Do not read this article

More and more we read, not what interests us, but what interests the algorithms. They know our tastes, those of our friends, what is moving in the environment and want to govern our Internet browsing as long as possible. If this article has reached your eyes through a social network or Google news (always so handy on the left of our lock screen) maybe you should stop and not continue reading.

If you are still determined to continue reading, I warn you that your freedom may be compromised. For good I say, since what I intend today is that you make an exercise of autonomy that leads you not to be fooled by what you read in the networks because nothing comes into your hands by chance. That wise, though apocryphal phrase of St. Teresa of Jesus that said "read and you will lead, do not read and you will be led" is of little use. Today we can say that it is just the opposite, since the readings that, in an apparently innocent and friendly way, appear in our mobile, what they intend is precisely to lead us, to take us where the algorithms want us to go. Knowing how they work and what their objective is the only way to take the red pill that frees us from the reverie in which most of us digitally active people live. 

First of all, it is important to know that the main objective of the robot that recommends reading is to keep us connected for as long as possible. The owners of the Internet live off our surfing minutes. They need us to move, to do as many online activities as possible. This is the way they make their millionaire investments profitable in order to give us their services for free. While we waste time watching short videos, uploading our photos to the cloud, consulting our social networks, messaging with friends or letting us find our way around on foot or by car, we are giving them their raw material, providing them with data on our habits, our way of thinking and living that they translate into highly valued information in the advertising or investment market. The longer we are hooked to the machine, the more data we generate, the more money they make. 

And how do they get their miners (you and me) to keep on cutting the rock, extracting gold for them without paying us a penny? Well, by giving us rewards, small pleasures: getting a "Like" on a photo we have uploaded, surprising us with that catchy headline, cracking us up with that humorous video, or -this is where I wanted to get to- asserting our own ideas. 

We like to be given the reason, that reality conforms to our thinking, that life is easy to understand, that it fits into our schemes. And the algorithms, who know this and want to make us enjoy our time on the web so that we go to the mine again and again, offer us what we want. Therefore, they always suggest us articles, information, messages that confirm any aspect of our ideas or beliefs. If you like beer, you will see that they recommend news in which science reveals the goodness of the drink; if you are a teetotaler, you will constantly see information contrary to its intake. Instead of beer, put terms such as illegal immigration, death penalty, LGTBphobia, vaccines, abortion or gender violence. These are difficult topics to deal with because they have many edges and require deep reflection and analysis from different points of view. The result is extremism, the polarization we are experiencing because, far from opening our minds, reading driven by algorithms locks us in thought bubbles from which it is difficult to get out Have you also locked yourself in a bubble? If everything you read tells you that you are right and that the wrong ones are the others, look at it.  

At home I always learned that I have to make the effort to read, listen or watch the media that do not always go with my ideas because the truth does not have only one sense, sometimes it is in an intermediate point, not everything is black or white, but there is a huge tonal immensity of grays. 

In this sense, Pope Francis, one of those who suffers most from this phenomenon in his own flesh (many hate it without knowing it well and many adore it without knowing it well), proposes the figure of the polyhedron as opposed to the sphere. Many of us are irritated by anything that comes out of our perfect, round and smooth sphere. We do not like that others, perhaps in the antipodes of our ideas or our beliefs, can be right in something because that does not fit us, it humiliates us in front of him; but this is false, it distances us from the truth. The Second Vatican Council called it "to listen, discern and interpret, with the help of the Holy Spirit, the multiple voices of our time". In the polyhedron, we all fit in but we all maintain our uniqueness, because the absolute truth is not possessed by algorithms, nor by you or me, nor by your parish priest, nor by your head journalist, nor by the Pope himself in most of his speeches. The Truth transcends us, it is a Person who likes to shake us up, to take us out of our schemes, and it is the only one that makes us authentically free. Let's go after It!