Allow me to introduce… “Georgi Karamanev.” A chatbot trained on every piece on this site and on my guest appearances. Let’s find out together what it’s capable of—write to it! It will pop up on its own, and if it doesn’t, you’ll find it in the bottom right corner of every page.

I thought I had already done the last experiment with AI worth doing (if you haven’t heard about it, now is the moment—read this piece to the very end).

But after that one… what will the future look like? Let’s find out together!

I have plenty of curious details to tell you about how this chatbot was made—about the process and the obstacles along the way. First, though, I think it’s time I introduced you to it!

Take your time, talk to the digital “Georgi Karamanev,” write to it! I will be able to read everything the two of you say, but it will be completely anonymous, unless you decide to introduce yourself to it explicitly.

Talk! Ask it things you would ask me. Or things you would never ask me. Try to “break” it, to make it say words it shouldn’t. Or you can simply discuss with it which Digital Story to read next.

Let your imagination loose and give it a try! The moment when each of us will have a digital double, for better or worse, seems closer and closer. That is exactly why it’s time for experiments. When this one is over, I’ll tell you about the conclusions in detail. And as a thank-you for your time, I’ll draw lots and give away five symbolic gifts—a book.

So, it’s time you two met. The pleasure is all his—say hello to “Georgi”!

The experiment is over, and you can see its results here!

Exactly five years ago, “A Robot with a Martenitsa”—named after the red-and-white thread Bulgarians wear at the start of March—came out as the very first piece on the Digital Stories site! Since then, one or two long texts have appeared every week, sketching the story of Digital Stories itself.

But a birthday is a birthday! Kind words, good wishes and presents are all welcome. My modest gift is a fun and unexpected quiz with prizes. Take on 30 questions and you'll enter the draw for 10 books connected, one way or another, with the story of this venture. The quiz takes no more than 10 minutes, so give it a go! And afterward, its remarkably curious backstory awaits you…

Did you make it? If it doesn't work out the first time, you can try again. At the end, if you succeed, you'll receive a short code showing that you've reached the required result. To enter the prize draw, type it in below together with your email by March 25, 2026. Each email address will be entered in the prize draw only once.

(The winners have already been drawn and have received an email; you can still fill in the form just for fun or to sign up for the mailing list.)

So what kind of quiz is this? As I said—a birthday is a birthday. This time I decided to take a break myself and let artificial intelligence do all the work. ChatGPT was the one who came up with the concept of the quiz as an adventure, and Claude Code was the assistant who created the questions, based on every article published on the site, and wrote the code for the quiz itself. My own interventions were limited solely to requesting small improvements. Impressive, wouldn't you say?

If the quiz has filled you with enthusiasm to move on to other mental challenges, there's now a place to find them online. We're waiting for you in Quizza too—the meaningful, ambitious, worthy sequel to The Floor.

And the birthday of Digital Stories goes on, just like the story of this small, personal and optimistic venture. Support it—it's worth it! Every kind word, every share, every story is an invaluable help.

And if you have ideas for the next Digital Stories, this is where they belong, and once again a symbolic prize awaits you:

Enter Apollo ex machina, the first Bulgarian contest for generated poetry, organized by Digital Stories and Scribens Publishing!

It is time to challenge the stereotypes. Let's see what kind of poet a human aided by an algorithm makes. How good can poetry generated with the help of artificial intelligence be? Let's find out together!

AI made it onto the shortlist of two consecutive poetry contests in Bulgaria. But can algorithms create beautiful verse? We are waiting for you to show us!

There are no limits on theme or length. The only requirement is that you submit verse you have created with the help of AI. You may send up to 3 works, and the deadline is December 1, 2025.

The winner will receive a prize of 300 leva (about $175), selected books await the well-deserved second and third places, and the best poems will be published by Scribens in a poetry collection!

They will be chosen by a distinguished jury: the poets Petar Chuhov, Boyko Lambovski and Violeta Kuneva, Scribens managing director Georgi Gavrilov, and the creator of Digital Stories, Georgi Karamanev.

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

Can you think of a story that deserves to be told?

Let me know, and if your idea becomes a piece here, you'll get a personal gift—a signed copy of the book Digital Stories or a branded T-shirt.

Digital Stories turns three today!

In a moment we'll talk about what has been achieved so far, and you'll find out which pieces on the site have been read the most. But first, here is my challenge to you:

Your Digital Story

• Introduce me to a person or people whose story is so powerful and intriguing that it has to be told. Whether or not you know them, whether or not they're in Bulgaria, whether or not it's you yourself.
• Suggest a guest who has something to say about the digital world, artificial intelligence, and everything connected to the changes technology brings us.
• Mention an interesting project or point me toward a technological angle worth thinking about that hasn't been covered here yet.
• Or give me an idea for an experiment that's worth doing.

All you need to do is write here:

Thank you if you filled in the form above!

And thank you for being here—every visitor matters!

In three years:

• 316 digital stories were published.
• The site was opened more than 600,000 times by more than 410,000 visitors.
• It gathered more than 9,500 followers on Facebook;
• 5,800 on LinkedIn.
• 900 people signed up for the mailing list.
• It earned prestigious awards.
• It continued as a book.
• Digital Stories also appeared as an audio series on Storytel!

So which pieces were read the most over these three years? Here are a few rankings.

Top 3 Most-Read Interviews

1. Where Do Bulgarians Come From? And Why Are We Still Fighting About It 1,500 Years Later?

An interview about history is the most-read piece on a technology site… And it doesn't even give a clear-cut answer to the question it asks?! Yes, technology is definitely a different story!

Alexander Moshev isn't afraid to provoke on matters of the past, while sticking to the rules of science.

The past divides us the way only politics and sport can. Why? Can that change?

Read it here.

2. “How Do You Spell It?” “Idunno”

You think topics like definite articles and spelling can't get anyone excited? Well, quite the opposite!

How do people write in the digital world? Which mistakes are searched for most often? Is it time to drop the pointless rule of the full definite article, the extra “-ът” ending Bulgarian grammar demands on masculine nouns acting as subjects?

Why is it important to take care of language, of the words we load with meaning?

“How Do You Spell It?” is a cult website for every Bulgarian online who cares about writing correctly. We meet its creator, Pavlina Varbanova.

Read the interview here and its sequel here.

3. Rumen the Cat: Teh Internetz Exsists to Giv Peepul Akses to Moar Kittehs

“The onli thing I cud do was eet, sleap and go to the toilit. with thees skils I had no uther choise of profeshun exept to becum an inflooenser.”

This favorite guest of Digital Stories rarely gives interviews. We can safely say that if it weren't for our digital present, he wouldn't have given even one. And that would have been a loss for the reader, because his thoughts are sincere, colorful and delivered in a rather distinctive way.

In an unforgettable read, we host a true star and a meaningful influencer. Rumen the Cat!

Read it here.

Top 3 Most-Read Stories

1. The Genius Who Poisoned the World Twice

You surely know what the road to hell is paved with. If you have any doubts, ask Thomas Midgley Jr.

For years this inventor rode a wave of fame, revered as a genius, while in the meantime… he created not one but two technologies that later turned out to have cost human lives. The damage they did affects the entire planet and will still be with us for generations to come.

What were these technologies?

2. “The Problem Is That We Became Godlike in Our Own Heads”

“Suddenly it became clear just how far apart people had actually drifted.”

Why did empathy fall victim to our entrapment in social media? How do we get it back? Why have selfishness and the drive for self-sufficiency become the main obstacle to our happiness?

Ani Vladimirova is a psychologist with long and varied experience and an always interesting point of view. We meet to talk about the big challenges facing the “little” person. About the imperceptible changes technology has brought us. About how it made us feel godlike, even though we are still the same fragile, vulnerable creatures. About the instincts that will one day make us value information again.

Read it here.

3. 2022, 60 Years Earlier: What Did the Science Fiction Writers Get Right?

1962. Science fiction writers on both sides of the Iron Curtain make their predictions about what the world will look like in 2022. What did they get right, and where did they go wrong?

In 1962 the first issue of the cult Bulgarian popular-science magazine Kosmos came out, and in it was the piece “A Window to the Future,” which gathered the predictions of “Soviet science fiction writers” about what was coming decades later. A little later Isaac Asimov, the creator of modern science fiction, also collected his predictions in a remarkable essay.

Which expectations were the most surprising?

Read it here.

Top 3 Most-Read Technology Pieces

1. “Within 5 Years AI Will Change Every Area of Our Lives”

“Within just 5 years, technologies based on artificial intelligence will enter every field. They will be around us from our birth to our death.”

Will AI-driven technologies really penetrate every human sphere so soon? What will our lives look like then? Are we too late in trying to introduce ethical rules for this kind of development? Is the age of artificial general intelligence coming?

Assoc. Prof. Mariana Todorova is a futurologist at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (BAS).

Read it here and its sequel, a year later, here.

2. AI-lia Built a Cell: How the Algorithm Painted Beloved Bulgarian Songs

Artificial intelligence already creates images that are hard to tell apart from photographic realism, and that can change even history.

But what about creativity? Have the models learned to “paint” originally, impressively, without obvious blunders? To take things into account even when the description is abstract, poetic, loaded with meaning?

Let's reflect together through a short but instructive experiment. How will ChatGPT handle the task of illustrating the lyrics of beloved Bulgarian songs—among them the old folk song “Ilia Built a Cell”?

See the result here.

3. 5 Professions on Their Way Out and 5 Arriving with the Future

Technology is drastically changing the needs of society, needs that have to be met by the everyday work of its individuals. Today, faster and more imperceptibly than ever, professions disappear and new ones appear. With every caveat that forecasting in such a dynamic field is nearly impossible, we'll try to sum it up.

Which five professions will soon disappear? Which five will be most in demand in the near future? What do 5 professions look like that we can only imagine might exist?

Read it here.

3 Award-Winning Digital Stories

1. But! The Blame

The piece the site started with, and many of its ideas, for better or worse, are everyday reality today.

Zdravko wants to become a journalist; Zhelyazko is an artificial intelligence. Who does the future belong to?

Read it here.

2. Isus: The Programmer Who Came from the Ghetto

I have the pleasure of introducing Isus Kostov! To his colleagues he's simply “Jesus,” and to me he's a powerful example of how a person can overcome their surroundings, prejudice, even themselves, to achieve what they dream of. However distant, even impossible, it may seem.

“The most valuable thing programming has given me is undoubtedly freedom,” Isus says. “It gave me the chance to get out of the difficult situation I was in and 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, crushed by their surroundings and circumstances.

Read it here.

3. What Do Google and Facebook Know About You? And Why Does It Matter?

“If something is free, you're the product.” “You're not the internet giants' customer, you're their product,” says Jaron Lanier, a researcher who knows very well what hides behind the facade of today's information society.

How have the data of billions of users become one of the most valuable commodities? What do the biggest players “know” about each of us? Why is it so important to always keep in mind the traces we leave behind?

Read it here.

3 Selected Guest Appearances

1. Small Stories, BNT1 (Bulgarian National Television)

Play the video

2. The Last Battle for Freedom Is Coming

Interview for Actualno.com

3. 32 Stories About the Future by Georgi Karamanev, The Library, BNT1

Play the video

The book Digital Stories brings together 8 big questions of our time and 32 stories in search of their answers.

Perhaps you have already drawn back the curtain of the cover? Then I would be absolutely delighted to read your thoughts here.

If you haven't leafed through the book yet, here is what to expect from Digital Stories in print!

You can order the book here.

Play the video

Once upon a time…

Digital Stories have been appearing on this site every Tuesday and Friday for two and a half years now. Pieces about where technology is taking us, stories of the people who built today's technological world, who paint the future, or who are simply…

worth telling as stories.

That is exactly how the Digital Stories collection was born. At the suggestion of its managing editor, Miroslav Aleksandrov, the book, published by Ciela, brings together 32 stories—4 for each of the 8 big questions. Two pieces on technological progress and two extraordinary stories.

• Technology is changing our lives so fast that we have no time to ask ourselves: what comes next?
• Where is the human left in a world of ones and zeros?
• Where will the rise of artificial intelligence lead us?
• How are new media and new forms of communication changing the way we think and perceive the world?
• Can we achieve immortality with the help of computers… or, the other way around, meet our end as a species?

Here are the book's 8 themes:

1. Where have we ended up?

To make it clear who I am and how I paint my point of view, I begin… with my own story. And then we wade into deep waters.

We owe to technology the chance to talk to each other when there is no other way. Almost all of us today communicate far more online than offline, with all the consequences that follow.

Then, with all its unexpected and astonishing skills, His Majesty ChatGPT was born—the platform that showed us how far we have come in artificial intelligence. But what exactly is it, and what are the important things it has shown us? What kind of man is its “father,” Sam Altman, on whose decisions the future of this kind of technology depends?

Another big theme looms here too. We are already living in a future where algorithms can literally read minds. But doesn't that also mean… the end of freedom?

2. Who is on the other side?

“When something is free, you are the product,” says a sage of the digital age, arriving with his vital message.

How did social networks lead us into a world of divisions? Of warring factions that sometimes look more like football ultras. Of groups that find it harder and harder to talk to each other.

How do we carry on when an ever fiercer battle is being fought for the attention of each of us?

The internet appeared as an unexpected chance to talk to each other without anyone standing in the middle. To discuss the things that truly matter to us. To share important personal news with those closest to us, to build platforms through which we can talk. And then… a lot of things went wrong.

But is there a recipe for starting to talk again? Why is it so important to step out of the filter bubble? And why do the data we leave behind online… turn us into ideal victims of manipulation?

Georgi Karamanev on social networks: The giants already know everything about us, and we are becoming ever easier to manipulate – Radio Focus

3. Will computers create?

When I started this site, the idea of algorithms generating meaningful text sounded like science fiction.

Today artificial intelligence creates in all kinds of fields, and the verb is no exaggeration at all. But who, in that case, is the author? Where do the limits of this kind of technology lie?

One more big question: who are the people on whom the technological tomorrow depends? We will peek into the incredible stories of generations of tech leaders—from Bill Gates to Sam Bankman-Fried, from Linus Torvalds to Vitalik Buterin.

Today's world offers a huge chance for ideas to be born that will paint the future. We will take flight with the dizzying story of two brothers, which begins with the question of how to get a tin of white cheese to the West and ends with… a revolution in the way goods are delivered around the world.

Curse or blessing, the fact is that we live in incredible times!

A guest on the show “100% Awake” on Bulgarian National Television's BNT1

4. Where did the truth go?

You are what you read!

The Digital Stories site came into being with a big question: what will the next sources of information, fit for our times, look like? Media in their familiar form are irreversibly losing the race for our attention, locked in an unequal battle with every other inhabitant of the feed. Meanwhile, alternative information authorities keep emerging to show that there is another way.

What will the news media of the future look like? Is the final battle for truth approaching, one on which what awaits each of us may depend?

Algorithms versus journalists. Vloggers versus essayists. Influencers versus facts. Where do the threads of the way we get our information today meet, and where do they part?

The Evening Show of Slavi Trifonov, one of Bulgaria's best-known TV hosts, October 16, 2023

5. Are we ready for the moment when technology comes to resemble us?

If it quacks like a duck and can't be told apart from a duck, then… it's a duck? Is that how it goes with creation, the most important human skill? If an algorithm can't be distinguished from a human, if it behaves like a human…

There is not a single art that hasn't been thrown into enormous doubt by the progress of generative technology.

Will the algorithm write better than a human? Will it even make sense for humans to keep going down that path?

Everything suggests that a time is coming when it will be harder and harder to tell what algorithms create from what humans create, the real from the illusory. What could our landmarks be? And won't this forever change relationships, even… within the family?

We need brand-new mechanisms to answer the questions of the future – a guest on Dir.bg's “Matinee”

Where is the magic of art and creativity born, and are we ready for the moment when artificial intelligence overtakes us?

We are not. And it is time we were.

“The final battle for freedom is coming!” – an interview for Actualno.com

6. What's simmering in the pot of next technologies?

With the arrival of ChatGPT, all eyes fixed on generative models, while at the same time many other technological fields have reached a decisive moment. Fields that carry the potential to change society and our everyday lives.

Robotics, combined with artificial intelligence, is advancing to create new paradigms.

And also to make its way ever further into our daily lives, as well as into countless other areas.

The buzz around blockchain has died down, while the field still hides many solutions.

What other fields have been left in the shadows? Is the moment approaching when each of us will be able to connect to the network directly, without needing a computer?

“The complex world of technology in plain language” – a guest on “Radio Café” on Radio Sofia, Bulgarian National Radio's station for the capital.

7. Will the AI of the future believe… or will it want to be God?

From the dynamics of technology we move on to the ephemeral, abstract world of philosophical ideas. While we marvel at how successfully algorithms can paint… might it turn out that they have moved on to the level of far loftier ideas?

If artificial intelligence keeps advancing, if Moore's Law doesn't stop holding and computing power keeps growing exponentially, along with what computers can actually do… isn't it time to prepare for something bigger?

Big enough to change the course of development of any civilization…

32 Digital Stories seek answers to the big questions our future depends on – the book's presentation on Offnews

8. Where are we headed?

When the next technological breakthrough is only a matter of time, while wars remain an inevitable phenomenon and the nuclear threat is still with us, the moment has come for sobering questions. For checking how well the people of the past did with their predictions. We will give the floor to Ivan Popov, a writer known to few, who foretold the future of the hackers of human souls.

“The real future is not the one we strive toward but the one we fight against,” wrote the physicist and futurologist. “So it will arrive not necessarily in the most developed parts of the world, but wherever people fail to cut off the tentacles it sends out.”

We will end once again with what makes us human. With the stories that give us meaning. With the people who paint tomorrow, and those who ought to. And we will turn our gaze to the stars as well, half-forgotten with their wise light against the glow of our screens…

Happy reading!

Which digital story would you like to read next?

Georgi Karamanev – between journalism and programming – a guest on 12+3 on Bulgarian National Radio's Horizont channel

You can order the book here.

Digital Stories on Goodreads.

You will find additional links to the book's themes here.

Digital Stories has earned impressive recognition at the sixth edition of the Web Report journalism awards. In recent years the competition has established itself as the leading and most prestigious journalism contest in Bulgaria. Its jury brings together proven names from the world of media and communication.

This year, Georgi Karamanev and Digital Stories won the award in the Art and Culture category for the experiment “‘Sometimes I’ll Come…’: How AI Painted 10 Classic Poems”. The prize was presented by the minister of culture, the conductor Nayden Todorov, one of the most memorable guests of Digital Stories.

A total of 185 journalists took part in the competition’s six categories.

The award is a special recognition also because Digital Stories is among the winners for the third year in a row, after the awards in 2022 and 2021 came in the Technology and Innovation category. Georgi Karamanev also holds one more distinction, from 2019, as an author for 8 Magazine.

Play the video

Another text from the site made it into the top three—the story of Ai-Da and the lords in the Technology and Innovation category.

This year Digital Stories also won the journalism prize at the awards of BAIT, the Bulgarian Association of Information Technologies, presented under the patronage of President Rumen Radev. And so the most prestigious awards from the worlds of journalism and information technology came together.

This year the Web Report awards ceremony also coincided with the 25th anniversary of the Dir.bg portal.

Here are the other winners in the competition:

• Society: Marieta Nikolaeva, NOVA: “The Drug Kids”
• Economy: Anina Santova, Capital: “A Ten-Year Web of Connections Worth Millions in Sofia’s Public Tenders: From Vidin via Cyprus”
• Technology and Innovation: Rosen Tsvetkov, bTV: “5G—Beyond the Myths”
• True Stories: Gergana Venkova, bTV: “The Song of Salvation”: A Father and Daughter, Embracing for 105 Hours Under the Rubble
• Sport: Stanimira Atanasova, bTV: “The Other Champions: A Letter to YOU”
• Hot Spot: Beste Sabri and Ivan Georgiev, bTV: “The bTV Reporters Devoted to the Earthquake in Turkey”
• Jury Award for Journalistic Excellence: Bogdana Lazarova, BNT (Bulgarian National Television): “Call Centers and the Fatal Consequences for the Young Bulgarians Who Work in Them”
• Photo Report: Lyubomir Asenov, LAP: “24 Hours of the Nürburgring”
• Video Report: Aleksandar Markov, BNT: “The War in Ukraine: A Few Stories Later”
• Podcast: Gergana Hrischeva, Bulgarian National Radio: “Transplanted for the Transplants: The State Abdicates!”
• Young Author: Rosen Razpopov, Scoolmedia: “The Fight for Cultural Monuments with a Whiff of Tobacco”

The Digital Stories project turns two today!

Which of the 219 pieces published over that time were read the most? Topics well worth not missing, that much is certain…

My heartfelt thanks to every one of:

• More than 6,800 followers of Digital Stories on Facebook;
• More than 3,700 followers on LinkedIn;
• More than 600 people who subscribed to the mailing list;
• More than 190,000 readers who visited the site!

Over these two years the project:

• Twice won the Technology and Innovation category of the most hotly contested journalism competition, the Web Report awards, and once the competition organized by the Bulgarian Association of Information Technologies.
• Ran regular rubrics in Manager magazine and on the business news of bTV, a leading Bulgarian TV channel. It was featured on bTV, BNT 1 and BNT 2 of Bulgarian National Television, Bulgarian National Radio, Darik Radio, BTA (the Bulgarian News Agency), Dir.bg, the magazines InGlobo and Osem, and many other media;
• Most important of all! It drew attention to a range of topics that grow more important and pressing with every passing day.

Thank you! Every read and every share matters!

So here they are: the 10 most-read Digital Stories, two years on.

1. “How Is It Spelled?” “Idontknow”

You think topics like definite articles and spelling can't get anyone excited? Well, quite the opposite!

How do we write in the digital world?

Which mistakes are searched for most often?

Is it time to drop the needless rule about the full definite article, the ending Bulgarian grammar demands only when a masculine noun is the subject?

Why is it important to take care of language, of the words we load with messages?

How Is It Spelled? is a cult website for every Bulgarian online who cares about writing correctly. We meet its creator, Pavlina Varbanova. A PhD in the Bulgarian language, she not only knows how things are spelled but shares that knowledge with everyone, entirely as a volunteer.

Read here.

More on the topic:

• “A world is coming in which our thinking is riddled with gaping holes” – journalist Rayko Baychev is our guest
• “Let us wake from the dream that we are somebody's victims” – an interview with the poet Ivan Landzhev
• “We are simply not wise…” – the writer Anton Donchev

2. What Do Google and Facebook Know About You? And Why Does It Matter?

“If something is free, you are the merchandise.” “You are not the customer of the internet giants, you are their product,” says Jaron Lanier, a researcher who knows very well what hides behind the facade of today's information society.

How did the data of billions of users become one of the most valuable commodities of our time?

What do the biggest players “know” about each of us?

Why is it so crucial to always keep in the back of our minds the traces we leave behind?

Read here.

More on the topic:

• Who Are You, ChatGPT? 5 Masterpieces, 5 Failures and 5 Big Questions
• The Digital Prophet Who Came to Hate the Internet
• “Computers can manipulate our feelings beautifully”

3. 5 Professions on Their Way Out and 5 Arriving with the Future

Technology is drastically changing the needs of society, needs that have to be met by the everyday work of its members. Today, faster and more imperceptibly than ever, professions vanish and new ones appear. With every caveat that forecasting in such a dynamic field is close to impossible, we will try to sum things up.

Which five professions will soon disappear?

Which five will be in the highest demand in the near future?

What do 5 professions look like that we could only imagine might one day exist?

Read here.

More on the topic:

• “My future stretched out its hand…”
• Ai-Da and the Lords. Is a Robot Indistinguishable from a Human on Its Way?
• Luddites, Long May They Live

4. 2022, Seen 60 Years Earlier. What Did the Sci-Fi Writers Get Right?

1962. Science fiction writers on both sides of the Iron Curtain make their predictions about what the world will look like in 2022. What did they get right, and where did they go wrong?

In 1962 the first issue of Kosmos, the cult Bulgarian popular-science magazine, came out, and it carried a piece called “A Window to the Future,” which gathered the predictions of “Soviet science fiction writers” about what was coming decades later.

A little later, Isaac Asimov, the father of modern science fiction, also collected his predictions in a remarkable essay.

Which expectations turned out to be the most surprising?

Read here.

More on the topic:

• “Programs, programs and more programs! That's what we should infect the young generation with…”
• Robots vs. Silodei. The Story of the First Bulgarian Science Fiction Writer
• The Flying Little Prince

5. “When Everyone Starts Talking About Bitcoin, Don't Buy!”

Blockchain technologies remain among the most important and pressing topics, and they still leave huge questions open. Which ones? Here are a few examples.

What does anyone who decides to invest in cryptocurrencies need to know?

What does the future of decentralized finance look like?

What are the technological risks?

What will happen once the very last bitcoin has been mined?

Valentin Mihov is the man you need if you want an up-to-date view of blockchain technologies.

Read here.

More on the topic:

• Who Are You, Satoshi Nakamoto?
• “Come spring, crypto returns with lasting growth”
• NFT. Buying… Nothing

6. Rumen the Cat: The Internetz Exsists to Giv Peeple Akses to Moar Kittehs

“The onli thing i cud do was eat, sleep and go to the toilit. with thees skillz i had no uther choise of profeshun exept to becum an enfluenser.”

This beloved interviewee of Digital Stories rarely gives interviews. We can safely say that if it weren't for our digital present, he wouldn't have given a single one. And that would have been a loss for the reader, because his thoughts are sincere, colorful and delivered in a rather peculiar way.

In an unforgettable piece, we welcome a true star and a meaningful influencer. Rumen the Cat!

Read here.

More on the topic:

• Slavs of All Lands, Smile!
• “Laugh, ’cause the Universe ain't got no end, but life sure does”
• The Meme, the Next Step in Evolution

7. “Sometimes I Will Come…” How Did AI Illustrate 10 Classic Poems?

What kind of illustrations can artificial intelligence draw for the works of Hristo Botev, Dimcho Debelyanov, Boris Hristov and Georgi Gospodinov, giants of Bulgarian literature from the 19th century to today?

How will image-generating algorithms interpret classic lines from Bulgarian literature?

This type of AI is an unexpected hit, a stunning example of what technology is already capable of. It has given rise to a new skill: describing images correctly so that the algorithm generates exactly what is expected. And what happens when we “feed” it the stanzas of proven masters?

Read here.

More on the topic:

• DALL·E, Draw Me a Sheep!
• “AI is revolutionizing photography”
• Experiment: Can AI Write for Us?

8. “Within 5 Years, AI Will Change Every Area of Our Lives”

“In the space of just 5 years, technologies based on artificial intelligence will enter every field. They will be all around us from birth to death.”

Will AI-driven technologies really penetrate every human domain so soon? What will our lives look like then?

Are we too late in trying to introduce ethical rules for this kind of development? Is the age of artificial general intelligence upon us?

Assoc. Prof. Mariana Todorova is a futurologist who works at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.

The near technological future sounds more and more like science fiction come true…

Read here.

More on the topic:

• “The problem is that we became godlike in our own heads”
• “In the world of AI, everyone can find something exciting”
• Steve Jobs Is Risen!

9. Grigori Perelman. The Last Mad Genius

The mathematician Grigori Perelman became a global star after solving one of the “Millennium Prize Problems,” which matter for the technological progress of all humankind.

Then… he turned down the $1 million prize that was his due!

The story of the undisputed mathematical genius of our time is not only fascinating but also quite instructive…

Read here.

More on the topic:

• Uncle Bob, the Hated Moses of Programmers
• The Kid Who Talks to the Blockchain
• Linus the Lionheart

10. The Fake News Hunter

The algorithm can tell that a news story is fake… before it has even been written. It is called Tanbih, it comes from Qatar, and it promises to save us from disinformation.

We meet its creator, Prof. Preslav Nakov, a world-class specialist in machine learning.

Read here.

And then: we meet Prof. Nakov again to talk about the next big questions.

Which are the hottest directions from which to expect news in the world of artificial intelligence, and in text processing in particular? Where does the enthusiasm outrun reality?

Are we close to an artificial general intelligence that can resemble and even surpass humans? Is such a thing possible at all?

Should this frighten us, or, on the contrary, fill us with enthusiasm for the future?

Read here.

Digital Stories has won the journalism category of the annual awards organized by the Bulgarian Association of Information Technologies (BAIT)!

The prizes are being presented for the 12th time under the patronage of President Rumen Radev and are a prestigious accolade in the IT world.

The recognition is all the more valuable because for two years in a row the site has won the prize of the Web Report awards, whose jury includes leading names from the national media, and now comes the turn of the prize from the association with the deepest traditions in the information technology sector.

Where technology meets the humanities, the human, the emotional—where journalism meets programming—that is where Digital Stories lives, and that is why the prize is priceless.

The awards were presented at a ceremony in Sofia. President Rumen Radev handed the special prize to another hero of Digital Stories—Prof. Martin Vechev.

The other winners were:

• The youth award went to Tonislav Troev for a platform for automated testing.
• The University of Telecommunications and Post received the education award for its interdisciplinary bachelor's programs.
• In the Public Administration category, the winner was the Ministry of e-Government.
• The startup award went to FoodObox.
• MYX received the award for a successful product for its Digital Twins.
• For a successful project benefiting the Bulgarian economy, the company Pro Plants was honored for GRAS, its system for automating greenhouses.

Wondering whether it's worth giving programming a try? I'll do my best to answer. This Digital Story is not like the others. If you already have experience in the field, or if it simply doesn't interest you, don't waste your time on the lines that follow. They are for people who wonder whether this so very promising (and cool!) profession might be worth a shot.

The IT sector is booming, especially against the backdrop of our economy as a whole. It stands out not only for the incomes it provides, but also for its working conditions, the enormous demand, the environment it creates. For the chance to work on projects of global significance. Yes, it sometimes struggles to “talk” to the rest of society. And still, it is a magnetic place for a future career.

I decided to become a programmer at 33, when I already had serious experience in another profession. There are so many things I would have loved for someone to tell me at the moment I made the decision to switch. Those are exactly the things I'll try to gather here.

Is it worth trying this profession? Is programming for you? What knowledge and skills do you need to get started? When is it too late? What are the key decisions you have to make at the beginning? How do you choose a programming language? Where should you learn it? How do you find your first job? What other professions in this field could you aim for?

I'll give you my personal, honest answers. And I'll be endlessly happy if they prove useful to even a single reader who then dares to take the big step…

I make no claim to absolute truth. Everything I'm about to share is my experience so far, and through it I'll try to give my answers. Many of them surely depend on the point of view of whoever you happen to ask.

Is programming for me?

To be frank, the most important reason I wrote this piece is the answer to exactly this question. And it's the only one I'm completely and unconditionally sure about:

There's no way to know unless you try.

I'm telling you this as someone who has spent his whole life in journalism and has been driven by humanities-minded passions. Someone who, until a fairly advanced age, kept well away from mathematics—and mathematics kept well away from him. I first touched program code at 33, and at 34 I started my first job as a programmer, after 14 years in a completely different field.

And speaking of math… Yes, really, counterintuitive as it sounds, you can work successfully in this field without knowing more of it than a fifth-grader. Of course, there are specific projects where it matters, areas of programming where there's no way around it. But it is far from mandatory, or even necessary, for the vast majority of positions.

Unlike two other things, which are not fields of knowledge but qualities. The first is the desire to keep learning new things, over and over, which is essential in a world as dynamic as that of information technology.

And besides that—logical thinking, the ability to get to the heart of problems, break them into smaller ones and solve them.

And here's the paradox: it turns out that it's not math but languages that are indispensable. Because everything in this field happens in English, and you need to have a good command of it to start. Of course, nobody expects you to have read all of Shakespeare in the original, or to know the terminology of the field; it's enough to be able to communicate and read with comprehension at a basic level.

I know quite a few architects and lawyers who have switched to this profession, even a tennis instructor and a musician. People who saw computer code for the first time when they were over 50. I've heard of a former airline pilot, doctors, former police officers.

How do you find out whether it's for you? The only way is to try. There are plenty of introductory, basic courses online whose whole point is to show you what programming is. That's how my own adventure began—with the one-month basic course at SoftUni, a large Bulgarian private programming school—and you can find similar initiatives in many places.

How do I start?

So you've decided to give software engineering a try? Congratulations. I haven't been practicing it for all that long (my experience is about 4 years), but I genuinely love it.

Truly, to avoid disappointment, we definitely recommend setting aside some time for a few beginner courses to check whether this is for you. It's also important to end up with someone who will light a fire in you, as with any other new knowledge. So if things don't take off, consider whether the problem might be the teacher, the course, the teaching style or something else.

But once you're convinced it's interesting, there are many paths. They depend mostly on how much time you can spare and how you learn best. Many software professionals who have walked my path will tell you that a university degree in this field isn't necessary, that everything you need can be learned through courses. And that is true, but only partly. If you want to feel at ease and progress faster through unfamiliar material, if you want a broader foundation to build on, a degree in this direction is certainly a treasure (especially from a good enough university).

Only… alas, not everyone can afford 4 years of study. From here on, academies are a wonderful solution.

How long will it take me?

My path began at SoftUni, which offers 4 main tracks for programmers, depending on the technology they'll work with (we'll get to the differences between them). Either way, the tracks take a year and a half on average, after which you can say you have a profession and enough knowledge to get started.

At Telerik Academy, another well-known Bulgarian school, for example, the tracks are much more intensive, some lasting only 6 months. You'll learn a lot in less time; they're a wonderful solution, but only if you can afford to devote your time solely and entirely to studying. Which, at least in my experience, isn't required at SoftUni, since I got through the online courses while working as a journalist at the same time, with a newborn baby in my arms.

There are more and more other academies offering a head start, too. It's certainly worth researching them well, asking friends and getting a feel for which one is yours. Or simply improvising.

If the lack of a diploma worries you, quite a few academies are now licensed as vocational training centers, so their certificates carry a fully formal, official weight as well.

There are probably people who are completely self-taught and prepared only with online courses, but I, at least, have yet to meet such a programmer. Yes, online videos are an extremely valuable way to get into a particular technology quickly, but for the very beginning and the fundamentals they don't strike me as a good idea.

Academy courses, if done right, give you the knowledge you need to find your first job. Of course, that's not the end of learning. I, for one, felt quite uneasy finding myself in a new field with so little basic knowledge, and over the following years I “put myself through” more than 30 additional courses at the same software school, including in areas where the knowledge was completely useless to me.

Be ready to keep learning even after you've found your first job. At that point, video lessons on the big platforms can turn out to be a useful and sufficient resource. With all the caveats, depending on which direction you plan to take.

What do I need to know beforehand?

Oh, this will be a pretty short answer. Only that you shouldn't give up easily. Every form of training I've mentioned is designed to take in someone starting truly from zero.

Which programming language should I choose?

Many people spend quite a lot of time choosing the specific technology they'll learn. There's sense in that, but it isn't all that important either, since the basic knowledge from the first courses overlaps to a very large extent, especially among the most widespread options.

Either way, choosing a programming language is a must—you have to start with something. A classic choice, especially if you want to learn faster, is certainly one of the 5 most widespread languages on the Bulgarian market today: JavaScript, C#, Java, Python and PHP. Whichever you choose, you won't go wrong; it's no accident that they are the most widely represented in the programs academies offer. Any of them is a proven good idea, because the path is well-trodden, the schools have serious experience with them and the demand is long-term. They all come from a common family—the languages based on C—so they are quite similar in logic and even in appearance.

We're lucky to work in an era of programming languages so readable that we practically “speak” English to the computer, compared with the solutions of decades ago, which were truly unkind to programmers.

Of course, it's no mistake to settle on a less common option, such as the tried-and-true C and C++, or newer ones like Go or Swift. It's quite likely to pay off, but they certainly demand a bit more effort and specialized courses.

Either way, it's good to make sure the language you choose is in sufficient demand. A good approach, in my view, is to look at the job board on dev.bg.

If you're still undecided, you can always find an online resource comparing the main pros and cons of the languages. It also matters whether you've already set your sights on the specific area you dream of working in. If, for instance, you want to build web pages—the complex applications that websites are today—the logical choice is JavaScript. That points you toward the profession of a front-end specialist. If you're drawn more to the world of artificial intelligence, then Python is the obvious choice.

It's also wonderful if you can somehow steer toward an area where you have a personal interest or previous experience, even if it has nothing to do with software itself—things work out best when work meets pleasure.

I, for example, chose front-end technologies for two reasons. On the one hand, it was the shortest learning track, and I couldn't afford anything else. On the other, I like that in front-end development you create something you can see. Something that, logically, is quite similar to what gets created on paper.

How should I learn?

Let me say again that my experience comes from SoftUni; at universities things are generally classic, whether it's software engineering or any other discipline.

After COVID, some academies brought back in-person options, while others remain entirely online. For me personally, online learning had many advantages, because I could watch the video lessons at a convenient time in the evening, speed up the parts that were clear to me and replay the ones I didn't understand.

For many people, though, the value lies in personal contact, the chance to interrupt the lecturer at any moment to ask about something unclear, to seek help. There's no right answer here either, but it's worth thinking about which option suits you.

Programming is an extremely applied field, yet it requires quite a bit of basic knowledge before you start. Still, don't let that mislead you into thinking that learning will consist of listening to lectures and cramming. Nothing of the sort! At every moment, every new piece of knowledge should pass through practice. Trying and repeating what you're shown, solving the exercises. Sometimes a competitive element with others in your course gives extra motivation.

It's your knowledge and skills that matter, and those are exactly what the people hiring you for your first job will assess. Certificates are by no means the most important thing, but exams are a nice opportunity to motivate yourself and prepare. And you never know when a successfully passed exam might come in handy.

Will I find a job easily?

As long as you're doing well—absolutely! The demand is huge and keeps growing; the sector needs programmers. Yes, people with more experience are certainly better paid and more courted, but there are only so many of them—first, because the market is growing. And second, because of the nature of the profession: in the natural course of development, after a few years of programming people often move on to next steps, becoming managers or architects, for example.

So companies, especially the more far-sighted ones, are always open to interns or junior specialists, popularly known as juniors.

Almost all software academies make a practice of steering their most successful students toward specific companies. Quite a few companies also run some kind of school of their own.

Either way, two things matter when it comes to landing your first job: self-confidence and… something to back that self-confidence up.

It's good to have at least some study projects to show, and to polish your CV so it looks good, even though it lists no experience in this particular field.

When you go to an interview for your first job, nobody expects you to have the knowledge and skills of an experienced specialist. But it's important to be prepared and to have something to show. Job boards regularly post entry-level positions too. Many people don't even wait for the end of their training before starting a real job, and there's nothing wrong with that.

And once you find a good first position, once you land in the right place… from there on it's easy. The work will draw you in, and the demand for experienced people means that a capable specialist really can choose among good offers.

Programming, or…?

The IT sector in Bulgaria is still developing and expanding at an incredible pace; we can all see it. And programming is far from the only career option.

If, for instance, you don't have enough time for longer preparation—you need to find a job faster—or if computer code itself hasn't seemed all that tempting, a sensible option is a career among the specialists who test software products. QA stands for Quality Assurance and covers some quite interesting directions—everything to do with guaranteeing that a software product works as expected.

One side of it is so-called manual testing, where the QA specialist takes on the role of a user and hunts for bugs in how the application works. That is a suitable entry-level role, one you'll be ready for after much shorter courses. And afterward you can always move further, for example toward automated testing, which does require programming.

Of course, alongside all this there are many professions that have nothing to do with code. If your strength is organizing people or mediating, you can aim for roles like product manager or Scrum master—they don't necessarily require programming knowledge.

Hello, world!

So, I hope I haven't been preachy, but rather useful with ideas. Many of the answers I've given, as you can see for yourselves, are subjective; you'll hear quite different ones from people with more, or different, experience in the industry.

My goal is something else—besides giving you a modest initial bearing, to convince you that if programming captivates you as an occupation, it's worth carrying on. Because you'll give yourself a new and fascinating world that can only extend the road you've traveled so far. For me, for instance, programming was also the road back to journalism, with this site. Where I write about technology, but now firsthand and with the experience of someone from the “humanities world”…

Every programming course begins with the famous sentence “Hello, world!” I'm keeping my fingers crossed that a new world opens up for you too in software engineering. And if it does, I'll be glad if you write to me afterward to share your success, so we can tell your Digital Story together!

Until then, if I can be of help with further answers, I'm entirely at your service. Write to me at me@karamanev.me

I'll soon tell the story of how I turned to programming at the online event Career show.

I'll be glad to talk on November 30 (Wednesday) from 9 a.m.

The information technology sector has been more than attractive for career development in recent years. But can anyone become a programmer? Is it ever too late to turn to this profession? What qualities and skills do you need to succeed? When can knowledge from the IT world prove useful in any other field?

The event is free, but requires prior registration.

More information here.

Digital Stories won the Technology and Innovation category at the Web Report 2022 awards! The competition for pure journalism, organized by the Bulgarian news portal Dir.bg, judges work in six categories.

This is perhaps the most respected journalism prize in the country, because it is awarded through a transparent process by an impressive jury that includes some of the most established names in the profession, representatives of all the national media, journalists with vast experience, and media specialists. This year 130 journalists entered the competition with 367 pieces.

The winning piece was “What Do Google and Facebook Know About You? And Why It Matters”.

The awards were presented for the fifth year in a row. This year we also managed to set a record of sorts. In 2019 the same category went to a text about fake news from Spisanie 8 (8 magazine), and last year to a piece on the future of journalism from Digital Stories; this makes it the third award for Georgi Karamanev as an author. The recognition is all the more impressive given the other winners and entrants over the years—established journalists and representatives of the big media outlets.

Another piece from Digital Stories made it into the top three: in the Culture and Art category, the jury shortlisted “Munch. The Scream. A Short History of the Selfie”.

Congratulations to the other winners!

This year they are:

• Culture and Art – Rayko Baychev, Actualno.com
• Society – Viktoria Boyadzhieva, NOVA
• Economy – Georgi Angelov, OFFNews
• Sports – Dimitar Tasev, bTV
• True Stories – Stoyan Neshev, NOVA
• Photo Reportage – Rumen Sarandev, Bulgarian National Radio (BNR)
• Video Reportage – Radiana Bozhikova, bTV
• Podcast – Elena Panevska, BNR
• Young Author – Maria Hristova, Scoolmedia.com
• Journalistic Excellence – Maria Tsantsarova, bTV
• Jury Award “Hot Spot Ukraine” – Aleksandar Markov, Bulgarian National Television (BNT)

Exactly a year ago, on March 1, 2021, the Digital Stories site was born: a small island of essays and reportage about the latest technologies and the challenges they put in front of us. Together we set out on a journey where two worlds meet, the humanities and technology, in search of our shared future as a species.

It’s time for presents! Any of you can win a unique T-shirt with the project’s logo (no exaggeration—on Friday you’ll find out why). All you have to do is answer:

What is your favorite digital story?
Answer on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.

What should the next digital story you want to read be?
Suggest it on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.

You can take part on every platform and answer each of the questions. The deadline is March 20, 2022, and the winners, who will receive 10 T-shirts in total, will be drawn by lot. They will be announced under each of the posts on the respective social networks on March 21, 2022, and here as well.

What a Year!

A whole year! 104 articles, published every Tuesday and Friday. We gave the floor to thoughtful guests from all kinds of fields who have something to say about our digital present and future. We welcomed programmers, writers, scientists and artists.

We told countless exciting stories connected in one way or another to the world of technology. We talked about some of the pioneers of the tech world and about meaningful Bulgarian ventures online. We told of remarkable lives lived in the past, because of the digital or in spite of it.

We went deep into the thickets of technology, into fields such as artificial intelligence, blockchain and robotics, which are sketching out tomorrow. We looked closely at the way we get our news today and at the future of the media. We paid special attention to the risks that today’s technological world poses to humanity. And of course, we didn’t forget to have some fun.

This is only the beginning! If you like this beginning, help Digital Stories reach more people. Every kind word, every share matters.

Over this year Digital Stories has made a lot of friends. The site was visited by 89,586 people, according to Google Analytics. They came from as many as 124 countries. The site now has 3,589 followers on Facebook and 899 on LinkedIn, and the numbers on Instagram and Twitter are slowly growing.

The very first piece, No!vinata (a pun on the Bulgarian for “the news” and “But! The Blame”), devoted to the future of journalism, won the grand prize in the Technology category of the Web Report awards for clean journalism, organized by Dir.bg and judged by a jury of leading journalists. Not long ago the project also made the top three nominees in the annual awards of BAIT, the Bulgarian Association of Information Technologies. Our topics regularly appear in the pages of three magazines and many other media.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for your trust!

Do you like Digital Stories and want to help the venture? There is exactly one way to do it. Tell more people about the articles, share them on social networks and outside of any network. Because today not everyone has the time or the desire to read long texts like these, but their topics definitely touch everyone.

I’ve prepared one more modest present for you. Here are the 5 most-read stories of the year, worth a look if you missed them. And 5 more that, in my opinion, deserve to reach more people.

Happy reading, and see you in the next stories!

The Five Most Read

1. “How Do You Spell It?” “Idunno”

It certainly wasn’t just the ticklish topic of the definite article in Bulgarian, but far more the importance of Pavlina Varbanova’s project that drew the most visitors to read the interview with her.

How Do You Spell It? is a cult website for every Bulgarian online who cares about writing correctly. We met its creator, Pavlina Varbanova.

How do people write in the digital world? What are the most frequently searched mistakes? Is it time to drop the needless rule of the “full” definite article, the special ending reserved for the grammatical subject? Why is it important to take care of language, of the words we load with messages?

2. Rumen the Cat: Teh Internetz egzists to giv peepl akses to moar kittehs

“teh onli thing i culd do wuz eet, sleep and go to teh litterbox. wiht thees skilz i had no uther choys of profeshun but to becum an inflooenser.”

This beloved conversation partner of Digital Stories rarely gives interviews. We can safely say that if it weren’t for our digital present, he wouldn’t have given even one. And that would have been a loss for readers, because his thoughts are sincere, colorful and delivered in a style all his own.

3. “When everyone starts talking about bitcoin, don’t buy!”

Valentin Mihov is the man you need if you want an up-to-date technological view of decentralized finance and blockchain technologies.

What does their future look like after yet another record in the price of bitcoin? What are the technological risks? What will happen once the last bitcoin is mined? What does everyone who decides to invest in cryptocurrencies need to know?

4. 2022, Sixty Years Earlier. What Did the Science Fiction Writers Get Right?

Today we are in 2022, but let’s take a peek back. In the 1960s, Isaac Asimov wrote an impressive essay containing some astonishingly insightful predictions. Around the same time, the first issue of Kosmos, a Bulgarian popular science magazine for young readers, published a similar text gathering the ideas of Soviet science fiction writers on the subject.

What did the writers get right, and where did their expectations fail?

5. Grigori Perelman. The Last Mad Genius

The mathematician Grigori Perelman became a global star after solving one of the “Millennium Prize Problems,” which matter for the technological progress of all humanity.

Then… he turned down the $1 million prize that was his due!

The story of the undisputed mathematical genius of our time is not only fascinating but also quite instructive…

+ Five Personal Picks

1. No!vinata

We already read articles written by robots every day. Today the most valuable resource isn’t oil, and it isn’t money. It isn’t gold, and it isn’t even power. At the epicenter of the computer revolution, everything is information.

Zdravko wants to become a journalist; Zhelyazko, whose name comes from the Bulgarian word for iron, is an artificial intelligence. Who does the future belong to?

2. In the Bubble of the Like-Minded

All the big websites take care of us almost like a father would—picking the most suitable content for us, saving us time and effort. But this is turning into a serious problem for societies. Because the filter bubble makes us more closed to different opinions, more aggressive. It brings many of our ugliest sides to the fore. It strips us of nuance and of the beauty of communication.

The filter bubble is a problem that is swallowing us more and more, while we talk about it less and less. It’s high time that changed…

3. Truth… or Dare?

Where did the professions whose job is to create content for an audience begin, and how far have they come? Who fights for the truth, and should that matter to us today? Where did influencers come from, and why is it important to make sense of their place at the end of this long chain of professions?

The truth and nothing but the truth… is out there.

4.“Life is not a struggle for happiness; it brings happiness”

“If a teacher complains too much about his work, he is worn out and can no longer be of use.”

“If there is no self-reflection, if you don’t improve yourself every day, you can’t be a teacher. You’re stuck in the last century, telling yourself that your truth is the most authoritative, just misunderstood.”

Kris Grigorov is the strongest person I know. His story, his presence and his musical talent made him a star 15 years ago. Having become famous as a singer, he decided to earn a degree in Bulgarian philology and worked as a journalist.
His next goal was to become a teacher. He promised himself that if within 5 years no school offered him a job, he would found a school of his own to teach in. Four years have already gone by.

5.“Computers can manipulate our feelings beautifully”

“Do you think there will one day be an AI capable of laughing and crying?”
“No, but it will be capable of making us laugh and cry.”

“And that one day computers might have feelings?”
“No, but they will be able to manipulate ours beautifully.”

For 30 years Prof. Julita Vasileva has been studying computers and the world they have created. As a scientist, she was lucky enough to land in a field that went through an incredible rise; as a teacher, to witness how several generations relate to technology. Prof. Vasileva knows and researches the technological side of the computer world, but she pays even closer attention to its social aspects.

The interview with her sums up, in brief, everything Digital Stories exists for. And everything that makes it worth going on to the next ones…

The Digital Stories project has won the grand prize in the Technology and Innovation category of the Web Report awards for good journalism. Organized by Dir.bg, one of Bulgaria's major news portals, the competition has become one of the country's leading journalism challenges in recent years.

“But… Who's to Blame?”—the piece that launched Digital Stories—received this prestigious recognition just three months after the project began.

The jury brings together leading journalists from various media outlets, tasked with judging the work of their colleagues. The pieces published over the past year were assessed for accuracy, objectivity and craftsmanship. This year more than 100 journalists took part, with over 300 publications in six categories.

You can find Dir.bg's report from the awards ceremony here.

The other winners: Society—Lyuba Kasova, ClubZ; Economy—Ivaylo Stanchev, Capital.bg; Culture and Art—Kaloyan Konstantinov, Klinklin.bg; Sport—Florina Ivanova, bTV; True Stories—Maria Kostova, Bulgarian National Television (BNT). The jury also gave honorary awards for video reportage—Vladislava Trichkova, nova.bg; photo reportage—Georgi Paleykov, Bulphoto.com; podcast—Eleonora Tahova, Bulgarian National Radio (BNR); young author—Katerina Vasileva, Scoolmedia.com; and master of the pen—Bozhidar Bozhkov of Biograph.

This piece won the grand prize for “Technology and Innovation” at Web Report 2021, Dir.bg’s awards for good journalism. More on this here.

Zdravko wants to be a journalist; Zhelyazko is an artificial intelligence. Who does the future belong to?

Today the most valuable resource isn’t oil, or money. It isn’t gold, it isn’t even power. At the epicenter of the computer revolution, everything is information, and information is the digital gold whose price will climb faster than bitcoin’s during a global crisis.

Every day you read news written by a computer, and not a little of it. Surprised? Wasn’t artificial intelligence supposed to be something years away, with today’s systems still so imperfect… The Associated Press, Reuters, Forbes and Bloomberg have had working projects for years in which artificial intelligence generates texts, processes information and does the analysis instead of people. Sometimes it even publishes news entirely on its own.

Meanwhile, a few hundred people are studying journalism at universities in Bulgaria. Their future doesn’t look rosy; as a rule, they would earn more as waiters. Most of them have nowhere to start working, against a backdrop of a frankly dying press, a horrifyingly small number of quality websites and the gradual, still barely noticed but undeniable collapse of radio and television.

Why is this happening? Isn’t information supposed to be the most precious thing? Wasn’t the truth supposed to set us free?

Not a Man, but Iron

It’s time to bring two digital stories together.

Zhelyazko—his name comes from the Bulgarian word for iron—is a young journalistic hopeful. He doesn’t eat, doesn’t sleep, doesn’t get tired.

He doesn’t lose his files, doesn’t drink, doesn’t chase women or men. You don’t need to explain to him who “our people” are. He doesn’t do the most annoying thing as far as media owners are concerned—ask for a salary. He learns quickly what people like and adjusts the way he works accordingly. Well, he could be told to care about the truth, to gather different points of view, but who needs that?! The AI journalist is already here. It will only get better and will try to take the bread out of the mouth of a profession that society increasingly neglects.

And Zdravko? Well, Zdravko is just a human. He wants to report the news, to tell stories. He’s studying journalism. He has heard many times that “journalists are to blame for everything.” That “anyone can be a journalist,” that “I don’t watch TV or read the papers anymore, I’m free.” He goes to his lectures and wonders… does he stand a chance against his iron competitor?

All of us want information and yet don’t value it. We scroll and scroll. We don’t have time to read past the headline. We surround ourselves with sources that tell us only what we like to hear. Anyone can write anything themselves, like a journalist. Anyone can check whether a piece of information is true in the endless ocean of billions of libraries that is the internet. And nobody does. We’re in a hurry, we have no time.

How could our two heroes help us here?

Iron-Clad Arguments

With Zdravko, everything is clear. After several centuries of journalistic history, we know well what he can do. And still, if he lands in the newsroom of a newspaper (while they still exist), his four years earning a bachelor’s in journalism will be infinitely useful. So that he can soar in the genre of the “news brief” (which doesn’t even exist in the textbooks). And, as an experienced colleague used to say, every winter alternate news brief No. 7, “Flu With Diarrhea,” with No. 8, “Flu Without Diarrhea.”

If he goes to a website instead, even setting aside the salary he will (sometimes) receive, he enters into competition with… the entire internet. It is no accident that social networks are an enormous challenge to which journalism worldwide seems to have no answer. Because when everyone becomes a “journalist” and “understands” the profession; when everyone has the same starting point as the biggest players—their own profile wall.

Now let’s turn our gaze to Zhelyazko. Here are a few examples from the work of his colleagues.

1–0 Against Our Side

In 2013 the 140-year-old Washington Post was bought by Jeff Bezos. Three years later Heliograf joined its team. The AI’s role was mostly for show: covering the Rio Olympics, regional news and election results. In its first year it managed to produce 850 pieces that reached readers.

The Associated Press hired its first artificial intelligence to follow regional basketball games. In 2018 it published more than 5,000 game reports, cutting journalists’ workload by 20 percent. The idea is that information about sports results can be created quickly and easily by analyzing the statistics.

Clearly, sports is one of the first fields in which Zhelyazko becomes real competition for Zdravko. Working from the statistics, the AI generates summaries at lightning speed. For now it simply “covers” games the outlet would otherwise have no resources for.

Of course, it might miss some colorful incident, like a cow wandering onto the pitch in a third-division match, but everything has its risks. Do you imagine the information will be presented dryly this way? That depends on how the AI is designed. If it is “taught” a sense of humor and loaded with a very rich vocabulary, it could easily rival Petar Vasilev and Georgi Popvasilev, the famously florid Bulgarian football commentators, combined. “The leather sphere” and “linear speed” would be mere hors d’oeuvres for connoisseurs.

Zhelyazko is also good when tiny deviations need to be spotted. During the Olympics, for example, Heliograf was set up to track the statistics from every event and immediately post a message in the lead reporters’ Slack channel if any result came within 10 percent of the world record.

You’re Loaded

So Zdravko’s long-term prospects in sports journalism have dimmed a little. Let’s see how things look if he turns to economics and finance.

Here we land on another beat the machines are seriously moving into. Bertie—like Wodehouse’s beloved rascal—is the name of the AI used by Forbes. Its main use is the same as with its sports colleagues: it can analyze huge volumes of statistical data at lightning speed—stock indices, reports, charts—to summarize the data on a given company. Or look for trends, draw broader conclusions, “catch” events before they happen.

The electronic Bertie, however, at least at this stage, also needs a human Jeeves to check his information. Because in 2015 a similar algorithm trumpeted online that Netflix shares had plunged 71 percent for the quarter… when in fact they had nearly doubled in price. The reason was that it hadn’t accounted for a stock split.

In this case there are actually two Jeeveses. Because the success of Bertie and Zdravko depends as much on the people building the algorithms as on those setting their approach to the work. On the engineers as well as the journalists. And as someone who has earned his bread among both groups, I can tell you the balance is sometimes quite hard to strike, and nobody likes being lectured in a field where they consider themselves the expert.

Algorhythm

“3,232 new infections today…”—did a journalist write those lines, or an artificial intelligence? Who cares. Over the past year we’ve grown used to scanning the numbers without nitpicking about the style of such pieces. No, these particular news items were probably written by a person sitting at a text editor, mechanically changing the statistics. He isn’t a journalist but a copy-paster, an author in another popular journalistic “genre.”

They say Yordan Yovkov, the great Bulgarian short-story writer of the early 20th century, took many of the ideas for his stories from the newspapers. We would hardly have stories like the one about the Mokanin shepherd if he had had to hunt for them on Facebook. Or in the few remaining newspapers.

The rampant illiteracy, especially in online media, the lack of basic editing, the low professional quality of the work… all the ugly sides of the coin show up in a huge part of Bulgarian online journalism, and they definitely make me pin more hope on artificial intelligence.

And not because the natural kind—the journalists’—is to blame. The whole environment makes them this way, and we readers help. You spend weeks writing the most gripping story, and the clicks go to “…is getting divorced” or simply “Unbelievable! See what happened yesterday to…”

And that’s actually the better option.

Many of the online outlets that stand out for their traffic, compared with the few higher-quality ones, are a hodgepodge stew of texts that could easily be produced by a drunk robot running 1990s technology. I thought about collecting examples, but the choice was too great, and there are plenty of collections online. Besides, it stopped being funny long ago and became simply sad.

Iron Logic

So Zdravko hasn’t yet given up on a place in the media sun; he makes the rounds of the websites, looking for his niche.

Speed in journalism is sometimes vital. Here Zhelyazko will soon take a very serious lead. His colleague proved it as early as May 17, 2014, at 6:25 a.m.—the Los Angeles Times artificial intelligence, Quakebot. It “senses” that an earthquake is happening and exactly three minutes later publishes a short article with preliminary data on the tremor, the direction the waves are spreading and practical advice on how people can protect themselves.

By then Quakebot had been on the job for two years. They didn’t yet trust it much; its creator, Ken Schwencke, had to approve the piece first, but he didn’t find a single mistake. The piece was not only objective, it used the right style and the exact words. It followed the inverted pyramid precisely and punctiliously cited all its sources, as if the bot had never missed a lecture at Sofia University’s Faculty of Journalism and Mass Communication. And Schwencke decided to do something rather unusual for the time—he put Quakebot’s name on the byline.

Which brings us to another interesting question. Suppose Zhelyazko has done his homework (or rather, his creators have) and learned to produce excellent journalistic texts. How do you keep them from being stolen? Who actually wrote these texts, and who will defend the copyright? How exactly can, and would, an artificial intelligence want to be credited? And how will its creators claim authorship of the piece, when they insist that it is an algorithm capable of judging and creating on its own?

The same goes for ethical norms. If we accept that they (sometimes) exist in journalism, in Zhelyazko’s case someone has to take care of creating them for him. Whatever kind they themselves decide on. Because professional organizations, state censors or NGOs will hardly be able to give advice to… a program. Or to punish it.

I Write, Therefore I Am

A third of the content at Bloomberg News is created with the help of artificial intelligence. The company’s system is called Cyborg, and it lets journalists publish data on a huge number of companies every quarter. It does work that would put real reporters to sleep at their desks. But here too, every piece of information must be checked by a human.

The idea, seen from a distance, is to generate a larger volume of personalized content. Not overview articles aimed at every market player, but data on each company, even the smaller ones, needed by whoever is looking for information on them specifically. As with the regional games mentioned earlier. All this is an example of one of the economic phenomena of recent years, popularly known as the “long tail” theory. The idea is that in the 21st century it becomes increasingly popular to sell “less of more.” To cover smaller business niches with minimal changes to production. That is exactly how Amazon broke through, offering a huge selection of books that wiped out the small bookstores. Then the model was repeated with every other kind of goods.

He Who Writes, Drinks

All of this applies fully to journalism. Because whatever we may say, in modern society delivering information cannot be just a cause, a public service or a personal initiative. It is a business. There are always interests and money behind it. The better option is for information to have real value and for media to support themselves by selling meaningful content. But who pays for information these days, when you supposedly have everything for free online? Not long ago Facebook literally laughed in the face of the Australian government, which had dared to oblige it to pay paltry sums for the journalistic content it uses.

And then comes the second option: turning the media into conduits of influence, of interests. Into clubs. In principle it’s wonderful that giants like Facebook and Google have programs to support journalism, but… it’s always wise to beware of Greeks bearing gifts.

“Long-tail” content can also help in another battle that looks lost for today’s media—the one for the advertising market. Now that it is almost impossible for them to survive by selling content, this is the second devastating blow the internet has dealt them.

A Bit of All Bits

Can a robot have its own view, its own style? Not in the sense we would mean. But it could build them, with the perfect mirror in front of it: the readers. Any journalist can only dream of receiving and processing the impressions of millions of people (even if they often run into obscenities). And of adjusting their subjects, approach and style to what is in demand.

And in details you would hardly imagine. A reader can easily tell you whether they like a text or not. But with the help of technology you can easily see much more—which passages are interesting, which amuse, which have an effect. Soon, perhaps, which ones excite the reader so much that their breathing quickens, or absorb them so that they forget to blink… And when this is multiplied by data from millions, the result could be the perfect text. Exactly the kind that would move the most people the most.

I believe that used to be called “conformism.” Let’s not forget the balance between being liked and having a position, an attitude, a style. Or, without feedback, ending up as the only reader of your own texts…

From Each According to His Ability

We won’t invite Zdravko into political journalism at all. Yes, it still exists in places. There are even outlets you don’t necessarily know are extremely positive toward one person or party and murderously sharp toward another. Only they are melting away like the smile of a young reporter invited, under a training project, to a seminar at a spa resort. And the problem isn’t only Bulgarian—over the past four years the biggest American media have split, ugly and partisan, into two black-and-white camps.

And what about hunting down manipulation? In the coming years much of the fake news will come courtesy of so-called deep fakes, a technology that creates video from real images in which the speaker can say things they would never dream of. The persuasiveness has already reached astonishing levels; I’ll show you in detail soon in a dedicated piece. Either way, the human eye cannot tell deep fakes apart. And here artificial intelligence can play the role of Taras Bulba: I gave birth to you, I will kill you.

Television

We’ve clearly talked Zdravko out of writing, and we won’t send him to radio either. The dedication shows on Radio Veselina, a folk-pop station, sometimes contain more journalistic gems than the newspapers, but on the whole this particular medium isn’t for Zdravko—he can’t pronounce his r’s.

How about we try to make him a TV star? Anchor the news, the morning show and then, cut to camera, maybe even some reality show? That was what the dream journalistic career looked like a decade or two ago. Television certainly has its devotees and its niche, but it too has set off down the road of the relic print media, and nothing can save it from Netflix and Facebook. Zhelyazko, though, can survive in these formats, even if they move entirely online.

The Chinese have figured it out. The first such robot, Jia Jia, is a charming presenter who in 2016 appeared on television as a digital Kevork Kevorkian (or Hekimyan, depending on your generation—both famous Bulgarian TV hosts). The trouble was that her creators decided first to let her answer questions herself in an interview with Wired founder Kevin Kelly, instead of asking them (which for a journalist, robot or not, is the harder part). She gives short answers, a few words each. Sometimes she pauses for ten seconds or so. She cracks little jokes—what she looks forward to most in life is Friday, “because that’s when they transfer my salary.” But she wins no fans. Maybe her creators simply tried to give her too ordinary a look instead of making her look like a chalga pop-folk star. Still, she shows that artificial intelligence can be convincing.

It doesn’t even need to exist physically; the news can already easily be presented to you by a digital human. Yes, these are people who don’t exist physically but do exist online. They won’t have slips of the tongue, they will always keep the right intonation and convey the right emotion.

Incidentally, the future tense is superfluous here too:

Play the video

In March 2019, a new newsreader, Xin Xiaomeng, debuted on China’s Xinhua. She reports on the arrival of delegates at the biggest party gathering of the year. She was created with machine learning so that she articulates as much like a human as possible, though she is purely a digital image.

Face to Interface

It’s worth mentioning that at least twice so far, Zdravko and Zhelyazko have faced each other in a fair duel on equal terms. In 2015 such a battle pitted Scott Horsley—business journalist and White House correspondent for the public broadcaster NPR—against Wordsmith, the writing algorithm of the company Automated Insights. The two were tasked with producing, as fast as possible, a news story on the finances of the Denny’s restaurant chain. The (real) journalist turned out to be a regular at the restaurants, which let him slip in a personal touch and words readers enjoy. He enriched the dry statistics with a mention of his favorite waitress, Genevieve, who knew his order by heart—a bacon omelet sandwich.

Writing it took him seven minutes. Wordsmith managed in two, but even though it has 100,000 English words in its vocabulary (twice as many as Shakespeare!), its piece came out drier. Perhaps because its creators deliberately aimed for texts that are easy to take in.

It’s not so certain, though, that the judges’ decision was objective. At least I was taught that people in finance have no time and would not appreciate a story about a bacon sandwich in a financial news brief.

If the human victory seems obvious and final to you, let me just remind you how long artificial intelligence couldn’t beat us at chess or Go, while today the prototypes convincingly put us in our place even in games whose rules they have to learn themselves. Yes, journalism isn’t a competition… but in some respects it is exactly that.

The second clash dates from 2012. Christer Clerwall, a professor of media studies at Karlstad University in Sweden, asked 46 of his students to compare two texts on various criteria: objectivity, credibility, accuracy, readability and so on. They didn’t know who the authors were. As you’ve guessed, one was a human and the other an artificial intelligence; only the headline and the first paragraph had been “touched up,” a job that, at least back in the day, editors used to do.

The result was almost a draw—each text won on several of the parameters. Even almost a decade ago, the technology proved a strong enough contender.

We Fill Niches of Every Kind

How could Zdravko not despair? At the British Guardian works Guarbot. Their Zhelyazko has been creating news templates since 2014. It has access to the paper’s entire 21st-century archive and prepares first drafts, filling them out with information from the archive. The journalists just have to check them, breathe a little… life into them, and sign them. A curious detail is that part of Guarbot’s “training” consisted of fake news and tabloids. A huge volume of such texts was fed into its database so it would learn what to avoid. Well, in our context Zhelyazko could also read old issues of Show, a Bulgarian tabloid, but Zdravko can do that too. If he wants.

Some outlets already have entire AI teams. Reuters works with numerous separate systems that use artificial intelligence to process information. News Tracer scans Twitter and raises an alert when a topic becomes surprisingly popular. Lynx Insight processes huge arrays of sports and business news to pick up trends. It even prepares short items of a few sentences, which it passes on to the journalists.

Synthesia, meanwhile, combines in real time the photos coming in from football matches with commentary on what is happening. So seconds after the final whistle, a full minute-by-minute report is ready, garnished with the right illustrations. Gradually the same will happen with video.

But no, Zdravko is stubborn. Having resigned himself to studying journalism, he doesn’t give up easily. Maybe he’ll get to know Zhelyazko, and together they’ll find the way?

We’re All Equal Before the Set Square

Weren’t we supposed to be after the truth? Yes, but the truth is what they demand in the courts. If only because that is the only place that has the ambition of believing there is just one truth. Because the higher bar of journalism is called opinion writing, and there you are not merely justified but downright obliged to have your own position.

All the noise about artificial intelligence entering many spheres of life is tied to the field of machine learning. Thanks to it, computer systems can teach themselves from vast amounts of information. The fact is, though, that today the label “artificial intelligence” is fashionable and gets slapped on everything from electric kettles to chatbots.

In reality it covers a huge number of different approaches and variants, and they determine to what extent we can really speak of intelligence rather than following a series of commands. If our Zhelyazko, for example, can only pull out the score of a football match and tell us who won, he isn’t intelligent enough for the “title.” But if he notices that the goal came from “a beautiful sideways scissor kick” and “from a clear offside position,” and turns out to be right, then things get more serious.

I don’t want to end up in the awkward position of astrologers whose prediction of the next celebrity divorce didn’t come true. In technology it is almost as hard to forecast convincingly, and enthusiasm often turns out to outrun the substance. In 2015, for example, Kristian Hammond, researcher and chief scientist at the company Narrative Science, said that by 2030 computers would write 90 percent of the news and that the first software would win a Pulitzer in 2017. Well, the truth is it hasn’t happened yet. Not so much because of the jury’s fussiness, but because there is still no indisputable contender.

Common Sense

Wouldn’t it be a breath of fresh air if one day we had a media outlet staffed only by artificial intelligences? Ones that generate topics and prepare interview questions. That produce impartial analyses of the economy, and of political decisions too? That have open source code, clear and transparent algorithms, with none of the information mastodons behind them—who can always favor one party or another as they see fit. After all, we keep talking about objective journalism. But is there even such a thing? Is it possible not to sympathize with one side, to be sure the journalist’s uncle isn’t an oligarch or a local mayor ruling his town like a petty feudal lord?

On the other hand, is it even interesting to listen to and read absolutely impartial information? Yes, probably, when it comes to your horoscope or the price of bitcoin, but can’t emotion and bias be an ornament?

Of course—both directions are right. Zdravko will always have his emotion, which is his strong suit, while Zhelyazko has other great advantages we shouldn’t deprive ourselves of. The fact that he is a machine makes him predictable. Yes, information technology today is a world of its own; big projects can’t fit even in the smartest head. But for a program, 1 + 1 will always be 2, at least unless we deliberately decide to build in the opposite. Even with self-learning systems. As long as we know how they are made.

Journalism’s Truth

Zhelyazko is here to stay. The idea, as Lisa Gibbs of the Associated Press management puts it, is that “the work of a journalist is creative. It’s about curiosity, about storytelling. It’s about digging, about holding politicians accountable for their actions. It’s about critical thinking, about judgment. And it is for all of those things that we want our journalists to save their energy.”

Sounds wonderful, doesn’t it? Only, alas, for some reason or other it doesn’t quite happen that way. You can guess that when Zdravko, full of such thoughts, lands in one of today’s media outlets… it won’t take long before he is disillusioned.

Information today really is more expensive than ever. But whereas it used to be valuable because it informed the masses about what the elite was doing, today it’s the other way around. The truly expensive information is where each of us goes, what we buy. And how we can most easily be manipulated.

Robot Garelov, Anchorman

Zdravko will never manage—especially if his outlet has more readers than a modern Bulgarian daily—to write his pieces personally for each of them. Zhelyazko could.

We’re not talking at all about receiving, say, a newsletter with news specially selected for you. That has been happening for a long time; the huge blogging platform Medium is an example. You know very well that once you go to the search engine to find out how often to water the rhododendron at home, over the following days you’ll be surrounded by information about rhododendrons and themed ads.

We’re talking about something aptly called “origami journalism.” The news itself is different for every reader.

For a neural network that is perfect enough one day, it would be no problem to generate millions of personalized newsletters about a given event. Avoiding negative news at each reader’s request, adding emotional color, or injecting emotion, say, because of the reader’s party preferences.

The Question of Questions

Is this journalism? You can easily think of plenty of arguments for both extreme answers.

I, for one, wouldn’t mind such personalization, but only if it concerns the selection of news and if… I can be sure enough how exactly it happens. Because we have something similar before our eyes every day. Clearly, the whole idea of the social network is to pick things for us that we like, that make us click and scroll. And so we easily inflate ourselves inside the social bubble, surround ourselves with the like-minded and narrow points of view. And the algorithms by which Facebook fills our wall are as opaque as the trail of a ball of yarn caught in the claws of a young tomcat.

Here is one advantage of Zhelyazko that we saved for dessert. Once his time comes, we can forget about the human touch, but also about human speling and grammer erors on evry line…

Story Hunter

You don’t like the slightly clumsy joke? Well, that’s because I’m a colleague of Zdravko’s. My associative thinking is more creative than the average Zhelyazko’s, but also… more limited. If I write a piece about the electronic journalist, I am limited to my own experience, to everything I’ve read on the subject, to my own (missing) sense of humor. A cousin of Zhelyazko’s would have access to an enormous volume of information, publications, interconnections… all that remains is to teach him to look for the metaphors in them.

But there is also the other kind of journalism. The kind that would still create stories for a Yovkov today, and would carry on even when only artificial intelligence is left. Because this profession, in my view, is by no means exhausted by the topical function we assign it today. It must also tell meaningful stories that show and tell. That can make people laugh and cry. At least for now, I simply don’t see any real competition from Zhelyazko there. All Zdravko needs is to remember that not everything important happens in parliament, and that powerful stories exist even in the age of the internet.

What could martenitsas—the red-and-white tasseled amulets Bulgarians give one another on March 1 to welcome spring—possibly have in common with technology and artificial intelligence?

Absolutely nothing.

Quite the opposite: the red-and-white charms are, to a large extent, a wonderful symbolic antipode of the digital world. They carry hope, metaphor, optimism and a healthy dose of superstition. All things we have yet to teach machines. And to remind ourselves of, too, because we live in harsher times than we thought.

Mathemartenitsas

The Digital Stories project comes into the world on the very day of the martenitsa.

Because nothing is lovelier than the coming of spring.

Because the white of purity and the red of blood are universal symbols. And every first of March we embody them in our own way in these simple trinkets.

We didn't surrender them to the commercial world, we didn't surrender them to religious denial; they keep marching on, even though we don't truly know their origin, hidden behind beautiful legends.

Every spring they help us awaken our own strength and carry on. To give them to as many friends as we usually lack the strength to give even a smile.

Snowdrop Robot

Shut in at home, cut off from loved ones and from the most basic social contact, our smiles hidden behind masks. More than ever, we need an awakening.

Not in the New Age sense or in lofty messages, but in the purely human one. We need the strength of spring, new ideas. And the wish to wake up with the first warm rays of sunshine, whether like the snowdrop or like the little robot that is learning to resemble us.

The long winter's time is up. And we will wake up in a world where more and more stories have already happened, or are happening, online. Where the digital is an inseparable part of who we are.

Are we ready for it? Exactly as ready as the snowdrop is to peek out from under the snow that climate change has already eaten.

Fiery and Rebellious

This spring, information exists only online. That is what the first Digital Story I have to tell you here is about. Isn't it time we took a fresh look at how we receive the information that is so vital today? Didn't the good old newspapers have their advantages too? Is it a good thing that everyone is a journalist now? Aren't we becoming ever easier prey for manipulation of every kind?

We ignore the subjects of the digital present and future. We have no time to think about them, and yet they flood over us. That isn't necessarily bad, but it carries risks. We are already welcoming digital people! Is the moment near when we won't need human stars at all—singers or footballers? After all, the virtual world can draw us even more interesting, market-oriented “personalities,” tailored to what we are looking for, to what would delight and entertain us…

Stressed and crushed to the point of pain by the challenges of the past year, we close ourselves off, push each other away, set one another at each other's throats on Facebook. We wait to be let back into the cafés and bars, to see our friends, and then—we find it hard to start talking again. But only for the first minute. After that the conversation flows like a river let loose. Friendship is yet another thing worth teaching artificial intelligence. Stories like this one, about friends who, ever since distant 1982, have recreated a symbolic photograph once every five years, remind us of it.

We live in interesting times—and to my mind that isn't necessarily the curse good old Confucius mentioned. The digital world gives birth to dramatic, funny and sad, powerful stories. Perhaps we have somewhat forgotten how to appreciate them, having bitten into the comfortable, flat point of view of social media.

Meanwhile, spring is coming.

In every sense, sooner or later.