Gijón (EFE).- The writer Marta Sanz (Madrid, 1967) stated on Tuesday that she wrote the novel “Metallic shutters go down suddenly” as “an exercise in resistance” of literature against new technologies, convinced that ” the power of the word can be imposed on artificial intelligence”.
The novel, which can hardly be classified as science fiction although it has elements of that genre, is “a satirical dystopia” with touches of humor that warns of the risk of the language of social networks and algorithms taking over life completely. everyday life of the people, explained the author in a meeting with the press during the Black Week in Gijón.
Written during the confinement stage due to the coronavirus pandemic, when the metal shutters fell suddenly and the streets were empty, Sanz’s latest novel tries to “counteract the prevailing positive thinking” according to which “by recovering normality we were going to be better people and we would live with more security and comfort”.
“That speech was a fallacy although many people believed it because the starting point of the vulnerable is not the same as that of the powerful,” he reflected.
Sanz has considered that “Metallic blinds go down suddenly” is also a “buff opera” with the rhythm of a “musical comedy” that served him to “talk about the cracks of the present”, characterized by a communication system that reduces the ability to discernment and understanding of people.
Technologies and their “dark side”
“The new technologies have many good things, but they have others that are very bad; they have a dark, seedy, stale side, and they are by no means universal and democratic as they want us to believe”, she has warned.
The novel defines a future world in an imaginary city called Land in Blue in which three women who gradually lose their mental and physical faculties are controlled by drones that end up falling in love with them.
A metaphor in which while women are dehumanized, drones are humanized, which warns of the risk that the algorithm ends up assuming total power over society.
The writer has said that artificial intelligence is being presented as if it were the Oracle of Delphi and what we are seeing is that this Oracle “speaks a lot of bullshit.”
The brief and visual communication of the new technologies is producing a “thinning of the capacity for discernment and the loss of the capacity for empathy and sense of humor, while literary language is the opposite,” he indicated.
Sanz has specified that although it seems a pessimistic story, it is not, because he is confident that “the power of words and literature can prevail” over the algorithm technology, which is not an abstract entity but “a powerful white man who lives in the United States.” EFE