Confusing the map with the landscape

17 Jan, 2026

With screens omnipresent in our lives, always close to our eyes, and often a mandatory passage when not forced, words are everywhere.

This blog contributes to having even more of them. That's why I choose, apart from not having the time, not to soliloquise for nothing. This is one of the characteristics of the web's profitability: producing content every day. Fortunately for you, and for me, I don't need profitability here.

But let's get back to screens. I probably thought, wrongly, that screens were the very symbol of a pictorial society. They are. Undeniably. But words are still everywhere. And as you know, in the beginning was the word. So our language has a huge impact on how we see our surroundings and understand the world.

Too many words mess with that perception. The landscape you see, just you, isn't the map that others have made and that you're reading. Writing thus removes us from the world around us.

And today, this is taking on a very particular, exacerbated form. The omnipresence of AI gives new and unknown meaning to the power of words. Words thus lose their creative genius, their unique soul forged by a unique trajectory. AI is the hyper-capitalist forge of a frenetic and uninterrupted succession of words, all stolen from others, mixed, shaken up and reconstituted by algorithms designed by a select few.

The truth of the world does not come through this succession of words. Even if it makes sense. These words are only of interest if they are written after perception, observation and analysis by the human intelligence I mentioned. Unique and inimitable.

Want to know why AI will never be able to replace you? Turn off your phone and go for a walk. ¹

#AI #perception #thoughts #word