Étiquette : global culture

Discovering Global Culture Through Conversations with AI

Publié le Publié dans Understanding Today's Culture (EN)Étiqueté , , , , , , , , 2 commentaires

A New Way to Discover and Explore Culture

Figure in a black suit with a clock for a head, surrounded by words referring to art, culture, the Web, and archives.

Read this article in French:
Découvrir la culture mondiale en discutant avec une IA

A Scene from Everyday Life:

You connect to an artificial intelligence (AI) system.
You ask: “What does contemporary art mean?”
It gives you a definition.
Then it invites you to continue the conversation: “Would you like to explore its history, digital art practices, or its place in culture?”

A simple question has just opened up several paths of discovery.

This kind of exchange is not limited to contemporary art. It can also lead us to literature, poetry, music, cinema, traditions, and the many other expressions of human culture.

As the conversation unfolds, one answer may lead to another question, and then another. We can ask for clarification, compare works of art, discover artists, or make connections between different cultures. Little by little, a path of discovery takes shape, guided by our curiosity and the suggestions offered by AI.

With a search engine, we generally use keywords to find information and visit different web pages. With conversational AI, we can instead ask our questions directly. AI then becomes an intermediary that presents knowledge, makes connections, and suggests new directions for further exploration.

This way of exploring culture has a distinctive feature: we do not need to know exactly what we are looking for. A simple question sparked by curiosity can lead us to works of art, ideas, or traditions we did not know about. Conversation thus becomes another way to navigate the vast mosaic of global networked culture.

However, this exploration has its limits. AI systems do not know everything about human culture. Some works, languages, and traditions are less represented in the information available to them. Their responses may also contain errors. And discovering a work through conversation does not necessarily replace experiencing it directly.

AI systems are gradually becoming new tools, new guides, for exploring global networked culture. But it is still our curiosity, our questions, and our choices that give direction to this exploration.

Human culture remains a territory of discovery. We now have another way to explore it: conversations with AI.

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This text is part of the Understanding Today’s Culture series, a chronicle of our global networked culture.

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Explore Further

🟦 How Do Images and Videos Shape Global Culture?

🟦 We Already Live in a Global Networked Culture

🟦 The Network Walker — Traversing Global Culture in the Algorithmic Age

🟦 Daring to Publish: An Individual Act, a Global Cultural Phenomenon

© Gilles Vallée | Humanist Digital Artist, Poet, Sculptor

What Is Culture For in a Digital Society?

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A Mosaic We Continue to Build

Digital collage combining a woman's face, an old wheel, and a large yellow flower against a white background.

Read this article in French:
À quoi sert la culture dans une société numérique ?

A Scene from Everyday Life:

You go online.
You ask a search engine: “Why is culture fundamental to human existence?”

It replies:
“… it is the very fabric that allows us to make sense of the world, communicate, and cooperate on a large scale.”

But how did this fabric come to be?

Since the beginnings of humanity, generations have passed down knowledge, values, beliefs, stories, practices, and artistic creations. They learn from one another, preserve some parts of their heritage, leave others behind, and invent new ways of living.

Over time, these processes of transmission and transformation have formed an immense cultural mosaic: the entirety of humanity’s culture, in all its diversity. It bears the traces of what human beings have learned, imagined, built, and experienced. And it is never complete.

But what purpose does this culture serve?

It helps us understand the world and make sense of our experiences. It gives us languages to communicate, knowledge to guide our actions, stories to share our memories, and creations to express what we experience.

It also contributes to our collective life. Our values, customs, and ways of thinking influence our relationships, our choices, and the societies we build. Some traditions bring us together; others can be questioned and transformed.

In a digital society, this long history continues in a new environment. The Web expands our opportunities to discover different cultures, share our knowledge and creations, and participate in their circulation.

We are therefore not merely the inheritors of this cultural mosaic. In a digital society, each of us can also play a role in its evolution.

You, who have just asked a search engine a question, are already participating in this networked cultural life. You discover, you learn, and you choose what you want to explore further.

And through what we choose to learn, create, share, and pass on, we contribute to the culture we will leave to future generations.

Culture is fundamental: it preserves the traces of human experience.

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This text is part of the Understanding Today’s Culture series, a chronicle of our global networked culture.

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Explore Further

🟦 Has the Web Become a Cultural Space in Its Own Right?

🟦 We Already Live in a Global Networked Culture

🟦 Global Culture as a Moving Mosaic

🟦 How Do Images and Videos Shape Global Culture?

© Gilles Vallée | Humanist Digital Artist, Poet, Sculptor

Why Do We Still Need Artists?

Publié le Publié dans Understanding Today's Culture (EN)Étiqueté , , , , , , , , , , 6 commentaires
Artistic portrait in pink, red and orange tones, with a face emerging from light and colour.

Read this article in French:
Pourquoi avons-nous encore besoin des artistes ?

An everyday scene:

You go online and open a search engine.
You type: “What is art for?”
Within seconds, you get an answer:
“Art is a way to express emotions, question the world, and connect people.”

All of this is true.
But something is missing.

We are constantly trying to understand the world we live in. Statistics tell us about poverty, aging, or isolation. Scientific research helps us better understand climate change. Economic, historical, and social analyses help us explain the transformations taking place in our societies.

We need all of this knowledge.
But there is more than one way to understand the world.

A statistic can tell us that thousands of people live alone. A poem can make us feel loneliness. A report can describe the consequences of a war. A photograph can make us stop and look at the face of someone living through it. A study can analyze a society. A novel, a song, a film, or a play can take us into the experience of the people who live in it.

These are not competing ways of understanding the world. They reveal different dimensions of it.

This is where the particular role of artists begins.

Artists bring their own way of seeing the world. They can draw attention to what goes unnoticed, give form to an emotion that is difficult to name, or reveal a reality from an unexpected angle. Through their works, they offer us new ways of seeing, feeling, or imagining the world.

But a way of seeing is not enough.

The artist looks for a form in which to share it: words, an image, a melody, a story, a movement, a scene, a film, an installation. The work then becomes a means of communication between a singular way of seeing the world and other human beings.

We do not only need to know what kind of world we live in. We also need to feel what it means to live in it, to imagine it, and sometimes to dream it.

Artists offer us their way of seeing and invent forms through which they can share it with us.

The artistic gaze enriches human experience. Reality is not discovered through rational analysis alone.

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This text is part of the Understanding Today’s Culture series, a chronicle of our global networked culture.

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Explore Further

🟦 Why Continue Making Art in a Digital World?

🟦 Has Publishing Their Work Become Part of an Artist’s Job?

🟦 The More Digital the World Becomes, the More Important the Human Becomes

🟦 Who Will Shape Cultural and Artistic Recognition Tomorrow?

🟦 Why Continue Writing Poetry in a Digital World?

🟦 Why Do Some Human Traces Endure Through Time?

© Gilles Vallée | Humanist Digital Artist, Poet, Sculptor

Why Continue Making Art in a Digital World?

Publié le Publié dans Understanding Today's Culture (EN)Étiqueté , , , , , , , , , , 6 commentaires
A human hand points toward the orange intersection of two black-and-white checkerboard circles.

Read this article in French:
Pourquoi continuer de faire de l’art dans un monde numérique ?

An Everyday Scene:

You log on.
You ask a search engine to show you some artistic creations.
It presents you with photographs, paintings, poems, films, sculptures, digital works, and sound art.

And you wonder: in a world where technology can produce images, texts, sounds, and videos in a matter of seconds, why do human beings still devote time to creating?

Surely, creating is not just producing.

For a human being, creating is an experience. It means searching, choosing, hesitating, feeling, starting over, sometimes abandoning one idea to follow another. The work is the result of this process, but the experience of creating matters too.

Humans have always created to express what they feel, tell stories about what they experience, understand what is happening to them, imagine what does not yet exist, or share their way of seeing the world. They give form to their experience: a text, an image, a piece of music, a movement, an object, a film, a digital work. From the age of cave art to our age of generative art, humans still feel the need to give form to their experience and share it.

Whether it is seen by millions of people or only a few, a creation can have meaning for the person who brought it into being. Because before a work can circulate, be discovered, transmitted, or recognized, someone first had to feel the need to create it.

Technology has always transformed the means of creation. Photography, cinema, computers, the Internet, and now artificial intelligence have opened up new possibilities.

The question, then, is not about choosing between humans and technology. A human being can create with a pencil, a camera, a video camera, a computer, or algorithmic tools. The tools change. The forms change. The way we create changes too.

But human experience continues.

We continue to love, lose, hope, doubt, observe, remember, and imagine. And as long as we feel the need to give form to that experience, we will create.

We will continue making art.

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This text is part of the Understanding Today’s Culture series, a chronicle of our global networked culture.

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Explore Further

🟦The More Digital the World Becomes, the More Important the Human Becomes

🟦Why I Continue to Write and Publish in a World Saturated with Technology

🟦Why Do We Still Need Artists?

🟦Art, Culture, and Humanity in the Algorithmic Age of Artificial Intelligence

🟦Humanist Digital Art: A Global, Poetic and Digital Artistic Practice

© Gilles Vallée | Humanist Digital Artist, Poet, Sculptor

Who Will Shape Cultural and Artistic Recognition Tomorrow?

Publié le Publié dans Understanding Today's Culture (EN)Étiqueté , , , , , , , , , , 5 commentaires

Cultural Stewards

Two black-and-white checkerboard spheres dotted with colorful squares, evoking circulation and cultural diversity.

Read this article in French:
Qui fabriquera la reconnaissance culturelle et artistique demain ?

You log on.
You ask a search engine to name some internationally recognized artists.
An AI-generated overview suggests several names, grouped by artistic field.

But who decided that these artists were recognized?

For a long time, this recognition was largely shaped and transmitted by different mediators: museums, galleries, critics, curators, publishers, universities, media organizations, and other cultural institutions.

Painting, sculpture, literature, poetry, music, theatre, cinema: among all the works created in these fields, some have been recognized and passed on by these stewards. By preserving, publishing, exhibiting, interpreting, or studying them, they have also contributed to their longevity.

Today, other stewards have joined them: search engines, platforms, recommendation systems, and artificial intelligence. Without replacing institutions, they are participating in a new ecosystem of recognition.

Today, a work can have little presence within institutions and yet be encountered by millions of people in our global networked culture. It can be searched for, shared, cited, and continually recirculated.

Is that enough to call it recognition?

Not necessarily. A work can go viral on the Web and then disappear. Popularity, circulation, recognition, and longevity are not the same thing.

Time, however, can have an impact. If a work continues to be encountered, transmitted, and rediscovered over the years, its circulation can contribute to its recognition and longevity.

This phenomenon is not new. From Leonardo da Vinci to Van Gogh, from Baudelaire to Rimbaud, works continue to endure because generations of stewards have preserved, studied, published, exhibited, or transmitted them.

And behind this circulation, there are not only algorithms. There are also people. Their searches, publications, links, citations, and encounters leave traces that new mediators can, in turn, organize and bring to our attention. Search engines and AI systems can suggest a work. But without a human encounter, there will be no one to recognize it, transmit it, and contribute to its longevity.

Tomorrow, institutions, audiences, and new stewards will probably participate together in shaping cultural and artistic recognition.

Stewards may change.
Technologies may change.
But a culture remains alive only if people continue to share it.

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This text is part of the Understanding Today’s Culture series, a chronicle of our global networked culture.

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Explore Further

🟦 Why Do Some Human Traces Endure Through Time?

🟦 Why Do We Still Need Artists?

🟦 The Horizon of Circulation

🟦 The Use of AI in Art: Beyond Creation, the Algorithms Organizing Global Culture

© Gilles Vallée | Humanist Digital Artist, Poet, Sculptor

How Far Can a Publication Go?

Publié le Publié dans Understanding Today's Culture (EN)Étiqueté , , , , , , , , , , 6 commentaires

The Horizon of Circulation in Global Culture

Black-and-white checkered spheres gradually receding into a vast white space, illustrating the horizon of circulation of works, ideas and knowledge through cultural mediators.

Read this article in French:
Jusqu’où une publication peut-elle aller ?

An everyday scene:

You log on.
You search for a topic that interests you.
Within seconds, you find a fascinating article.
You read it.

Then you discover that it was written by someone living on the other side of the world and translated so that you could read it.

You realize that only a few decades ago, you probably would never have had access to that text.

What made this encounter possible?

For centuries, works, ideas and knowledge have circulated through mediators such as storytellers, scribes, booksellers, librarians, teachers and critics. Today, new algorithmic mediators — search engines, digital platforms and artificial intelligence — also play an essential role in their circulation.

In our example, it is precisely these new mediators that made this encounter possible.

Mediators make encounters possible. But their ability to circulate a publication also depends on the way it is published.

Choosing how to publish

Take the example of a poet who wishes to share a poem.

The poet may choose to recite the poem during a poetry reading before an audience of about ten people, without publishing it.

The poet may also decide to publish it in a printed poetry collection distributed through a few bookstores, reaching a few hundred readers.

Or the poet may publish it online, where it can be shared, indexed by search engines, recommended by digital platforms, sometimes cited by artificial intelligence, and discovered by tens of thousands of readers around the world.

The poem is exactly the same.

What changes is the potential extent of its journey.

This is what I call the horizon of circulation.

Several ways of making a text accessible coexist. If we choose to publish it, each publishing method opens a different horizon of circulation. The chosen method of publication therefore influences the potential extent of the circulation of a work, an idea or a piece of knowledge.

I have used the example of a poem, but the same phenomenon applies to every publication: a work of art, an idea, a piece of knowledge or even a simple personal testimony.

Algorithmic mediators now allow certain publications to reach a horizon of circulation on the scale of global culture.

Choosing how to publish also means choosing how far a publication may potentially travel.

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This text is part of the series Understanding Today’s Culture, a chronicle of global networked culture.

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Further Reading

🟦 You Already Use Artificial Intelligence

🟦 You Publish… But Are You Really Seen?

🟦 Who Will Shape Cultural and Artistic Recognition Tomorrow?

🟦 The Horizon of Circulation

🟦 AI in Art: Beyond Creation, the Algorithms That Organize Global Culture

🟦 Global Culture as a Moving Mosaic

🟦 Why Do Some Human Traces Endure Through Time?

© Gilles Vallée | Humanist Digital Artist, Poet, Sculptor

You Already Use Artificial Intelligence

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The Real Impact of AI on Art and Culture

Black-and-white cube symbolizing the circulation of culture through digital networks, featuring the silhouette of a human observer. Illustration for the micro-essay "You Already Use Artificial Intelligence."

Read this article in French:
Vous utilisez déjà l’intelligence artificielle

An everyday moment:

You log on.

You are looking for something to read. You ask a search engine a question. A streaming platform recommends a film. An artificial intelligence suggests new cultural discoveries.

A few seconds later, it feels as though you have simply found what you were looking for.

Yet something important has just happened…

You have encountered culture in a way that is very different from how your parents or grandparents did.

For centuries, we have discovered culture and knowledge through mediators: a library, a bookseller, a teacher, a critic… or simply a friend.

Like many people of my generation, I spent years discovering culture exclusively through human mediators.

Today, new mediators have joined this long history… and they are no longer human.

Who now guides our cultural discoveries?

Global culture has become a continuous flow in motion.

Works of art, books, films, articles and ideas no longer circulate only through libraries, booksellers, critics and cultural institutions.

They now move through a vast network where search engines, digital platforms and artificial intelligence also help shape their circulation.

In reality, we have already been accompanied for decades by new mediators that quietly organize part of our encounters with culture.

Whether we realize it or not, we already use artificial intelligence when we search the Internet, watch a video on YouTube, receive a recommendation for a film, a song, a book or an article, or simply when social media platforms decide what appears in our news feeds.

The greatest impact of artificial intelligence is not its ability to create images, texts or music. Its greatest impact lies in its role as a mediator, helping shape our cultural discoveries and the circulation of works, ideas and knowledge.

The mediators are changing. Increasingly, they take the form of search engines, digital platforms and artificial intelligence.

Our desire to discover, share and pass on culture, however, remains profoundly human.

📚 View all Micro-Essays

This text is part of the series Understanding Today’s Culture, a chronicle of global networked culture.

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Further Reading

🟦 Everyone Already Uses AI

🟦 How Far Can a Publication Go?

🟦 Who Will Shape Cultural and Artistic Recognition Tomorrow?

🟦 The Use of AI in Art: Beyond Creation – Algorithms That Organize Global Culture

🟦 You Already Choose Your Culture

🟦 You Publish… But Are You Really Seen?

🟦 Global Culture as a Moving Mosaic

🟦 Understanding Today’s Culture – View All Micro-Essays

© Gilles Vallée | Humanist Digital Artist, Poet, Sculptor

You Are Already Leaving Traces in Global Culture

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What Will Remain of You in the Future?

Illustration of world culture as a multilingual mosaic alongside the Network Walker, symbolizing human traces, time and cultural transmission.

Read this article in French:
Vous laissez déjà des traces dans la culture mondiale

An everyday scene:

I log in.
I publish a photograph on the Web.

Like everyone else, I wonder whether anyone will react.

A Like?
A comment?
A share?

I wonder how many people will see this post.

Today?
This week?
Next month?

Then other questions arise.

In a few years?
In a few decades?

What if this publication one day became a trace from the past?

The moment I click Publish, I am mostly thinking about the present. Yet this publication may continue its journey long after I am gone, reaching people I will never know.

Since the beginning of human history, people have sought to leave a part of themselves behind: a handprint on a cave wall, a petroglyph carved into stone, a manuscript, a book, a photograph, a work of art. Today, a publication on the Web.

Technologies change.
The human need remains.

We write, create, photograph, and share. The digital world did not invent our desire to pass something on. It has simply become the new place where this long story of human transmission continues to unfold.

Not every trace survives the passage of time. Many will be forgotten. Others will travel much farther than we can imagine. We never know which ones will continue their journey.

Every publication may become a small part of the world’s memory.

A photograph
A poem
An idea
A testimony
A work of art
A piece of knowledge

Each publication may add another fragment to the moving mosaic of global culture.

To continue their journey, these traces must first become visible. They must then be discoverable. One day, they may finally encounter another human being who gives them new meaning.

For thousands of years, the journey of human traces has followed the same path:

Visibility

Discoverability

Encounter

Every generation leaves traces. Ours travel through the network.

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This text is part of the series Understanding Today’s Culture, a chronicle of global networked culture.

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Further Reading

🟦 You Publish… But Are You Really Seen?

🟦 Human Traces in Global Culture

🟦 Why Do Some Human Traces Endure Through Time?

🟦 Inhabiting the Network — A New Human Condition in Global Culture

🟦 Global Culture as a Moving Mosaic

© Gilles Vallée | Humanist Digital Artist, Poet, Sculptor

Publishing Is Not Enough. You Also Need the Chance to Be Seen.

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The Path from Visibility to Encounter

Multilingual mosaic of the word culture, young woman walking through a digital stream of online content and platforms, illustrating visibility, discoverability and cultural encounters in global networked culture.

Read this article in French:
Publier ne suffit plus. Encore faut-il pouvoir être vu.

A scene from everyday life:

I log in…

I publish a photo.

A text.

A video.

A reflection.

Sometimes what I publish is quickly seen and shared.

Sometimes it seems to disappear almost immediately.

Yet those posts still exist.

Today, billions of posts circulate through digital networks. Never before have so many people been able to share their ideas, knowledge, experiences, creations and discoveries so easily. Publishing has become an everyday act.

But publishing is no longer enough.

You also need the chance to be seen.

In my own case, I have been publishing artistic works and reflective essays on the Web for more than twenty years. Some quickly find their audience. Others seem to disappear into the digital limbo. There is nothing unusual about this experience. Today, anyone can see that some publications circulate widely while others remain almost invisible.

At its core, this is a deeply human experience. Publishing, communicating, hoping to be seen, to be discovered and to reach an audience have always been part of cultural transmission.

Throughout history, human beings have sought to pass on ideas, knowledge, experiences and creative works. Transmission is one of the great threads running through human history. The digital world did not create this aspiration. It has simply become its newest chapter.

In a world where everyone can publish, visibility has become a genuine cultural issue. Without visibility, ideas, knowledge and creative works may never reach the people who could give them new life.

What has changed with the digital age is the path that transmission now follows. Search engines, digital platforms and artificial intelligence have become new mediators between content and the people who may discover it. Today, this capacity to make content discoverable across the vastness of the Web has a name: discoverability.

Ultimately, visibility is not an end in itself. Being seen only truly matters when an idea reaches a curious mind, when knowledge finds someone who was looking for it, when a text, an image or a piece of music encounters a person who gives it new life through reading, listening, reflection or sharing.

Visibility makes it possible to be seen.

Discoverability makes it possible to be found.

Encounter is the true goal.

Culture has always lived through encounters.

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This text is part of the series Understanding Today’s Culture, a cultural chronicle of global networked culture.

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Further Reading

🟦 You Publish… But Are You Really Seen?

🟦 Global Culture as a Moving Mosaic

🟦  Inhabiting the Network — A New Human Condition in Global Culture

© Gilles Vallée | Humanist Digital Artist, Poet, Sculptor

You Already Choose Your Culture

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Building Your Culture, One Choice at a Time

Multilingual mosaic of the word culture, a person facing a digital stream of online content and platforms, illustrating the construction of a personal culture within global networked culture.

Read this article in French:
Vous choisissez déjà votre culture

A scene from everyday life.

I log in…

The Web offers me:

  • a Led Zeppelin concert;
  • a retrospective of Van Gogh’s works;
  • a documentary on climate change;
  • a talk on contemporary art;
  • an introduction to Chinese calligraphy;
  • a poetry reading.

I won’t watch everything.

I will choose.

Global networked culture has profoundly transformed the way we discover works, ideas, and knowledge. In just a few clicks, we can explore music, books, knowledge, traditions and creative works from almost every part of the world. Search engines, digital platforms and artificial intelligence have become the main mediators of our cultural discoveries. They suggest, recommend and organize a vast stream of content.

But they do not choose for us.

Culture is no longer only an inheritance. It has also become something we build ourselves.

It was not always this way.

When I was a teenager in the early 1970s, our opportunities for cultural discovery were far more limited than they are today. A few television channels, magazines, cinemas, live music performances, libraries and bookstores were our main gateways to works of art, ideas and knowledge.

Building a personal culture is a continuous process. It does not happen in a single day, but through the works, readings, discoveries and encounters that gradually shape our journey.

Every day, we choose the works we watch, the books we read, the music we listen to, the talks we attend and the subjects we decide to explore. Each choice may seem small. Yet, over time, these choices gradually shape our worldview, our references and our cultural identity.

Recommendations sometimes open doors to works we might never have discovered otherwise. They never replace our freedom to choose the direction of our own cultural journey.

The greatest cultural challenge is no longer gaining access to culture. It is learning to consciously build our own cultural path within an almost unlimited global cultural landscape.

Choosing fragments of global culture to enrich our own culture has become part of the human experience.

Scrolling is moving through the flow. Choosing is building your culture.

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This text is part of the series Understanding Today’s Culture, a cultural chronicle of global networked culture.

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Further Reading

🟦 Do Our Choices Shape the Culture of Tomorrow?

🟦 Global Culture as a Moving Mosaic

🟦 Inhabiting the Network — A New Human Condition in Global Culture

© Gilles Vallée | Humanist Digital Artist, Poet, Sculptor