History has shown us that the greatest impact on human society hasn’t come from the accumulated knowledge of centuries, but from the tools we have used. Some may doubt this, but if we look back, inventions like fire, the knife, the wheel, paper, the printing press, the telescope, the telephone, the car, the airplane, the internet, and many others have radically changed our lives—and they have also changed the way we think and interact with the world.
So, if you want to change a person’s life, just give them the right tools. This is the starting point of the book “The Game” by Italian author Alessandro Baricco, widely recognized as a master storyteller. Baricco studied philosophy and music, but has devoted his life to storytelling, essays, media, and culture, reflecting on the dynamic changes of our reality and the way identities are shaped in the digital world.
Known to Albanian readers through novels such as “Three Times at Dawn,” “City,” “The Young Bride,” and “Mr. Gwyn,” Baricco, in this essayistic-philosophical book “The Game,” offers a simplified yet insightful view of our times following the invention of the internet, the rise of video games, social media, e-commerce companies, mobile applications, and most recently, artificial intelligence. This book is for everyone seeking clarity about what has happened over the past three decades—for those trying to understand their environment and how to interact with a world that is increasingly less real and more virtual.
We are in the midst of a gradual transformation, a wild transition toward a virtual reality that has just begun. It will be chaotic, difficult to manage, and full of challenges for each of us to adapt to.
For Baricco, today’s world is the product of evolutionary processes that began with the Enlightenment, through the empowerment of reason, followed by successive industrial and technological revolutions. The 1970s and 80s laid the foundation for what we are experiencing today—with the invention of the computer and the internet—leading to a vast map of tools, networks, and now, artificial intelligence. “We are moving forward with extinguished lanterns,” says Baricco. According to him, while intellectual revolutions once changed the world, now the technological revolution is doing the opposite—it is changing us.
Where once we faced the world of words, today we confront the world of numbers, which underpins the very meaning of the digital age.
Since the invention of the internet and the computer, and changes in the way we transmit, search for, and interact with information, Baricco argues that the aim has been to create a “new human.” A “differently molded human” stands at the origin of the digital choice.
Returning to the power of tools in our history, Baricco gives special attention to the “Human-Keyboard-Screen” figure, walking through two realities: the world and the beyond-world. People have been given these playful, engaging tools—to spend time, to entertain—and in doing so, they have not only transformed the human being, but also realities, markets, and the forces that govern the world.
The author traces this shift back to Silicon Valley and the Californian counterculture of the mid-70s, all the way to the present. “It was the soil from which the digital uprising grew,” he writes. If you want to change a civilization, don’t change human nature—change the tools humans use. This is what today’s “digital heroes” or “makers” like Steve Jobs, Eric Schmidt, Larry Page, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg have done.
A new digital culture has emerged, with new intelligence, in The Game that has dismantled the soul, diverted our attention from reality, and ushered in what Baricco calls the “post-experience.” Experience is a gesture; post-experience is movement. True experience brings fulfillment, completeness, and a sense of wholeness. In this environment, we now live in an era of post-truth. This entire shift has occurred slowly, peacefully, and subtly—without a war. Baricco highlights a few visible and readable events for sharp minds to understand what has already happened: the invention of Spacewar video games (1972), the creation of the World Wide Web by Tim Berners-Lee (1991), Google’s early algorithm (1998), and the iPhone launch by Steve Jobs (2007). The 2018 U.S. Senate hearing with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg symbolized the climax of the great clash between the old and new worlds—a fierce battle for dominance between the powerful of both sides.
Here emerges a new perspective for reflection: the technological world has made society more unequal, less democratic, more autocratic, and has made each of our futures more fragile.
“If anyone hoped that the digital revolution would create a world of equals, where each individual could construct their own value system—let them not fool themselves: all revolutions create elites, and from them, we learn what the hell we’ve just messed up.”
In this new world, we have distanced ourselves from the old world—from theater, cinema, and even books—and entered a virtual world where each of us is no longer a passive observer, but a player. Yet even the digital world is merely an extension of life, of play, and of art itself. Human beings are born to imagine, and in that sense, the virtual reality shaped by the technological revolution is just the next fantasy of the human mind—where each of us is invited to play our own game.
Reading this book will help each of us gain a deeper and more original understanding of the digital age we live in. It helps us grasp generational and cultural shifts. It doesn’t place us in opposing or dogmatic positions on technology; instead, it invites us to be players. Ultimately, it is a modern guide to living consciously in a digital world.
The final section of the book includes 25 theses on The Game—axioms that help us better understand the world shifting beneath our feet. Since I’ve gone on long enough in this reflection, I’ll leave it to you to discover those 25 viewpoints on the new world humanity has embarked upon—a turbulent voyage across stormy seas that we must not only endure but adapt to, if we are to survive and thrive as we always have throughout history.
Play your own Game, too!
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