Glass

Written on: 2026-05-29 Download PDF

If I told you there is a place where you can talk to anyone, freely, without anyone hearing you — would you go?

And if I told you that everything you say, no matter how loud you scream, is only audible to whom you choose, and no one else? Would you go?

And if I told you that you can go there instantly, for as little or as long as you like, and find whoever you want? Friends, relatives, strangers... Would you go?

And if I told you that this place is a huge, immense metropolis made of glass buildings, would you still go?

You can talk to whoever you want, whenever you want, as much as you want, but from the outside, it is possible — not to hear, but to see everything.

There are machines watching when you get up to talk to your mom, when you change location to visit a friend, when you go to a party and who you meet there. And when you meet someone new and special in your life.

And they record everything. How long your conversations last, your meetings, your business updates.

They record the first person you talk to in the morning and the last person you speak to at night.

They record how many people you know, and how many people know you, the times when you talk the most and to more people, and the most intimate moments instead.

Would you still go?

The machines hear nothing. They only record: building timelines of your habits, your rhythms, and graphs of your relationships, whether old or new.

Would you move your residence to this place?

Such a place already exists — and in all likelihood, you are already living in it. It is not a physical place; it is virtual. It is on the Internet.

It is called WhatsApp.

The people who run it give you a tool to talk to family, friends, colleagues, doctors, institutions.

They tell you they won't read what you write. And that is probably true.

But the issue is what they don't say.

They don't read your messages. But they know when you write them, how often, and to whom.

They know if you make video calls, if you meet the people you talk to elsewhere too.

And with all this, they build a model of your social life — precise, up-to-date, silent. They do it without asking you for anything. You give them everything, and you thank them for it.

That information is called metadata. And you are giving it away for free.

Alternatives exist: there are more than just glass metropolises.

[ May the Talpone be with you ]