Rome – The release of the new RayBan Meta glasses has been welcomed as yet another triumph of technology: take pictures, record, connect—without even pulling a smartphone out of your pocket. Extraordinary, no doubt. I confess: I, too, am fascinated by these innovations. Since childhood I have looked with wonder at every new advance in this field. I remember when, with a small Nokia phone, I managed to connect to the large desktop computer at home to access the internet—an experience that at the time felt like science fiction. Today, in the newsroom, we grow impatient if the connection takes a few seconds longer to download a file. And yet, alongside this sense of wonder, one cannot help but ask: what are the side effects of this race toward innovation?
The Korean-German philosopher Byung-Chul Han warns us that we live in a society of “transparency” and “hypercommunication,” where everything is captured, shared, exposed. These glasses seem to embody that very logic: the gaze is no longer gratuitous, but aimed at producing content. We look in order to record, not to contemplate.
And yet, as Merleau-Ponty wrote, the body and perception are our primary way of inhabiting the world: “to see is never to possess, but to open oneself to the appearing of the other.” If what we see is already filtered by algorithms, what remains of that openness? Do we not risk reducing ourselves to spectators of our own small world, made of selected contacts and tailor-made bubbles, incapable of wonder? It is, in the end, the same fear Hannah Arendt foresaw when she spoke of the loss of the capacity to ‘begin something new.’ For her, human action was born of wonder, of the unexpected that arises from encountering the other. But if the other becomes only an archived image, catalogued and mediated by a lens, where does novelty hide? What unsettles most is the speed with which we consume each innovation. We chase after the latest iPhone—and I admit, yesterday I too rushed into the Apple Store—yet soon after the purchase, the surprise fades and we grow bored. Technology promises wonder, but often leaves us more restless than fulfilled.
I recall an experience some time ago: I was with friends, not exactly favorable toward the Catholic world, in a monastery. There they encountered a different rhythm: time marked by bells, silence, nature, moments of fraternity and dialogue. One of them eventually admitted: “At first it feels strange, because you’re not used to it, but then it draws you in and you can’t do without it.” Perhaps the capacity for wonder is not entirely lost—we have simply forgotten where to look. It will certainly not be the corporations profiting from us that offer us an authentic gaze upon the other. Their goal is clear: to bind us ever more tightly to a device and a platform we feel compelled to “cultivate”—because otherwise we seem not to exist—while they, meanwhile, profit.
Religious tradition reminds us that the authentic gaze is the one capable of being surprised: “Look up at the sky and count the stars,” God tells Abraham (Gen 15:5). The biblical gaze does not capture, does not possess, but allows itself to be wounded and opened by the unexpected. Even Jesus, before Zacchaeus or the Samaritan woman, does not record content—he encounters a face. Today, when we experience something beautiful, our first impulse is no longer to savor it deeply, but to turn it instantly into content: a story, a reel, a photo to share. Entering a museum, we often do not abandon ourselves to the atmosphere, nor let ourselves be questioned by a painting or seized by its silent power. We worry instead about snapping the best image for social media, producing material to display, rather than allowing ourselves to be touched by the experience itself.
The danger is that technology trains us to live without epiphanies, without encounters that disarm us. We may walk among others with eyes fixed on our digital microcosm, convinced we see everything but in fact unable to truly see. The question, then, becomes inevitable: will we still be capable of wonder, or have we already lost the hope of being surprised by the real?
Marco Felipe Perfetti
Silere non possum