What If the Bubble That Welcomes Us Wasn't Created by Us?
What If the Bubble That Welcomes Us Wasn't Created by Us?
You scroll one more time. Something familiar, moving, or surprising appears. But if our perception is already a fragment of reality, who chooses the fragments that reach us?
BrainLatam Special Series | 8th Symposium on Neuroscience and Cognition at UFABC — 2026
WHO PARTICIPATES IN THE NEXT MOVEMENT?
Perhaps you are reading this article on your phone.
Notice your fingers.
You can continue reading, open another page, or scroll.
Imagine finding an interesting video. Another appears. The third triggers an unexpected emotion.
One more movement.
Perhaps you consciously chose to continue. Perhaps you followed a habit.
But who participated in creating the conditions for that choice?
This question accompanies the 8th Symposium on Neuroscience and Cognition at the Federal University of ABC (UFABC), scheduled for November 16–19, 2026, under the theme “The Brain in Context: Contemporary Challenges in Interdisciplinary Neuroscience.”
To investigate synthetic bubbles, we need to begin before algorithms.
We need to ask what we mean by reality.
REALITY ALREADY REACHES US AS A FRAGMENT
Imagine walking through the Atlantic Forest.
Light passes through the leaves. Your feet encounter uneven ground. Humidity contributes to the sensations on your skin. Sounds emerge from different directions.
Your organism integrates sensory information, memories, expectations, and bodily conditions.
But you do not simultaneously perceive everything happening within that Biome.
While watching a bird, countless other events continue unfolding.
What we experience as reality is already a situated fragment of reality.
Recognizing this does not mean that everything is an illusion.
It means that our experience is partial, embodied, and historically situated.
The world contains more events and relationships than any organism can perceive simultaneously.
And learning can expand what we are capable of recognizing.
THE SCREEN PRESENTS A FRAGMENT OF A FRAGMENT
Now imagine someone photographing that forest.
The camera selects a frame.
Light is transduced into electrical signals, processed, encoded, and stored.
Later, a screen produces another configuration of light to represent that information.
What appears before your eyes is not a material fragment of the forest.
It consists of pixels producing a visual representation.
Your organism performs new sensory transductions to construct another perceptual experience.
We can represent this sequence:
Reality → captured fragment → transduction → encoding → screen → perception.
The screen also belongs to physical reality. Its light exists. The emotions it evokes can be real.
But what it represents is not materially present inside it.
A screen presents a transduced representation of a fragment of reality, perceived through our own perceptual fragment.
It is a fragment of a fragment.
WHO CHOSE WHAT REMAINED OUTSIDE THE FRAME?
A photograph may show a magnificent tree.
But its framing may have excluded a polluted river.
The image can be authentic while remaining incomplete.
Now add another layer.
Before you encountered that photograph, a platform selected it for display.
Other images could have appeared.
The system may consider interaction history, content characteristics, and objectives defined by its operators.
Brazilian researcher Lucia Santaella, among the announced participants at the symposium, investigates relationships between communication, semiotics, artificial intelligence, and platform culture.
Her contributions help us recognize that technologies do more than transport messages.
They also participate in shaping the conditions through which information and meanings circulate.
How many choices occurred before the choice we perceive as our own?
BIG DATA IS NOT THE WORLD
Before artificial intelligence can learn about an event, some aspect of that event must be transformed into data.
A camera records light.
A microphone records pressure variations.
A platform records clicks, searches, and viewing time.
A form transforms experiences into categories.
Each record has possibilities and limitations.
At BrainLatam, we propose:
Big Data is not the world. It is a collection of fragments that could be transformed into data.
Latin American researcher Paola Ricaurte investigates the structures of power involved in the development of artificial intelligence.
Her work helps explain why the problems associated with these systems cannot be reduced to technical errors or statistical bias alone.
We need to investigate the institutions, interests, resources, and forms of knowledge that determined what would be recorded.
And ask:
What remained invisible because nobody developed the instruments or categories needed to recognize it?
WHEN A BUBBLE FEELS LIKE BELONGING
Imagine entering a public square where many people share your interests.
Someone introduces a familiar song.
Another person confirms an opinion.
You recognize similar words, experiences, and concerns.
Perhaps you feel a sense of belonging.
Now imagine that the paths through this square are continuously rearranged to bring certain encounters closer to you.
Brazilian anthropologist Letícia Cesarino, in O mundo do avesso (The World Turned Upside Down), investigates how digital infrastructures participate in the formation of publics, beliefs, and interpretations of reality.
A synthetic bubble can bring together genuine human relationships within artificially selected conditions.
This does not mean that every participant is manipulated or thinks alike.
It means that opportunities for encountering others also depend on architectures that participants may not understand.
Feeling that we belong does not guarantee that we participate in choosing the rules that organize that belonging.
AN ALGORITHM DOES NOT NEED TO READ YOUR MIND
A recommendation system can use observable indicators.
How long did you remain on a particular post?
Which video did you finish watching?
What did you share?
Which content did you ignore?
These signals help estimate interests and behaviors.
But remaining in front of an image does not necessarily mean liking it.
You may be curious, outraged, distracted, or trying to understand.
Algorithmic inference is not equivalent to subjective experience.
Nevertheless, it can influence what appears next.
Your behavior modifies recommendations.
New recommendations modify the encounters available to you.
Those encounters generate additional data.
A feedback loop emerges.
We do not need to lose our ability to choose for the conditions of our choices to be continuously reorganized.
WHY DO WE KEEP SCROLLING?
Let us return to your finger.
Perhaps you opened the platform to find a particular piece of information.
Several minutes later, you are following entirely different topics.
Continued scrolling may involve curiosity, habits, expectations, and social rewards.
The possibility of encountering something interesting with the next movement also contributes to the experience.
But it would be inappropriate to attribute all social media use to dopamine or to treat every scrolling session as addiction.
Digital technologies can expand knowledge, friendships, and opportunities.
Their effects depend on individuals, content, and circumstances.
Brazilian researcher Michelle Prazeres, from Instituto Desacelera, introduces another dimension: time is also socially organized.
Expectations of availability, work, and communication participate in determining whether we can slow down.
Perhaps the question is:
Who participates in organizing the time we can devote to our own Being?
DO ALL BUBBLES PRODUCE THE SAME EFFECTS?
An experiment published in Science in 2023 investigated Facebook and Instagram users who began receiving content in chronological order.
The change reduced time spent on the platforms and modified the content participants encountered.
However, during the three-month study, it did not produce statistically significant changes in certain measures of polarization and attitudes.
This does not demonstrate that algorithms are incapable of influencing beliefs.
It shows that exposure, behavior, and opinions need to be investigated separately.
We must also consider differences among platforms, populations, and time periods.
The scientific challenge is not to assume that every recommendation creates confinement.
It is to identify when personalization expands our possibilities and when it restricts meaningful encounters.
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE SAME FRAGMENT KEEPS RETURNING?
Imagine encountering the same interpretation repeatedly.
It appears in videos, comments, and messages from people you know.
Familiarity increases.
Perhaps the narrative begins to feel self-evident.
Research on the illusory truth effect shows that repetition can increase the perceived truthfulness of certain statements.
But familiarity does not establish correspondence with reality.
An emotional experience does not, by itself, confirm the interpretation assigned to an event.
Feeling something provides evidence of our conscious experience; it does not necessarily establish the truth of the narrative accompanying it.
When similar fragments are repeated, we may experience belonging.
We may also stop noticing alternatives that never reached our screens.
At BrainLatam, we summarize this concern:
We are standardized by the choices we were never given.
PERSONAL AI: THE POSSIBILITY OF REOPENING THE FRAGMENTS
Imagine an artificial intelligence capable of explaining why certain information was recommended.
You request alternative sources.
It presents disagreements, limitations, and missing evidence.
You can modify criteria and challenge classifications.
At BrainLatam, we propose Personal AI (IA Personalíssima) as a digital interface subordinate to Body-Territory.
In our original conceptual framework, it could constitute a fractal of the relationship between citizens and the Jiwasa-State.
This would involve control over data, transparency, and the possibility of reviewing decisions.
But the proposal requires technological development, rights protections, and independent evaluation.
A Personal AI could also create new dependencies and concentrate sensitive information.
Its purpose should not be to predict our choices so perfectly that we stop encountering new possibilities.
Knowing our previous fragments does not authorize turning our past into our destiny.
JIWASA: BELONGING WITHOUT BEING TRAPPED
At BrainLatam, we understand Body-Territory (Corpo-Território) as an indivisible unit of existence, sensitivity, and participation in the world.
We use Jiwasa to propose shared agency that preserves the uniqueness of participants.
A bubble can offer recognition.
Jiwasa adds another question:
Who can participate in transforming the conditions of the collective?
The proposal does not require abandoning technology or digital relationships.
It invites us to investigate how to expand encounters, engage with differences, and preserve the possibility of change.
This is a philosophical and institutional formulation, not an established neuroscientific conclusion.
WHAT EXISTS BEYOND THE NEXT FRAGMENT?
Let us return to the Atlantic Forest.
No photograph can contain all the relationships within that Biome.
But every encounter can expand what we perceive.
Now return to your screen.
Your finger once again encounters the possibility of scrolling.
Perhaps you continue.
Perhaps you seek another perspective.
Perhaps you question the frame you were given.
Recognizing the limits of our fragments does not need to weaken our confidence in knowledge.
It can strengthen our capacity to investigate.
If we never perceive the whole of reality, how can we build technologies and collectives that expand our perceptual fragments instead of imprisoning us within those others have chosen for us?
Jiwasa: the possibility of Being many without anyone having to stop Being.
About This Series
This article is part of a special series by BrainLatam, a sponsor of the 8th Symposium on Neuroscience and Cognition at the Federal University of ABC (UFABC), scheduled for November 16–19, 2026, in São Bernardo do Campo, Brazil.
The article engages with topics announced by Lucia Santaella, Michelle Prazeres, and André Fujita, connecting neuroscience, semiotics, artificial intelligence, attention, and collective organization.
BrainLatam's original conceptual formulations do not necessarily represent the positions of the researchers or event organizers.
Official event website: https://www.even3.com.br/viii-simposio-em-neurociencia-e-cognicao-da-universidade-federal-do-abc-761401/
References — A Second Reading of the Article
1. Our perceptual experience is a situated fragment of a broader reality.
Cionek, J. (2026). Quem colocou essa verdade dentro de mim? [Who Put This Truth Inside Me?]. BrainLatam.
The essay distinguishes conscious experience, interpretation, and truth, explaining why feeling something does not automatically confirm the narrative attributed to an event.
https://brainlatam.com/blog/quem-colocou-essa-verdade-dentro-de-mim-8726
2. A digital image results from selection and transduction, rather than transferring the original event onto a screen.
Cionek, J. (2026). Da percepção à avaliação — como o ambiente passa de imagem a valor [From Perception to Evaluation — How the Environment Becomes Image and Value]. BrainLatam.
The article distinguishes environment, technological capture, pixels, perceptual experience, and subjective evaluation.
https://brainlatam.com/blog/da-percepcao-a-avaliacao-como-o-ambiente-passa-de-imagem-a-valor-8553
3. Digital data represents selected aspects of reality, not the totality of the lived world.
Cionek, J. (2026). O Big Data não é o mundo [Big Data Is Not the World]. BrainLatam.
The article develops the sequence connecting reality, perceptual fragments, transduction, encoding, data, and algorithmic inference.
https://brainlatam.com/blog/o-big-data-nao-e-o-mundo-8568
4. Digital platforms participate in shaping how information circulates and meanings are produced.
Santaella, L. (2023). Pensar a inteligência artificial: cultura de plataforma e desafios à criatividade [Thinking About Artificial Intelligence: Platform Culture and Challenges to Creativity]. Edited by Daniel Melo Ribeiro and Geane Alzamora. Belo Horizonte: FAFICH/PPGCOM/UFMG.
The Brazilian researcher examines relationships between artificial intelligence, platform culture, communication, and creativity.
https://seloppgcomufmg.com.br/colecoes/pensar-a-inteligencia-artificial/
5. Digital infrastructures also participate in the formation of publics, beliefs, and belonging.
Cesarino, L. (2022). O mundo do avesso: verdade e política na era digital [The World Turned Upside Down: Truth and Politics in the Digital Age]. São Paulo: Ubu Editora.
The Brazilian anthropologist examines relationships among platforms, cybernetics, and transformations in the contemporary public sphere.
https://www.ubueditora.com.br/
6. The effects of artificial intelligence must be examined within the social and institutional structures that produce these systems.
Ricaurte Quijano, P. (2025). Algorithmic Assemblages of Power: AI Harm and the Question of Responsibility. Teknokultura, 22(2), 201–208.
The Latin American researcher proposes understanding algorithmic harms across different scales of power, rather than reducing them to exclusively technical problems.
https://doi.org/10.5209/tekn.101084
7. Our digital habits influence decisions without necessarily eliminating individual autonomy.
Gonzalez, M. E. Q.; Broens, M. C.; Quilici-Gonzalez, J. A.; Kobayashi, G. (2023). Hábitos e racionalidade: um estudo filosófico-interdisciplinar sobre autonomia na era dos Big Data [Habits and Rationality: A Philosophical and Interdisciplinary Study of Autonomy in the Age of Big Data]. Trans/Form/Ação, 46, Special Issue 1.
The Brazilian study, involving researchers from UFABC, explores relationships among habits, rationality, information, and autonomy.
https://doi.org/10.1590/0101-3173.2023.v46esp1.p367
8. Changing how content is selected alters the digital experience, but does not necessarily change opinions within the same period.
Guess, A. M. et al. (2023). How do social media feed algorithms affect attitudes and behavior in an election campaign? Science, 381, 398–404.
The experiment found changes in content exposure and time spent on platforms, without statistically significant changes in certain attitudes over three months.
https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abp9364
9. Time spent on digital platforms also depends on social conditions extending beyond individual choices.
Prazeres, M. (2026). Urgente é gente: estamos vivendo se estamos sempre correndo [People Are the Priority: Are We Living If We Are Always Rushing?]. Diálogos Editora.
The Brazilian researcher discusses social acceleration, inequalities, and the need to build collective opportunities for slowing down.
10. Platform governance can protect rights and expand opportunities for participation and contestation.
UNESCO (2023). Guidelines for the Governance of Digital Platforms: Safeguarding Freedom of Expression and Access to Information Through a Multi-Stakeholder Approach.
The document proposes shared responsibilities, transparency, and rights protections in the governance of digital environments.
https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/guidelines-governance-digital-platforms
11. A Personal AI should recognize the limits of its data without turning someone's history into their destiny.
Cionek, J. (2026). IA Personalíssima — do dado minerado ao dado restituído [Personal AI — From Mined Data to Restored Data]. BrainLatam.
This original essay proposes mechanisms for autonomy, rights protection, and recognition of Body-Territory's capacity for transformation.
https://brainlatam.com/blog/ia-personalissima-do-dado-minerado-ao-dado-restituido-8658
12. Investigating the brain in context also means recognizing how technologies participate in our experiences.
UFABC (2026). 8th Symposium on Neuroscience and Cognition — The Brain in Context: Contemporary Challenges in Interdisciplinary Neuroscience.
The symposium connects research on the brain, cognition, behavior, technology, and society.
Conceptual note: Body-Territory, 5D Consciousness, Jiwasa, Jiwasa-State, and Personal AI (IA Personalíssima) are original conceptual formulations developed by BrainLatam. The scientific references support specific aspects of the discussion but do not constitute experimental validation of these proposals.
BRAINLATAM · W45/2026 · BLOG 06 · ENGLISH EDITION
