“I love you, boy from the mobile store at Bravo Murillo 303 who always helps the yayos with their problems with technology. I have seen it several times. Today it was that if the battery does not last, that if I do not find a contact. Today’s lady: ‘Okay, kid, I’ll leave you here for a coffee’”. The tweet is from Gonzalo Remiro and he shared it a few weeks ago. Since then I have thought about the kid’s daily fight and the naive fascination with which governments and companies are embracing exponential technologies, such as the Internet or Artificial Intelligence. Who will protect humans from technology, I wonder sometimes. Finally Twitter responds: the guy from Bravo Murillo, 303. And of course, I think about him so much that I decide to go meet him.
I love you boy from the mobile store at Bravo Murillo 303 who always helps yayos with their problems with technology. I have seen it several times. Today it was that if the battery does not last, that if I do not find a contact.
Today’s lady: well, boy, I’ll leave you here for a coffee. ♥️ pic.twitter.com/INLWtEsYFb— Gonzalo Remiro (@emitiendo) March 18, 2023
As soon as I arrive at the store, I recognize the hero the first time: he is the same one that appears in the photos on Twitter. His name is Miguel, he is 32 years old and he is Spanish of Chinese origin: he has been living in Spain since he was six. The origin is relevant because it is one of the aspects discussed in the thread. “In China the elderly are listened to and respected, here they are despised and considered a burden”, says Mr. Cheng. To which another tweeter, @KamGalCar responds: “China is not an example of respect for human rights, precisely.” Miguel, for his part, explains that in China there is indeed a widespread culture of respect for the elderly, although he qualifies that “each person is different there, here and anywhere”.
All in all, China is a tech giant where social structure has stood above technology. I mean that the identity there is still communal (and family), as well as rigid, authoritarian and patriarchal. On the other hand, in the West, community structures are no longer good or bad, since they are totally dissolved. And the political parties are not in charge of restoring or reinventing these structures because affective ties do not vote or produce. Meanwhile, Europe —which does not generate technology at the level of the United States or China but does suffer its consequences— is not being able to legislate, think or educate about it.
And this is how we have entered a spiral where technology is first developed and then used in a massive way without the slightest reflection on the way of life we are leading, neither by the authorities nor by the public. part of the people who follow this model with no other alternative for survival. But the older ones resist. It is not that they are clumsy or stupid, it is that sometimes they reject what technology offers them and denounce that it is not as easy or efficient as it promises. They remind us that the Internet must be at the service of people and never the other way around. And there is Miguel to listen to them. “What costs older people the most is brand new device,” he explains. “And they need to talk to someone about the change.” I look at Miguel behind the counter and think that this migrant neighborhood store should become a think tank technological. It is urgent to involve people who have gone through different models of coexistence, such as migrants and the elderly, when thinking about the future. Qualified people to identify and correct the limitations of a technology that, not knowing where it is going, runs the risk of becoming a great leap into the void. The unknowns are many, but one thing is certain: the heroes no longer live in Silicon Valley.
