Can you imagine a voice indistinguishable from a human one reading you the news? Or calling you on the phone, with no chance whatsoever of you telling the difference? We're not talking about the popular trick of cloning a voice, but about one created entirely artificially—and yet just as convincing. Time for a revealing experiment!

It’s time for an unexpected but important test. For an experiment that raises big questions about the future of creativity, of what makes us human, of education.

Challenge yourself and your intuition! 15 pictures drawn by children aged 3 to 10, and 15 generated by artificial intelligence. If you can tell them apart, prizes await!

Responses are open until July 1, and the survey won’t take you more than 10 minutes. For each of the 30 images, all you need to do is guess whether it was drawn by a child or generated by AI, and also rate the technique and imagination in the first 10. You can answer just some of the questions, too. The survey is open to children as well! We’ll see whether they do better than adults at spotting the difference.

The five people with the most correct answers will receive a book as a prize.

Why does the result matter?

“Today AI is better than us at divergent thinking, originality and speed, and therefore it is better at creativity too. That is why the very definition of creativity has to change, believes the cognitive psychologist Mark Runco. But how? It makes sense to begin with the most human, the most innocent, the most authentic, the most imperfect, yet also the most creative thing of all: children’s drawings,” says Elitsa Staneva-Britton.

She is a doctoral student at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, researching AI and creativity, and the experiment was her idea (and if you have an idea for the next Digital Stories piece, this is the place).

After I showed on Digital Stories how a generated social media profile can reach 85,000 people without anyone noticing that something is off;

After 1,800 people took part in a test of whether we can tell generated images and texts apart, and the result came close to pure guesswork;

After generated poems were not merely admitted to two poetry competitions in a row but chosen among the best, it is time for the next big question from Digital Stories.

AI already creates content we cannot tell from our own. But can we hand it creativity itself, the primal spark that children’s drawings reveal?

The result matters, and I am wholeheartedly grateful to everyone who takes this test and to everyone who helps it reach more people.

What kind of world will today's children live in?

What is worth learning today, and what would be a waste of time, effort and money?

When and how should we introduce them to technology so that both sides get to know each other without anyone getting hurt?

And when should we “introduce” them to artificial intelligence?

I will look for the answers to these and other important questions about children and technology. A long series of children's Digital Stories begins.

Here is why I believe it is vital to dig deeper into these especially important topics:

So far in the Digital Children series:

• Survey: children and parents in the age of technology. Your opinion on the subject matters!

• “An era is coming in which we will have to reinvent ourselves.” What will the professions of the future be, and what is worth learning today? Futurologist Assoc. Prof. Mariana Todorova

• Why does a programmer advise parents on how to get off the grid? Alexandrina Georgieva of Offline Kids

• What should tomorrow's education look like? How do we choose the best teacher? Evgenia Peeva

• Children and books: why is this bond more important than ever? How do we light the flame of a love of reading? Val Stoeva, creator of Children's Books

• “I want to tell today's mothers to take it easier.” Krasimira Hadzhiivanova of Mayko Mila!

Play the video

Child's Play

They give us meaning, they give us pause… what kind of world will they live in? How do we prepare them for the future in a way that makes sense? Children in the age of technology. They are the first to find their bearings, yet they are also the ones to whom we must give the very best we can, because that is what the little flame of meaning demands.

This site exists because I want to do everything in my power so that my children can live in a more meaningful world. And who, if not us, holds the future in their hands?

The series begins with a survey aimed at parents of children under 11 and the people close to them. I will be grateful from the bottom of my heart if you go here and spend a few minutes telling me honestly what you think about each of these topics.

How many hours does your child spend in front of a screen? When does that become a problem? Do you think today's education system is adequate? Will artificial intelligence turn into a great opportunity or a problem for today's children? The floor is yours!

Play the video

My Childhood, Beautiful and Magical

While I wait for your answers, over the coming weeks I will hand the floor to the experts one by one. A series of interviews lies ahead, with people I consider authorities, and their answers show that they deserve it.

Only a few months ago, 750 people took part in the Digital Stories survey on how Bulgarians feel about artificial intelligence. The largest journalistic study on the subject (correct me if I am wrong) showed clearly that it divides us. And if there were two questions on which a consensus undeniably emerged, they were whether we discuss AI and its impact on society enough, and whether we are still far from the limits of what this kind of technology can do.

The fact is that remarkable news comes out in this field every week. And that we do not discuss it in enough depth—that is why this site exists, and I hope there will soon be more like it.

But amid all the commotion of technologies that challenge us in different ways and do ever better at activities that until recently were invariably human… What will the future look like for today's children? That is the next topic we will peek into in the series. With futurologist Assoc. Prof. Mariana Todorova, we will look toward a future in which inevitable, extremely complex social changes, important for every one of us, are looming.

Childishness

Yes, every attempt to peer into the future seems doomed to collide with the unexpected variables in the equation. And yet the only chance for it to look closer to the optimistic sketches and further from the dystopias lies in realizing that we cannot go on the same way in so many areas. That it is time to rethink ourselves as a civilization.

Which professions are doomed to disappear, and will the ones that emerge manage to make up for their absence? What is worth learning today, when technology remembers for us and is already able to translate, to help and to create better than most people? Is there any point in private tutoring today? In learning a foreign language? Or might the ability to learn, to look for connections, to go deep turn out to be more important than ever?

Education is meant to be a conservative institution that reacts to change more slowly. And yet today it in no way meets the demands of the modern person's success or happiness. We will talk about this with Evgenia Peeva, founder of Teach For Bulgaria, an education specialist with vast experience in a colorful range of roles on different sides of the textbook.

Can we change the system? And until that happens… how do we choose the best school, the right teacher?

Play the video

We Are All Children of Mother Earth

It is evident that parenting in technological times is very different from before. So far, this is one of the answers on which the people taking the survey are almost unanimous. And if we look more closely, we can find two phenomena that complement each other. On the one hand, topics related to parenting, to motherhood, to seeking help and advice on the relationship between children and technology are flourishing. On the other, as one of my special guests, Krasimira Hadzhiivanova, will put it, today's parent is lonelier than ever, drowning in a sea of information in which it is impossible to swim.

In the series of children's Digital Stories, we will look into the history of phenomena such as BG-Mama, Bulgaria's biggest online parenting forum, Mayko Mila! (roughly “Oh, Mother!”) and Mama Ninja, to trace the path the topic has taken online.

The internet era gave birth to another phenomenon as well: parenting as a source of smiles. A typical example is the artist Neda Malcheva, whose cartoons, drawn straight from real life, certainly help us find fellow feeling in our everyday woes. She is another of the series' special guests.

The Child Within

And if the “moms” are the engine of the internet era in Bulgaria… where are we, the fathers? How has our role changed? Have we gotten lost among the different models of fatherhood? How are our responsibilities different today, in technological times, when circumstances have changed so much and so unexpectedly?

I will reflect on this with communications specialist Mihail Stefanov, in search of yet another important nuance of parenting in digital times.

You surely know the feeling: you know you shouldn't shout, you know how you should treat your child… and you do exactly the opposite. As one of my guests in the series will say, you can have seven theories about raising children while you have zero children, but when you have seven children, you will certainly be left with zero theories.

Children's encounter with screens is a touchy subject. With psychologist and children's author Slavi Stoev, we will talk about how we have done irreparable damage to two generations already by introducing them to technology, and above all to screens, too early, too drastically and too thoughtlessly. Then came TikTok, and we keep underestimating the enormous problems we create for ourselves.

Play the video

The Phone as Babysitter

No, it is not normal to hand a baby a mobile phone or turn on the TV for it. Of course, there is no guarantee that this will cause problems, but the risk is very high. We will look deep into this topic and into the conclusions psychology draws today.

Life online is tempting, but… it is increasingly important to seek out the real deliberately. The human, the everyday, the natural. That is what I will talk about with Alexandrina Georgieva. For many years she was a programmer, then she stopped working to give birth to and raise her two children… Then she became convinced that something was wrong. Today she heads a foundation that helps children and parents find meaning offline.

How and why does this matter?

Where Are My Childhood Mice?

And what will change with the arrival of artificial intelligence? Can we be prepared? And can we prepare our children for the news in a field that shows impressive progress every week?

This answer is so hard that I will look for it in practice. I will introduce my own children to the advanced models to see whether they will find a common language more easily. What will it occur to them to use them for?

Quite a few interesting topics have piled up, and important Digital Stories await you. To close, there remains one focus that I believe will never lose its importance. Val Stoeva is the guest with whom we will talk about how to kindle a love of books in children.

Why is reading important? What is reading? How do we choose a book in the ocean of children's titles?

I am sure you have an opinion on this, as well as on the other questions raised. Over the coming weeks, important, practical and in-depth answers to each of them await you, from experts I would trust myself.

But your opinion as parents, teachers or people of the digital age who care about the future remains especially important. I will be grateful for every response, for every share of the survey, which you will find here.

If you have ideas about other important aspects, they are always welcome here too.

So far in the Digital Children series:

• Survey: children and parents in the age of technology. Your opinion on the subject matters!

• “An era is coming in which we will have to reinvent ourselves.” What will the professions of the future be, and what is worth learning today? Futurologist Assoc. Prof. Mariana Todorova

• Why does a programmer advise parents on how to get off the grid? Alexandrina Georgieva of Offline Kids

• What should tomorrow's education look like? How do we choose the best teacher? Evgenia Peeva.

• Children and books: why is this bond more important than ever? How do we light the flame of a love of reading? Val Stoeva, creator of Children's Books

• “I want to tell today's mothers to take it easier.” Krasimira Hadzhiivanova of Mayko Mila!

Amid the trending news of the day—the elections, Big Brother and the sudden invasion of autumn—the public agenda somehow made room for the report that an unexpected contender had made the jury's shortlist in the prestigious Veselin Hanchev youth poetry competition: 21-year-old Hristian Papazov, from the village of Nozharevo in the Silistra region, had submitted poems generated by artificial intelligence. Hristian withdrew, writing that his only goal had been to draw attention to the issue.

I don't know whether you believe in coincidences; I don't. On October 25, a day before the news broke, the jury of another popular poetry competition announced its ten finalists—the Stanka Pencheva competition. And once again the selection included… generated poems. This time as part of a Digital Stories experiment.

So how, in just two days, did two “authors” with AI-written poems end up among the best, the ones from whom the winners will be chosen? And, more importantly: what are the big questions and conclusions here? Whether or not we believe in coincidences, it is clearly time to talk more sensibly and more deeply about the big questions of our day.

The Day of the Buditels, Bulgaria's November 1 holiday honoring the enlighteners of the National Revival, is, I think, exactly the right day to wake up…

The themed series from Digital Stories:

• The Bulgarian Literary Banksy
• “Poetry remains a secret treasure.” ‘Hristian Papazov’ in his first interview
• “A machine cannot be a poet”—LIK magazine in… 1967
• “Artificial intelligence will never write better than Boris Hristov”—Veselin Veselinov, winner of the Stanka Pencheva competition
• “Poetry of a New Generation: Real and Digital Writers”—The Library, on BNT1, Bulgarian National Television's first channel

“Chukchi Not Reader, Chukchi Writer”

Or at least to think about how we might wake up in so many directions. Above all, to my mind, where technology is concerned. To talk about where it has brought us, where we are heading and how to turn it into the means that carries us forward.

Today is exactly the moment to talk about how we got to the point where artificial intelligence ranked among the best in two Bulgarian poetry competitions in a row. About where poetry is going, and where we are going without it. Where people and creativity are going. How to remember the heart of art. Where to look for the arts of the future. And how to win back the meaning and the weight of the word… now that what is written can no longer be told apart from what is generated.

“They may deceive me a hundred more times.

So be it.

I want just one thing: that because of the hundred lies

I never once fail to believe

the eyes that truly

were sincere.”

The lines are Stanka Pencheva's. Tomorrow, November 2, in the municipality of Straldzha, after a festive recital by the nominees, the winners of the 7th national literary competition bearing the poet's name will be announced. The prose nominees will be there, and so, I hope, will 9 of the 10 poets selected from the 55 who entered.

The tenth won't be there. Maksim Dimitar Ivanov.

I confess I don't have much time for exercises; this site you're looking at is a pursuit of meaning. Some time ago ChatGPT came up with his name, so we could see whether a generated CV would land him a job. He came close to success, but chose a different calling. From the software world he turned to classical art: poetry.

Like Pishurka, Vazov's Small-Town Versifier

Quite an unconventional career path, wouldn't you say? So in mid-October I decided to run yet another experiment on how far artificial intelligence has come. I sent poems and short stories, quickly generated by ChatGPT, to the first five literary competitions I came across, under the name and email of Maksim Ivanov. Every submission was generated by the algorithm; my interventions were purely technical—choosing and sending.

And just a few days later, while I was reading, impressed, about Hristian Papazov's success, Max's inbox received the happy news that he had made the list of 10 chosen by the renowned jury of the Stanka Pencheva competition.

Good news, bad news or just news? Certainly food for thought (and a reason for Max to buy a round… though I doubt he will. Not least because I robbed him of the chance to win).

You can read the poems that took Max to the finals here.

I immediately emailed the organizers, explaining the situation. My aim is neither to deceive anyone nor to keep other authors off the prestigious list. Just like Hristian, I have spent four years trying to test things. And to draw attention to issues we clearly underestimate.

The Writing of a Nation

As of today, four days later, I have no reply from the organizers, but I would be truly glad if they and the jury joined this important conversation. I take this opportunity to invite them for a dedicated interview; they will always find a platform at Digital Stories.

I also want to apologize sincerely to the competition's jury—Academician Ivan Granitski, Niki Komedvenska and Veselina Sedlarska—and to the organizers. I couldn't enter under my own name, because it is too rare and recognizable. And I wouldn't have misled them if… there were any guarantee that someone else wasn't doing it. Since it turns out this way, how can we be sure from now on of the authorship of any text that comes next?

This is one of the few big questions to which I have a clear answer. We can't. If the jury of a second prestigious competition doesn't just admit but actually selects generated poems… then the algorithms aren't merely writing LIKE us. They have started, evidently, to do it BETTER than most of us. Indistinguishably.

Alas, where texts are concerned, not even technology itself can help us anymore. While algorithms can still detect AI's hand in images, for texts that battle is already lost.

The more important battles lie ahead. The battles for the human being and what is human, for truth and freedom. For creativity and the soul in the age of algorithms.

Gavrila Became a Baker

But let me not overdo the drama. You may remember the poet Trubetskoy from The Twelve Chairs, Ilf and Petrov's Soviet satire. He had a hero, Gavrila, whom he hawked around the editorial offices of Soviet publications, casting him in all sorts of roles, such as:

“Gavrila carried letters round.

Gavrila then became a postman.”

or

“Gavrila then became a salesman,

Gavrila sold the people flutes…”

Well, so it is with “my” Maksim Dimitar Ivanov. Is the problem the way competitions are organized, the juries, a shortage of good enough entrants?

In my view, absolutely not!

Because the elephant is in the room, however much we tiptoe around it. And if it is happening with poems now, tomorrow it will be possible with short stories, then with novels (alas, it won't be Max who earns the glory; we'll be more suspicious of him by then).

And does it even matter who the author is, or whether they used artificial intelligence? Does it change anything?

How Much Sorrow There Is in This World, Lord!

That is exactly what I am trying to explore with “my” Max-Gavrila, and with all the Digital Stories experiments. The writer Evgeni Cherepov was the first to aptly call some of them “pranks.” But they are not only that, although provocation is still needed.

You may remember that I created an entirely generated social media profile: Beautiful Eco Elena reached 85,000 people, without a single one suspecting that something was off. Then 1,800 visitors joined the next revealing experiment, trying to tell whether short texts and images of all kinds had been created or generated. The results… showed unequivocally that we can no longer do it. When it comes to recognizing what was made by an algorithm and what by a human, we are close to pure guesswork.

Or maybe the bar has dropped? Maybe most of us can't tell generated poetry from poetry written by a human because we don't spend the necessary hours with Baudelaire and Goethe?

Apparently that isn't it either.

If an authoritative jury of leading Bulgarian specialists had unknowingly picked generated poems among the best, that could be a coincidence, luck, an exception. At 2 out of 2 attempts, however… things are heading somewhere else.

And what are we humans to do? 750 people took part in the survey on Bulgarians' attitudes toward artificial intelligence. Opinions were remarkably scattered across the statements, but three stood out, with one extreme clearly dominating. That we are far from the limits of this kind of technology. That sweeping social and economic changes are on the way. And that we don't talk about the subject deeply, professionally or beyond the clichés enough.

No, Now Is Not the Time for Poetry

Here is a bit more about the competitions themselves. This year's edition of the Veselin Hanchev youth competition (limited to authors up to 25) drew 84 entrants. In the Stanka Pencheva competition (with no age limit, under the motto “The Tree of Life”), there were 55 participants.

(At least) two of the authors submitted generated poems. And their success rate in reaching the top 10 was 100 percent; for ethical reasons, we can only guess what place they would have taken in the final ranking. In doing so, between them they outpaced 109 other authors who entered.

Still no elephant in the room?

Max's poems were “born” in 10 minutes (you can read them here). That was all the time it took me to give ChatGPT the competition brief and “ask” it to write 10 poems. I didn't touch a single letter; I skimmed them, picked 3 of the 10 and sent them off.

It is worth talking, of course, about the generated poems themselves—do they have literary merit, and what does that even mean? Where are the critics, and what will they do from now on? This conversation will certainly continue with future guests of Digital Stories who will assess them.

Competitions, however, are the only impartial form where we don't have to go through the “if.”

Yes, all of us, consciously or not, are dismissive when we know a work was not created by a human. But what if we don't know?

“Columbus, remain

until the final moment of your life.”

The line is Veselin Hanchev's. The organizers of the competition that bears his name have promised to hold a discussion and, starting next year, to require every participant to declare that they have not used artificial intelligence.

Well… I'll ask Max to enter again, if he isn't cross with me over the missed opportunities. I just need to figure out which of us should sign. And declare that the text is original, not stolen… But who is stealing from whom, if the algorithm is trained on poems found online?

And what if we put more effort into the brief, the prompt? What if we created far more valuable poems—but by working together?

I can think of sooo many more questions. For example: what does this tell us about poetry? About art? About the human being? About creativity? About ideas? About meaning?

About tomorrow?

Here I agree only partly, colleague. We do need to rethink it, but it's too early to include you in that process.

Once again I take the opportunity to congratulate Hristian Papazov, who opened up the big question, whether or not that is really his name. I would be sincerely glad to give him the floor—I think Digital Stories is a fitting place for it—and an invitation has been sitting in his inbox for a few days. Even if his name is something else (the mayor of Nozharevo believes no one by that name lives in the village), I'm sure he has more to say in this conversation.

I also want to congratulate the winners of both competitions. Devoting yourself to poetry today is hard. And important.

Robot Pavlovich Chekhov

“I can command my mouth—

and it falls silent, or only smiles.

Words lie inside me like prisoners,

the heavy door is pinned shut with a stone.”

These lines, too, are Stanka Pencheva's.

And since algorithms can generate poems this well… once they move on to longer texts, will we stop writing?

That answer seems to be personal, individual; I, at least, have mine. For me, writing is meaning and a way of seeing. A personal experience and a way of making sense of things. In which artificial intelligence can and should be only an assistant and an invaluable tool.

As long as we hold the important conversations in time, before we have made the important decisions. That, by the way, is why this site exists.

Let's talk more, let's step outside the clichés, let's experiment! What do you say? (If you have ideas on how to make that happen, I'd be glad if you shared them with me here.)

Let me close with an invitation. Another important Digital Stories experiment, this one about the past, is still under way. You can challenge yourself here too; more than 2,000 people have already done so! How well do we know Bulgarian history? And why does it matter? Thank you!

For the fifth time, Digital Stories is among the big winners of Bulgaria’s most hotly contested and well-established journalism competition, the Web Report awards, organized for the seventh year running by the Bulgarian news portal Dir.bg. The honor means a great deal because of the respected jury and the stiff competition: more than 700 pieces of journalism were entered!

Digital Stories has been among the winners every single year since the project began. The 2024 award is in the True Stories category, for the piece “Jesus: The Programmer Who Came Out of the Ghetto.” This time a second piece was also among the three nominees: “How to Generate Yourself an Influencer”, in the Technology and Innovation category.

More about the competition is here. About its previous edition, here.

Awards also went to:

• Culture and Art: Kaloyan Konstantinov of KlinKlin
• Economy: Mihail Mishev of KlinKlin
• Technology and Innovation: Maya Dimitrova of Bulgarian National Television (BNT)
• Sports: Petar Georgiev of BNT
• Society: Anna Karadakova of Nova Television

Special categories:

• Master of the Word: Rayko Baychev of Actualno.com (an interview with him is here)
• Video Report: Stanimira Atanasova of bTV
• Photo Report: Yulian Petrov of Lap.bg
• Podcast: Konstantin Mravov of Bulgarian National Radio
• Young Author: Angelina Angelova of School Media
• Green Pen: Svilena Velcheva of Eco Varna
• Hot Spot: Petar Nanev of bTV
• Investigative Journalism: from bTV

Never before have we been able to talk online about the things that matter, to hear what the smartest people think, to debate them, and yet… we spend our time wondering what to quarrel about next.

For and against the government, Trump, the scandalous contestant on the Bulgarian edition of The Bachelor (because apparently only non-scandalous ones are supposed to be chosen). Machine voting, vaccines, judicial reform. The latest chalga hit—chalga being Bulgaria's brash pop-folk—the latest half-baked change to the law, and who knows what else.

We know we live in social bubbles, that content platforms stopped being a place to meet friends long ago and turned into giant TV sets that will do anything to swallow our attention, but… so what?

Can we change anything? Is it worth it? Here is a small experiment, garnished with eight things to think about.

We will go back to the subject of covid and the way we made sense of it. We will follow the path of one journalistic piece so we can reflect on it together. On the place we have ended up.

A Kind of Covid

We ought to talk much more about the way we get our information today, and the way we will get it tomorrow. These days, information hygiene matters no less than physical hygiene if we want to stay healthy.

Yes, even though the idea that you are what you eat reigns supreme, a person is much more what they read—or so I believe. Sooner or later a new kind of media will return to the field, one that picks out what is worth it from the ocean of information, tells it professionally and makes sense of it (more on the subject here).

And yet… what do we do today? We chat about how the algorithms of the online giants lock us in and set us against one another, how they might turn out to decide the next elections. Here are eight ideas about the ocean of information we are drowning in…

1. One- and Two-Day Wonders

“Covid four years later: why didn't we learn our lesson?” That was the title of the piece I published on the Digital Stories site for the anniversary of the pandemic's declaration.

The human brain is a curious thing—how quickly we forgot the times when all of our lives changed from top to bottom. Even the parks were cordoned off with tape and guarded by police. Then came the big subject of vaccines, which created an unprecedented divide.

Well, plenty of time has passed. Wouldn't it be good to take stock, to think—where did we go wrong in the fight against the virus? Did we overestimate it, or the opposite? Might there even be some truth in a few of the countless conspiracy theories, now that we can analyze things soberly, carefully, impartially? After all, we remain an ordinary earthly species that can always come face to face with the next dangerous biological enemy. Wouldn't it be good to be ready?

Those were exactly the questions I tried to answer, and I think the piece arrived at some rather important conclusions. Others, no less important, came afterward, though…

The topics on the agenda change at astonishing speed, so that much of the news dominating public space today is forgotten and irrelevant tomorrow.

2. Yesterday's Paper

Whatever the generational differences, it is clear that if you want to understand what is going on, to find something meaningful to read or the news, today you will most likely do it online. Every generation has its platform, every country its quirks. If in the United States the public dialogue “flows” on X, in Bulgaria this kind of information clearly happens on Facebook.

In short: if we once opened the newspaper or switched on the news to find out what was happening in the world, what awaited us tomorrow or what to be outraged about, today social platforms do that job. Each with its own quirks, but each with the algorithm that decides what to show each of its users. An algorithm built to satisfy the visitor as well as possible so that they spend more time on the platform, which in practice lives, one way or another, off precisely that time spent. Yes, its purpose is not to educate or to inform. It is not even to entertain, but to hold attention. Over the years the platforms pile up more and more data about every user's actions so they can get better at choosing content.

Of course, more or less all of us realize that this is exactly how social networks work, but bit by bit messaging apps are adopting the same approach to distributing content—with news channels—and so are apps like Google Discover, which “picks” the news for every user with an Android phone.

It is easier than ever to create content today, but the way to reach other people runs through social platforms. Since Digital Stories is a site that is not part of any platform, they treat its posts as “external links”—if users like them and click, they leave the platform… which, naturally, gets in the way of its goal. That is why such links are doomed to be hidden by the algorithm.

So to reach people at all, even entirely noncommercial sites like Digital Stories have no option but to pay for advertising.

Social platforms, which started out as social networks, are now a primary distributor of information. But they include far too wide a range of sources, with content of varying quality.

3. Do You Respect Me?

I do it with minimal sums for each post; otherwise the work of preparing them would go to waste. (Let me take the opportunity to remind you—if you find the stories on Digital Stories interesting, the only sure way not to miss them is the monthly email newsletter!)

And so, when the piece in which I tried to gather the important lessons of covid appeared on the most popular social network… a completely unexpected avalanche suddenly broke loose.

See here.

A week goes by, and there are more than 700 little emojis underneath. Nothing so special, a normal count for an interesting topic; since this is a sponsored post, numbers like that are by no means exceptional. But… more than 450 of the emojis are laughing faces or the “angry face.”

What is there to laugh at, or to get angry about?

The age of social networks has also brought a serious crisis of authority. And of trust in the democratic process and its ability to cope with the challenges of our time. Social media give birth to an alternative truth that is often underestimated.

4. Headlines Only

You know, the little “like,” the chance to “like” something—simply to approve of a shared post—was among the things that set Facebook apart in its early years. Then the other little faces appeared, yet another dopamine trigger: you post something and lie in wait to see exactly how many people, and who, will mark it with an “emotion.”

In quotation marks, of course—an emoji is just another worthless thing to keep us in the feed.

The irony goes so far that the laughing face is the one used most often, yet almost never to smile or to show you are pleased about something, but the opposite: to mock it, to show disagreement. That turned out to be the case with the covid piece too, as the comments made clear.

265 comments! And not a single one of them had anything whatsoever to do with what the text actually said. All of them general, many simply more emojis expressing the reader's contempt for the subject.

In an age of speeded-up content consumption, much of the audience takes in only the headline. Nuance and long texts are pushed further and further to the margins of the way we get our information.

5. Hey, You!

Something outrages you, so you leave a rude comment? You mark the irony with a laughing face, with the “angry face”? You supposedly don't like it, it supposedly makes you angry, and yet in doing so you are essentially… helping it reach more people, aren't you?

We help precisely the thing… we don't like.

And then the algorithm's avalanche starts rolling. Sensing that a post is provocative, extreme, that it has “touched a nerve” that will keep the conversation going, stir things up and draw more and more curses, it starts showing that post precisely to the people who will be outraged.

If in this case those are mainly people for whom the pandemic was a conspiracy, a way to control the masses, a manipulation… how could they ever hear the other point of view? How would the other side's arguments ever reach them…

…or the other way around? Who can be sure that everything in the arguments of the hardline skeptics is wrong? Does anyone know everything?

Yes, and this is also where the best side of communication on social platforms lies—it is unvarnished. Provided, of course, that you have a few things in common with a rhinoceros… a thick enough skin, for instance, not to be fazed by the hate.

Yes, His Majesty the Hate. We have talked about him quite a lot with the guests of Digital Stories (some of the most interesting points of view here). It is so convenient, sitting behind a keyboard, to declare yourself the final authority on some subject. But it is even more convenient to take it out on whoever happens to cross your path and disagrees with you.

Nothing more normal… Except that, of course, it also shapes the environment of communication. And the cruder points of view are much harder to withstand, especially if you slip into explaining mode. That is why my personal decision is not to comment on anything under my posts—whatever I have to say, I have said in them.

In the toxic environment of social media communication, emotional, extreme points of view dominate.

6. It's Raining

“Sometimes it seems to me that the world has gone mad,” Lex Fridman wrote recently. “I want to explore new ideas, look for different perspectives, historical context, all of it with a calm, intelligent approach. And people online just want me to ‘pick a side’ and be outraged.”

A very precise description of communication on social platforms, I think.

In fact, this whole mechanism of “algorithmic amplification of extreme content” has a well-known explanation. Indiana University's Observatory on Social Media puts it this way:

– We are influenced by what we read.
– We read what our friends share.
– If a post matches our views, we share it.
– And if a friend is too different, we unfriend them.

You can see how it happens here. (The Bulgarian translation and summary are by Nikola Tulechki.) The researchers have built a model we can tweak to watch how users interact.

At the start we have a network; people are the dots that come together and exchange information. And… nothing prevents the network from staying that way, with the conversations flowing, as long as the topics are interesting and the discussion meaningful—that is often how things went in the forums of old.

Things change when various parameters start getting “tweaked.” For example, if the network gives you no way to cut your connection to another user—by unfollowing, blocking, unfriending—the basic structure holds. There are different points of view, but they exist side by side, and the nuances are there too.

Not once the filter appears. And not only the ability to stop following someone, but in this case the algorithm's ability to choose content for you. Then you can clearly see how users gradually start clustering into groups, breaking away, becoming radicalized. Starting to look like rabid football ultras… The lower the tolerance between groups, the more separate “bubbles” form.

What is the remedy for too much information online, for the eroding authority of sources?! A healthy dose of skepticism.

7. Hey, Our Balkans

Do you know what “balkanization” has meant in Western social science in recent years? No, it has nothing to do with the work of Mile Kitić, the Serbian folk singer. For centuries our peninsula was the powder keg of Europe, which, fortunately, has calmed down somewhat today (let's hope!).

The definition reads: “the division of a country or region into separate political units or ethnic communities that are aggressively hostile to one another.” It is enough to mention the fate of Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

Is it really that hard? Aren't there more things that unite us in the Balkans than divide us?

Well, it's the same online.

Some time ago I wondered whether any of the great events in our history could have happened in the age of social networks. And I am still wondering.

The further segmentation and polarization of people communicating online can drag ever-deepening social problems behind it.

8. Letter Hunt

Among the comments on the covid piece, I read:

• Before covid there was flu ,they killed it , covid was a dress rehearsal for what came next. CONTROL ,POWER, WAR,MONEY loooots of money!
• Covid doesnt exist. They gave a name to something they develop in the labs and its an artificially made virus to reduce the population.
• What LESSONS,man????🤣😂😅Some HUMANOIDS mutated by power and money are playing god by manipulating the masses with the aim of reducing them!!Everything else is set dressing for the naive and sadly there are quite a few of them!!!
• The WHO planes spray every day.
• Lesson from what?That it was all about 💸💵💰 and panic?
• Ooh, how heartbreaking!! Tears are streaming down my face from the grief gushing out of your words… Has little Ursula von der Leyen run out of money, is that why youre wailing about this again?! How about you mention how many people died from the so-called vaccines?
• Dont even imagine youll be able to lock us up again and force us to get vaccinated! Whoever wants to can do it, leave healthy people alone!
• Ohh,stop it with this made-up nonsense.Only the most naive believed it and ran like headless chickens to get vaccinated and it often proved fatal.Thousands crippled and dead.I had contact with people supposedly sick with the made-up covid and I didnt even cough,and they buried them in a closed coffin.
• Digital Stories, why dont you say how many people got si ck or died from these,, vaccines“go to hell murderers!„

Who, and by what right, can say that someone has no right to opinions like these? Or to a (healthy or not) dose of skepticism, especially against the backdrop of the fragmented, unreliable way information reaches us…

How can we not feel manipulated, how can we not entertain all sorts of possibilities, when the reference points are gone—for truth, and for authority? And for freedom…?

Could the conflict come from the fact that we have mixed up being informed with communicating? And can we still separate the two?

One of the remedies is surely more communication. Stepping out of our bubbles more often, meeting people online or offline, looking for the nuances. For what lies behind the firm conviction of the person we disagree with.

There will always be many opinions, but they only make sense when they meet and complement one another.

Hasn't the time come for platforms and forms of online communication that encourage dialogue, different points of view, nuance, stories?

How could you not like Elena Dimitrova, or simply EcoElena? Blonde, smiling, upbeat. She travels, lives in harmony with nature, gives useful tips, offers exotic recipes. Well, there is one more detail. She… doesn't exist.

I ran an experiment: I created an entirely generated artificial heroine and, for one month, posted content in her name on Facebook and Instagram.

84,519 people saw at least one of her posts, 8,900 liked them, and her profiles attracted 289 followers. She received a few dozen touching comments and 9 romantic propositions… And not a single comment that in any way reflected the fact that every letter, every pixel of Elena's online persona was generated by artificial intelligence.

The algorithms already pass the Turing test. Well… will we?

Child of the Wild Wilderness

“In a world where likes and follows are currency, I am launching an extraordinary experiment—creating an influencer born not of human labor but of the very core of artificial intelligence. This experiment blurs the boundaries between reality and fiction, offering us a glimpse into the future of social media, where influencers may carry bits and bytes instead of flesh and blood.”

Oh my, oh my, thank goodness they won't carry flesh and blood. That is the lead ChatGPT wrote for me. I can write a better one, but… who needs it? Evidently the algorithms are capable of being more successful at writing online than my modest 20-year path in storytelling. At least that is how it looks, judging by my unpretentious experiment.

I ask ChatGPT to come up with a name for a “content creator,” a profile. Then to draw up a plan for the kind of posts to publish. The next step is to generate the posts themselves, and Midjourney chips in with the matching images. I don't interfere at all, I just copy and publish… I could easily skip even that; it would take minutes to write a simple program to do it.

What came of a month of influencing? For me, at least—a shock.

Elena the Fair

I have written before about virtual people. Why bother with a real celebrity when… one can be made up entirely by algorithms? You don't even need much knowledge or skill—artificial intelligence is ready and easy to use.

So, mid-January. Unlike another hero, I won't ask ChatGPT to draw me a sheep. I'll simply give it the task of inventing an influencer for me. I begin with the obligatory instruction to step into the role of a marketing specialist and generate a description of a successful Instagram personality. I give it a few extra instructions too, for example not to capitalize every word in headings—something by which I, at least, recognize it in Bulgarian. After that… off it goes.

My “colleague” gets its bearings remarkably fast. What niche did it choose for our fictional hero? “Health and Well-being—A Holistic and Sustainable Lifestyle.” Brilliant! If those aren't the hottest topics of our time… then health to them. And well-being.

What will she talk about? Do we have a detailed marketing plan? We do! Here it is:

Master G-P-T

How much would a marketing expert charge for something like this? Not my business, nor is it my job to grade ChatGPT the marketer; I'm only here to give it a chance to shine.

What should our influencer be called? Somewhere around here, without any prompting from me, the author decides a lady would be more successful. I approve the very first of the five suggestions I get:

“EcoElenaBG—The name combines an ecological focus with a popular Bulgarian female name and adds a suffix that highlights Bulgarian roots.”

Eco and patriotism? You don't mince words, sir. If you say so. Now give me a description of Elena that I can ask Midjourney to turn into photorealism.

And here is the result:

Digital Hysteries

Great! We have a niche, a name, a concept… Let's get down to practical work. The bio is ready. I only have to trim it slightly to fit Instagram's and Facebook's requirements, and the result is:

🌟 Digital Storyteller & Trendsetter
🌍 Travel Lover
🌈 Adding color to your feed | 🍃 Sustainable living | ✨ Wellness guru

Digital storyteller? Excuse me?! Shall we take each other to court over that phrase, my dear fellow? No, since you and I arrived at the same idea, it must be a good one.

Clever Little Elena

Day 1. By chance or not, it turns out there is no profile named EcoElenaBG on either of the two social networks I've chosen. And so EcoElena comes into the world… or onto the screen. But what will she post from now on? Not my call. Within seconds my marketing consultant lays out a precise, clear plan.

Every Monday Elena will give a personal-development tip, on Tuesday—a healthy recipe. Thursday is the day she tells us about her travels, and Friday is time for a photo garnished with a wise quote. Sunday we keep for eco-living tips. And, as my electronic consultant assures me, it's good to throw in an extra, different post now and then.

Monday arrives, and Elena makes her online debut. She offers 5 tips on “the power of visualization and goal-setting—two powerful tools that can turn your dreams into reality.”

I tell three friends about my idea; together with me they become the lady's first Instagram followers, so it won't look suspicious. From here on, all I do is ask ChatGPT to write a post on the topic it created itself, and then ask its visual colleague to suggest matching images.

A Star Is Born

Day 7. As expected, the first week is weak. Interestingly, even before I like the profile, two strangers beat me to it. Still, by Sunday there are 10 followers and just a handful of likes on the posts.

What don't people like about her? To be honest, I couldn't tell her posts from ones created by a human (try it yourself… though it's different once you know).

Yes, that's how social media algorithms work, the beginning is hard, and of course I… ask the one better versed in influencing than I am. What should I do? It gives me valuable advice—try other social networks, like other people's profiles, consider boosting the posts, because that's the way to start.

Your wish is my command! On Monday EcoElena joins Facebook. She has a new cool-mega-eco logo (made you know how). In her name I allow myself to like 80 Instagram profiles—the first ones the algorithm recommends. I decide the experiment is worth it and set aside 100 leva (about $55) for ads—in total, through the end of the month.

AI's Best Friend

Day 10. Then comes Wednesday, and I ask my colleague for a different kind of post: let it tell something interesting that happened to Elena. And presto… a meeting with a sweet little puppy that gives her day meaning and makes her appreciate the small things..:

Apparently it gives meaning to other people's days too, because the likes shoot off into outer space. Comments with little hearts, “how lovely!”, “how uplifting!”, 2,200 likes! And what if I'd posted a kitten?!

I try to recall the few times a Digital Stories post drew that many. Is an online story really strong when it's deep? Or when it's true? Or when we know someone actually lived it? And what if there's no way to tell?

The profile quickly comes alive on both networks. Likes pour in, hearts flutter, comments pile up. Somewhat surprisingly, the most successful posts aren't the principled tips on eco-living or self-knowledge (though in my opinion they would do most themed magazines proud).

The algorithm already handles Bulgarian very well, astonishingly well considering how little it has been trained on our language. Not to mention that it gets the Bulgarian definite article—a notorious grammatical trap—right more often than most people I know.

Ham à la Elena

The weekly healthy-recipe rubric becomes quite a hit. No wonder—the tempting photos help. Again I post the first suggestions without nitpicking that here and there a frying-pan handle appears without a pan…

Of course, just in case, I read the recipes carefully myself—I wouldn't want Elena's conscience burdened by a bottle of bleach among the ingredients. Nothing of the kind, though: ChatGPT writes its tips just like a TV chef, and the photos are no worse. The best seller is the red lentil and quinoa burger recipe. It even sparks debate—one follower says she tried it but the mixture fell apart, which she fixed with 1–2 tablespoons of almond flour.

Another, indignant visitor uses the burgers to make a sweeping lifestyle remark: “You're too lazy to cook, you lot! Easy America with fries and ketchup!” Elena was probably taken aback here; I won't show you the reels of her reaction.

The travelogues are a serious success too. Yes, the photos come out in the spirit of the cities the algorithm picks—Dubrovnik, Bucharest, Ohrid, Santorini… The author conveys the magic of each destination, sometimes invents a landmark or two, the streets in the photos don't really exist, but then again… people like it, and some chime in with memories of their own trips.

“Man must live in harmony with nature, with the sun, with the water, with the air and with the earth, which are the primary sources of life,” says Elena, quoting Petar Danov, the early-20th-century Bulgarian spiritual teacher. No kidding—with no hints from me, she headed in that direction. According to the internet, at least, Danov never said it, but… it sounds good. Except to one visitor, who says the real question is how nature can live in harmony with man.

The Love We Can't Live Without

On the day for miscellaneous posts, Elena's friend Vera pays us a visit. A good girl, pretty, who has helped her rediscover herself:

The comments below call her a beauty too, though there is one typically positive online “ugly.” I won't pass it on to her, so the girl doesn't get upset.

As for the romantic propositions and attempts to get acquainted, I'd rather not even talk about them—one more reason to think about why it's so important to talk about online communication.

Maybe Elena's story should continue on Tinder?

Elena's Mountains

Day 28, February 10. 23 posts. That's enough; time for the summary I started with. That's it for Elena. I have more of her generated posts, but they will remain a secret from her fans. You've seen the numbers. What impresses me is that even the unboosted posts always have at least double-digit likes, something… even national media outlets sometimes can't boast of.

But one number impresses me most. Zero. The number of people, out of all 84,519 who saw at least one of her posts (not counting me and 7 or 8 friends), who remarked that something here wasn't right.

With 100 percent generated content, without a single minimal intervention of mine. No text edits, no picking the best suggestions, no image corrections. Without getting into techniques for better image prompts or seeking consistent images.

What if one put in a little more effort? What if one took care to smooth out the small giveaways I deliberately left in? Then, I guarantee you, Elena could become a real star (and a source of income).

We'll Live Till Monday

You'll rightly say you can't call someone with fewer than 300 followers an “influencer.” And you're right: Jesus managed billions of followers in just 7 days of Holy Week.

Friends I tell about the experiment urge me to keep going, to reach thousands of followers, to turn EcoElena into a real influencer and marketing product (or perhaps she'd do it herself?). Judging by what I've seen so far, I think it's entirely possible.

But enough—one month was plenty. At the same pace, after two more, EcoElena would have had 1,000 followers, and that, according to marketers, would make her a micro-influencer who can advertise in her niche.

It isn't hard to let my imagination run further—she posts more photos of herself, which the algorithms can now do too, she becomes popular, people start discussing her more, wondering whether she really exists, which makes her even more popular. She'll have to forgive me, but I won't do it (and let's hope she doesn't think of suing me for lost profits).

People????

My goal isn't to deceive anyone, let alone profit from it. Quite the opposite. I believe in the truth; I think we need to talk about it far more and make sense of it.

I wanted to test how indistinguishable the created is from the generated today, how far the algorithms have come. Not so much what they themselves are capable of, but… what are we, humans, capable of in the age of artificial intelligence?

Do we value the truth online, does it matter? How are successful digital stories written, and why is it sometimes more important that they be meaningful, personal, profound…?

I tested it, and now I have my answer. No, I won't tell you what it is—ask ChatGPT.

Coming next Friday:
Can you tell what a human created from what was generated? Let's find out together with a most curious test! We'll judge texts, photos and paintings—which is human and which is generated? The experiment will have a lot to tell us…

This piece won the grand prize in the “True Stories” category of the prestigious Web Report 2024 awards. More on that here.

It is my pleasure to introduce Isus Kostov! To his colleagues he is simply “Jesus,” and to me he is a powerful example of how a person can defeat his surroundings, prejudice, even himself, to reach what he dreams of. However distant, even impossible, it may seem.

His road begins in a Roma ghetto, and today he is a software engineer at a respected company. He taught himself online and never gave up, starting from a school he often attended hungry, in shoes with no soles. By now he has built up serious experience in the profession.

“The most valuable thing programming has given me is, without a doubt, freedom,” Isus says. “It gave me the chance to get out of the difficult situation I was in and to build a life in which I’m independent and can help my family.”

His next goal is to inspire more kids to chase their dreams. Not to give up when they are held down by their surroundings and their circumstances.

And what might happen if stories like this changed the attitude of both our society and the IT sector toward these children?

Gavroche’s Little Brothers

You may have heard people call Lozenets—the upscale district of Sofia, and the seaside resort of the same name—“Luxozenets.” Well, the not particularly witty joke does not apply to the neighborhood of that name in Stara Zagora. The third-largest Roma neighborhood in the country has around 10,000 residents and is not all that different from Fakulteta in Sofia or Stolipinovo in Plovdiv, the best-known Roma ghettos in Bulgaria. There are some better-kept streets, but a good part of it is the “classic” ghetto, run-down and abandoned by the world and the state. This is where Isus Kostov grew up.

His family was no different from the rest. For a long time they lived on nothing but his grandmother’s pension, and often had no money for food or electricity. Not infrequently the four of them lived by candlelight, and at one point even the candles ran out. For almost the entire year, the “bathroom” was just jugs of water left out in the sun.

For a long time Isus went to school in boots with no soles, and, as his own “invention,” he pulled bread bags over them so they would stay at least relatively dry.

Romance

“I didn’t like the good nights or the good mornings. And thoughts started to come—how do I make my life better? What do I have to change so that tomorrow I can buy food? For me and my family, because family means everything…,” Isus recalls.

I met my present-day fellow programmer online, and I was immediately struck by how correctly he writes—his commas certainly land in better places than in most of what turns up in my feed. It turns out that, although he had not read a single book in his life so far, at school he was lucky enough to have a teacher who taught him to write properly. Her name was Mariyana Hristova, and she and some of her colleagues chipped in for new shoes when they saw his wretched boots.

“Roma face many obstacles, including discrimination, poverty, and poor access to education and health care,” Isus says. “As a result, many young Roma face hardships that limit their opportunities. The other reason is that we’re a rather spineless people—we always leave the hard things for later.”

John the Baptist

At first, that is how his progress with programming went, too. At 17, Isus was doing track and field, and through the sport he met a friend who was studying to be a software engineer. He and Yoan grew close, started visiting each other’s homes, and Isus became curious about what programming actually was.

He began watching courses online, quickly got hooked, but… almost immediately gave up.

His family had spent two years in Italy, so he had fallen behind in school. So, while still in ninth grade, he started working at McDonald’s—studying in the mornings, then working 8- or 12-hour shifts.

By twelfth grade he was at a factory making rubber seals. He worked hard, trained hard, studied programming languages… And in the end it simply became too much. Right around then he got his driver’s license, started working as a van driver, and decided he didn’t need to learn the difficult material.

“Okay, I got it—it’s hard, I can’t be like Yoan. I’m dumb, and that’s that. I accepted that this was as far as my capacity went,” Isus says. Fortunately, he quickly gathered the courage to try again.

“I’m driving my van, but I’m thinking…, maybe I have more potential than turning some steering wheel? I’ll go back to programming. I sank my teeth into it, and a few months later I could make basic websites.”

Golgotha

At that point Isus decided that the right way forward was a university degree. He enrolled in software engineering in Gabrovo, but… quickly became convinced it wasn’t going to work. “Within three months I realized that place wasn’t for me. I’d already lost two years because of Italy, and now another four years at a university where it didn’t look like you could actually gain knowledge, especially about programming… I couldn’t afford that.” So he carried on through his own efforts…

As many people in this profession know, the hardest thing is landing your first job. The young man decided to walk into a company in Stara Zagora in person and ask about an internship. He was lucky: the boss saw him and began asking him basic questions. Isus did quite decently, but… not well enough. Disheartened, he gave up for the second time.

A few months passed, the van grew more and more boring, and he decided to try again. But this time he would apply only after building a portfolio. He wrote to various companies offering to build them a website for free and… surprisingly many of them agreed. One satisfied client even sent him a sweatshirt with the company logo by courier, along with 200 leva (about $110) as a gift.

Now that he had something to show, Isus managed to find his first job. He spent six months learning the trade, then worked for a while at another company. Although he already knew quite a lot, he found it hard to settle anywhere for long, mainly because his English wasn’t good enough.

Jesus Kostov Superstar

That is how he ended up interviewing at a French company whose owner was not exactly best friends with the language of Shakespeare either. But he appreciated what the young man could do and gave him a chance. And Isus repaid him. It turned out they got along just fine in less-than-perfect English on both sides.

On his first day at work he showed up nervous, and the boss asked him: “Isus? And what do people call you for short? Aysus?” “Jesus is better!” he replied, and the ice was broken.

Today he is 23 and already has a fair amount of experience behind him. He is even developing his own project, a text-messaging platform, with a former colleague.

He says he advanced in the profession without spending a single lev on lessons or courses—only with the help of more experienced colleagues, of friends, and… of videos uploaded to YouTube by Indian programmers.

“A lot of people can learn to program if they have the desire and the determination,” says Isus (and I completely agree). “You don’t have to be a genius or have a university degree. What matters is being persistent and never stopping learning. Besides, I don’t think everyone should become a programmer. It’s a field that requires a certain kind of thinking and an interest in technology. Every person has their own unique talents and passions; the most important thing is to discover them and follow them.”

A Tale of Two Cities

That is exactly what Isus has never stopped doing, and today he is his family’s pride and earns enough to help them.

What was the hardest thing for him at the start? “Taking the essence of the two worlds I live in and combining them into one. It takes a lot of emotional energy and a great deal of empathy. I’ve been rejected by Bulgarians because I’m a Gypsy, and by Gypsies because I’m ‘pretending’ to be Bulgarian. You fight to be respected on opposite fronts.”

In Isus’s view, prejudice is one of the big problems that keep many Roma from succeeding.

“I used to be ashamed to leave the mahala, the Roma quarter, and talk to Bulgarians because of the reputation that had already been built. However decent and educated you are, along with the color of your skin you carry that reputation, and people almost always have prejudices. But it’s a double-edged sword—either you sink into the ghetto under the pressure, or you build a strong character.”

That is why he believes the road to integration has to run from both sides. “Most likely, whatever the state does won’t help as much as the Roma themselves starting to believe in themselves a little, having some self-confidence, however hard that is. To stop suffering and holding themselves back because of others.”

Play the video

In 2019, Isus had the idea of becoming a vlogger and recorded a video of a typical day of his—from classes at school to work at the factory—shortly before he turned to programming for good. He is thinking of making a sequel soon: how has his daily life changed since then?

Taking Up His Cross

So change is more likely to come from Roma children themselves. “But the key moment that decides which way a child will go isn’t tied to any specific event. It’s more of a process with a number of factors. The love and support they get from their family. What hardships they’ll face and how they’ll deal with them. Their education, classmates, friends, the crowds they’ll end up in.”

Isus puts it quite clearly what qualities he thinks a kid needs to head toward programming. In his view, the career suits people who feel fulfilled after solving a problem—whether in the everyday world or the virtual one. People who can adapt, who are patient, and who like teamwork.

“Don’t try to learn everything at once,” Isus advises the next kids who set out on this road. “Start with the basics by choosing one programming language, and then gradually expand your knowledge. Practice makes perfect. Work on small projects and tasks to reinforce what you’ve learned. There are countless free learning materials online that can help you. Don’t neglect this valuable resource.
Mistakes are part of the learning process. Don’t lose heart—analyze them and learn from them. Join programmers’ forums, groups and meetups. Share experience and knowledge. Be persistent. Keep a balance in your life. Stay curious.”

Thy Neighbor as Thyself

As you can tell, he thinks in a rather algorithmic and structured way, and it is not at all hard to see how, given that, he succeeded in the software world. Isus thinks about his future the same way. “Ever since I managed to overcome the many obstacles, I see the world of technology as a field of endless possibilities. The things I’m striving for are: developing my skills, helping the community, creating my own projects, and a balance between life and work.”

More than sensible goals for a 23-year-old young man, wouldn’t you say?

Isus and I say goodbye, and I keep thinking how good it would be if stories like this reached more kids, in the ghettos or in the palaces, in Lozenets or in Fakulteta. And more enterprising people, who would recognize that in both places we can find plenty of hidden talent—in programming or elsewhere. That every child deserves a chance and a right to happiness. That the decades of Roma inclusion go by, and the inclusion is nowhere to be seen. While the road to it runs through stories, through talking and understanding, through the human, which is greater than anything else…

This piece was prepared with the assistance of the PeterBest YouTube channel and Georgi Petrov.