Us and alternative intelligence, instructions for use. Writer Jeanette Winterson speaks

The British author talks about her vision of the future, between technology and artificial intelligence: “We are in a time of choices and whether we will go towards a good or terrifying future will depend only on us”

The hands of Jeanette Winterson – like anyone else’s – speak for themselves, but hers show with unaware pride the clear signs of her other passions – gardening and vegetable gardening – in addition to writing, which is his job. “I am a very seasonal creature”, he explains to Foglio in a room overlooking Piazza Barberini shortly before going on stage at Literature International Festival of Rome. “Now that it’s summer I wake up with the light, more or less at half past five, and I dedicate myself to the garden after having put on the coffee. I write until lunch and it’s only in the afternoon that I turn on the phone and get ready to welcome the world that must always be invited, it cannot present itself by breaking down a door. We are the ones who can manage these devices and who have to keep them at bay”. Social media? “Well, all they do is try to trap users in a reality equivalent to an operant conditioning chamber where there are no stimuli that can be tracked or actions that can remain private.” “Even at night we are constantly in the spotlight,” she writes in 12 Bytes. How we got here, where we could end up in the future, his collection of essays published by Mondadori in the translation of Chiara Spallino Rocca. “And what we suffer is generational violence,” she adds.