Spirits, demons, shadows around the corner, all sorts of otherworldly entities… I used to be absolutely certain they couldn’t stand electronics, and that electricity itself was to them what garlic is to a vampire. I remember a cable burning out in the stairwell of my building—sparks, smoke, the smell of scorched rubber. The neighbours were complaining, but I knew: the demons were up to mischief; the wires made them sick! And photographic film? Oh, you could capture things on it that kept you awake at night afterwards—blurred silhouettes, strange reflections, faces where no faces should be. In time, everything changed. Electronics became an ordinary part of our lives. Equipment no longer smokes, wires no longer melt, and the demons have gone quiet, as if they have made their peace with it.
And what about film? It was displaced by cameras with their artificial intelligence. Now everything is smooth and even—AI will wipe the miracle away into sterile gloss, retouch the shadows, remove what doesn’t belong. So where have those blurry entities gone? The magic has vanished, burned away by algorithms. How did that happen? We couldn’t use any of this before—the very sight of an electrical socket made spirits recoil. And now that electricity is in every pocket, are we using their world? Has our reality, our everyday life, rewritten the rules of their existence? Or have they themselves adapted so as not to disappear?
That is why I look at what is happening more broadly. Does consciousness determine being? You couldn’t say that. The example of electricity shouts the opposite—they hated it at first, and now they’re silent. But being does not entirely mould consciousness either—for it was our consciousness, our will, that made the spirits bend before wires and microchips. Or perhaps they have tricked us by pretending to be tame? The circle closes, and it turns out that there is only one thing we know with absolute certainty: we know nothing. And the deeper you dig, the thicker the darkness becomes.