Étiquette : Understanding Today’s Culture

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.

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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

🟦 Everyone Already Uses AI

🟦 How Far Can a Publication Go?

🟦 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

Publié le Publié dans Understanding Today's Culture (EN)Étiqueté , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Commentaire

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.

📚 See All Micro-Essays

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

→ Back to the Micro-Essays page

Further Reading

🟦 You Publish… But Are You Really Seen?

🟦 Human Traces in Global Culture

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

🟦 Global Culture as a Moving Mosaic

© Gilles Vallée | Humanist Digital Artist, Poet, Sculptor

You Are Already Part of Global Culture

Publié le Publié dans Understanding Today's Culture (EN)Étiqueté , , , , , , , , , 1 Commentaire
Minimalist illustration showing an orange sphere beside a grid displaying the word “culture” in multiple languages, symbolizing that people already participate in global culture within an interconnected world.

Read this article in French:
Vous faites déjà partie de la culture mondiale

It is already part of your everyday reality, even if you do not always think about it.

• Every day, you choose fragments of global culture that interest you.

• You gradually build your own cultural mosaic.

• You already inhabit this interconnected world.

In the morning, you check the news on your phone. Later, you listen to music, watch a streaming series or search for information about a topic that intrigues you. Sometimes, you interact with people living in other countries.

All of this has become normal.

And yet, these ordinary actions already connect you to the rest of the world.

For you, global culture is not an abstract idea. It is already part of your everyday life.

You do not consume all of global culture. No one does. Instead, you choose fragments that attract your attention and gradually compose your own cultural mosaic.

Some people are interested in Japanese photography. Others discover South Korean artists, African writers, Spanish films or culinary traditions from elsewhere.

We all do this in our own way.

I often remember a particular scene. In 1974, I discovered Surrealism while watching slides projected onto a classroom wall. I was looking at reproductions of paintings by Salvador Dalí. Today, I discover fragments of global culture through search engines and artificial intelligence. The tools have changed, but the desire to discover the world has remained the same.

By observing this evolution over many years, I have realized that global culture is neither a distant phenomenon nor an idea reserved for specialists. It has already become part of our daily lives.

We have become inhabitants of a vast cultural space where everyone gradually builds their own mosaic.

Becoming aware of this reality changes the way we look at the world.

We are no longer just spectators. We already participate in this global culture through our choices and discoveries.

And perhaps, by taking a few moments to observe it, we will better understand the global culture that we are all building together.

It is your world,

it is mine,

and it is the one we already share.

📚 View All Micro-Essays

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

→ Return to the Micro-Essays page

Explore Further

🟦 Global Culture as a Moving Mosaic

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

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

© Gilles Vallée | Humanist Digital Artist, Poet, Sculptor