Even | Perspective

Carla Rodrigues Cardoso

"I need to buy some shoes," he thought. And if he thought about it correctly, he quickly googled the model he was looking for.

The next day, he entered the search engine to go to Facebook. And, suddenly, advertisements for shoes that were similar to the ones he had seen the day before, appeared slowly, as if by magic. And the next day, too. And two weeks later. More and more spacing. When he didn't even remember them, another pop-up appeared, like someone who doesn't want the thing...

Is the Internet open and does it allow you to discover new realities in an unlimited way? Or does it enclose us in a bubble in which we repeat what we know? Whenever we research and build our digital footprint, we leave clues about what we like, look for, desire. Algorithms work on top of these clues - those disembodied beings, mathematicians, calculators, who count how many times a certain keyword is searched, which sites we visited, where we clicked and how long we spent at each online stop. Then, the operations they perform return us to new sources of desire that coincide with the ones we expressed earlier.

Result? More of the same. Isolation in what we are, in what (we think) we want, around our navel. Where is the unknown, what is new, other tastes, other people? Far away, further and further away, with each digital search we carry out.

Director of the Degree in Communication and Journalism
Researcher at CICANT - ECATI
General Coordination of Writing LOC