Over the past two decades, we have been taught to think of technology as platforms: supposedly neutral infrastructures designed to scale interactions, optimize engagement, and extract value from connection. Users became metrics, relationships became transactions, and culture was flattened into content.
However, as these systems grew, something essential was lost along the way. The problem is no longer technical, it’s relational. What we are starting to realize is that the next phase of technology cannot be built solely as platforms. It needs to be conceived as ecology: a living system of relationships, affects, and feedback loops, where technology not only mediates interactions but actively shapes how we relate, create, and inhabit the world together.
The user is no longer considered an object, something to be measured and utilized. In the relational layers of our daily lives, Martin Buber’s I–It and Kant’s idea that humans should not be treated solely as means but also as ends become directly applicable to contemporary technological development.
We are, therefore, talking about developing technologies that do not treat us as a means but recognize the human as presence and spirit. What does this mean, practically? It means creating structures that bring into the center of technology what is most human: encounter, care, listening, and living relationships.
Platforms that build new ways of relating to the city, to art, and to what humans create. A radical way of developing tools that do not harm human relationships but strengthen them, expanding communication, bringing people to the streets, and enabling real gazes, encounters, and interactions.
It is becoming increasingly clear that context is fundamental to the design of AI-mediated technologies. And not just technical or social context: philosophical context also needs to be part of this equation. After all, the very existence of many platforms — like Membrz, for example — depends on a rich ecology of relationships, encounters, living connections, of I and you.
Over the past two decades, we have been taught to think of technology as platforms: supposedly neutral infrastructures designed to scale interactions, optimize engagement, and extract value from connection. Users became metrics, relationships became transactions, and culture was flattened into content.
When systems are designed to treat relationships as means to an end, the encounter is impoverished. The other ceases to be presence and becomes a resource.
This becomes evident when we observe the real workings of cultural ecosystems in cities. An event is not merely an isolated occurrence on the calendar: it mobilizes artists, producers, spaces, audiences, and territories. There is displacement, encounter, expectation, and memory.
Each access, each interaction, each physical presence in urban space carries an affective context that cannot be reduced to raw data. When technology respects this ecology, connecting people to events, encouraging the occupation of the city, and strengthening the bonds between creators and participants, it stops being a neutral intermediary and becomes a relational infrastructure, supporting experiences that continue to exist beyond the screen.
When we introduce a humanist context into artificial intelligence, what we are truly doing is allowing technology to understand and respect the social and cultural dynamics within which it operates.
Instead of building platforms that simply seek to maximize profit and engagement, we start creating systems that not only optimize but also enrich the ecologies they work within.
This means, for example, that an event platform is not merely an interface for selling tickets, but a means of strengthening the network of artists, promoters, and audiences, ensuring that all participants receive the recognition and benefits they deserve.
Event platforms, when designed with a humanistic and ecological approach, have the power to transform the way artists and audiences relate to the economy of culture. By integrating AI systems that support a more equitable distribution of revenue, it becomes possible to create dynamics in which artists meaningfully participate in the value generated and not just intermediaries.
Technology, in this context, can optimize not only the audience’s experience but also expand artists' access to new forms of monetization, allowing them to earn directly from their art without losing control over their production.
Instead of relying on traditional models that often exploit artistic and cultural work without fair compensation, platforms operating within an ethical and humanist ecology can use artificial intelligence to ensure greater transparency in the distribution of resources.
This includes, for example, analyzing consumption patterns, creating new revenue streams for artists and communities, and strengthening local cultural economies. Imagine a digital art platform where artists can directly monetize their creations, with technology ensuring that buyers and collectors pay fairly for the work, while part of the revenue is directed to local cultural initiatives or projects that promote democratizing access to art.
This type of platform also changes the relationship between the public and the artist. By offering artists more control over their sources of income, it opens up space for more authentic and participatory experiences, where audiences are no longer just consumers but also active contributors to the creative process.
As artificial intelligence becomes an increasingly present tool in our daily lives, it is crucial that it be used to build platforms that not only promote profit but also respect and strengthen the social ecologies within which they operate.
In a world where art, culture, and music are increasingly digital and distributed, we have the opportunity to create fairer monetization systems, new forms of collaboration between creators and audiences, and more transparent and democratic processes, ensuring that the value generated circulates more equitably.
by Rods Rodrigues // Membrz.Club General Manager
