidity! It demands citizenship that does not get lost in the glare of new developments, but that stands firm in defending what is human!
Tomorrow, Arrábida will be that rare space, the place where, away from the noise, one tries to understand what is really at stake. Between enthusiasm and prudence and between speed and awareness, perhaps we will finally find the balance that the Web Summit cannot offer, but that the future requires.
E-governance specialist