Латинская Америка борется с цифровым мифом Прокруста: алгоритмы угрожают демократии

Sept. 2 (UPI) -- We are living through the digital version of an ancient Greek myth: the bed of Procrustes. In the story, the bandit Procrustes tied his victims to an iron bed and forced each of them to fit its dimensions, stretching those who were too short and amputating those who were too tall. Today, the bed is digital. Across Latin America, public deliberation faces a common threat: bot networks, content farms and coordinated disinformation campaigns aimed at democratic institutions. In Mexico, two journalists devoted a public radio conversation this month to exactly that problem, warning that unchecked algorithmic amplification not only distorts political debate but threatens democratic stability itself. The exchange captured, in miniature, a pattern now visible across the region. The richness of human experience -- doubts, suffering and contradictions -- is increasingly compressed into standardized measures of interaction: likes, shares and clicks. What cannot be reduced to an instantly recognizable reaction risks disappearing from view. This is especially consequential for Latin America, whose democracies require precisely the opposite: citizens capable of reflection and serious public debate. We live in an age in which stridency often substitutes for reason and speed eclipses depth. Ethics struggles for attention. Great ideas and critical thought must compete with an incessant torrent of entertainment, instant gratification and superficial controversy. Humanity, increasingly enclosed within screens and guided by largely invisible algorithms, appears to have accepted a Faustian bargain: exchanging the complexity of existence for the comfort of instant gratification. French philosopher Éric Sadin has warned of what he calls the "Silicon Colonization" of the world, in which algorithms cease to function merely as tools and increasingly influence habits and behavior. Spanish philosopher José Carlos Ruiz has likewise examined how the obsession with constructing a flawless digital identity can consume real life in a relentless search for validation. Digital platforms and, increasingly, traditional media reward the headline over the argument, scandal over evidence and indignation over reflection because those are the currencies that generate attention and profits. Superficiality is not simply an accident of the system; it has become part of the business model. Shoshana Zuboff has described this structure as "surveillance capitalism," an economic order built on the extraction and commercialization of personal data. Its power lies not merely in knowing what people do, but in increasingly sophisticated efforts to anticipate and influence what they will do next. The danger is subtler than mass conformity. The constant pressure toward immediate reaction encourages conformity, discourages complexity and rewards certainty over carefully developed argument. José Ortega y Gasset warned a century ago of mass society, in which individuals risk surrendering their singularity to prevailing assumptions. Zygmunt Bauman later described a "liquid modernity" marked by fragile bonds and institutions. In the digital age, those tendencies acquire new speed and reach, but the heart of the problem is moral, not merely technological. What does not fit the prevailing mold is increasingly difficult to tolerate. People, ideas or institutions that resist fashionable assumptions may be pressured to adapt or dismissed as irrelevant or outside the acceptable consensus. Critical thought is uncomfortable precisely because it challenges easy consensus. This does not mean every dissenting opinion is wise, or that every consensus is false. It means that societies lose something essential when disagreement itself becomes suspect. In Latin America, where political polarization, institutional distrust and social fragmentation already place enormous pressure on democratic life, this tendency deserves particular attention. Public debate too easily becomes a contest of identities and loyalties rather than arguments. Digital platforms accelerate the process, rewarding outrage faster than deliberation and turning complex political questions into opposing slogans. This moral and cultural drift does not affect only the individual; the Syndrome of Insignificance infects institutions -- universities, academies, political parties, churches of various denominations, Masonic lodges, and think tanks -- which, for generations, were bastions of reflection and now seem to be surrendering. They are yielding to pop culture, including what is commonly called 'woke' culture, and to cosmetic visibility over depth of knowledge. Institutional authority is no longer measured by the rigor of its ideas. This is what I call the "Banality of Good": good intentions that are never tested against reality. The alternative is not nostalgia, but the recovery of intellectual seriousness. Ideas capable of enduring have often been nurtured within communities where principles mattered and truth was distinguished from fashion. Latin America needs such spaces urgently: places where people can step outside the relentless current of digital reaction, recover rational judgment and debate competing ideas without reducing opponents to enemies. The region cannot confront its political and social challenges through slogans, algorithms or manufactured consensus. It needs citizens and institutions capable of examining uncomfortable facts and questioning their own assumptions. Awareness must come first. No platform, algorithm or media organization will perform that task for us; their incentives frequently depend on keeping us engaged and reacting. The responsibility therefore returns to the individual. If we are incapable of the self-criticism required to break the spell of banality, continued adaptation to the logic of the digital marketplace may gradually diminish precisely those human capacities technology should serve rather than replace. We still have time to climb out of the Procrustean bed. But doing so requires courage: the courage to embrace complexity, tolerate disagreement and remember that human dignity begins with the noble and sometimes uncomfortable act of thinking for ourselves rather than surrendering to the mold. Carlos Cantero is a Chilean academic at the International University of La Rioja in Spain and the author of "Digital Society: Reason and Emotion." An international lecturer, adviser and consultant, he focuses on adaptability in the digital society, ethics, social innovation and human development. The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.