In the magazine TintaLibre and in El País, Ekaitz Cancela, member of the CNSC, problematises and reflects on how to transform social networks into ‘social institutions’ where the conditions of social communication necessary for our democratic societies can be democratically defined. The concern is based on a reading of the political power accumulated by social networks and the conditions that define our behaviour through their consumption. Donald Trump and Elon Musk exemplify the complex relationship between technology, power and contemporary collective imaginary where the concepts of democracy and market economy bifurcate in contemporary capitalist societies.
Information technologies and the infrastructures they produce not only facilitate the ideological influence of the far right, but are also connected to the economy, climate change or international conflicts. In this result, it would seem hard to believe that collective welfare or individual rights trump national security agendas or the survival of capitalism. Digital architecture is the dominant normative framework of neoliberal rationality, linked to the generation of attention that extends to interpersonal relations in the physical world. But networks must become social institutions where the conditions of our social communication are democratically defined, not based on the logics of the market, allowing for a public life. The proposal is hopeful in the understanding that any society can, through imagination and collective collaboration, give meaning to its institutions.
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