Technology God Contest Writing(s) Foundation

The technological development of the last decade (the so-called technological revolution still at its dawn) is transforming numerous areas of our lives at a quite giddy speed: our way to connect with others via social networks, the way we manage dozens of practical aspects of our daily lives, the way we consume information and culture, the form of participating in new political rituals… And obviously, the way we read and write: the paper page has turned into a page of light (screen). The online reader is more and more active when connecting texts and references that create a very personal reading style, transforming oneself into a writer-reader. At the same time that the reader learns against the clock how to use signs beyond words to make the most out of the light of the screens and thus he/she can write with photos and moving images (photography, cinematography: the word graph comes from writing) integrated into the text.

Concurrently, in times where developed societies live the decline of traditional Gods, the fear of a new era of climatic catastrophes and profound social destabilizations grows. Technology has become a promise of salvation, even including within its illusions our eternity via virtual versions of who we were, that will be maintained alive after our deaths. It all begins to constitute for many a new faith, to no small extent fostered by large technology companies and its representatives, that, heads up, amass more power that the vast majority of the world’s Governments. The machine, a positivist creation, and the last hope of man promises to solve human imperfections. However, we could be asking ourselves: What will be the place of human beings then?

Writing(s) Foundation, responsible for this contest and in direct collaboration with Talleres de Escritura Fuentetaja, invites you on this call of the “Technology God” contest to think and invent multiformat stories (which can include within the text, images, videos, and links) about the more disturbing aspects of the exceptional rise of the technological development, in what seems to be a change of paradigm that affects the limits of what we considered human. One of the ongoing projects supported by the Writing(s) Foundation, “Homo Maquina Sapiens”, has placed several topics as the more disquieting, those that demand an urgent and lucid reflection that will be translated into stories about the conflicts they entail, stories that collaborate if not to avoid them, perhaps to mitigate them, to make us more conscious of:

-what worldview surfaces when that perception depends more and more of its digitalization, of a virtual reply (internet understood as the broken mirror of the world) that it is nothing else but a translation in a complex system of numerical combinations,

-where is the tipping point in the step-by-step of human robotization and the quickened substitution of the organic in favor of the mechanic

-what is the characteristic of the new conflict of the virtualization of our lives, the Twitterization of the expression, the exhibitionist Facebookization of our privacy, the Googlization of our relationship with knowledge…

-what new behaviors provoke the algorithmizing of human relationships; those algorithms that govern so many everyday applications aim to liberate us from doubt anxiety, directing our lives in areas increasingly intimate: can mathematics, the motor force of algorithms, heal us from the pain of being human?

This call encourages you to use creatively and collaboratively the tools that technology puts today in our hands (this club is the fruit of technological advances) to deepen into the proposed topics and its ramifications in the present, envisaged in the future, or both.

Characteristics

This contest takes place in the Writing(s) Foundation platform, developed specifically for this type of competition, and always aiming to facilitate participation, interaction, and transparency. Contests announced by the Foundation are open: from the moment a participant decides to make public a text, the work is open for public reading, commenting, and recommending by any club guest. Subsequently, the work is also put to the vote by a sophisticated program system and under the supervision of rules developed to prevent misuse.

The call admits any entry allowed by the text editor: short stories, photography series, short films, and sound recordings. The basic requirements are a maximum of ten photographs, texts of a maximum of 1,000 words, and videos (hosted on YouTube or Vimeo) no longer than five minutes.

You must submit at least a family image (a photograph, a snapshot of a homemade video, a drawing, etc.)

Terms & conditions

1. Participation in this contest and registration in the Writing Club is free of charge. This contest is open to participants aged 16 years or over registered with the Writing(s) Club. Writers from anywhere in the world may enter. Registration is totally free of charge and does not entail any purchase commitment. It is important to register your real identity since it is the only way to ensure a one-person one-entry basis. To opt for prizes, any participant registered must facilitate their address and telephone number which, in case of doubt, will allow us to verify the identity of the participant, voter, or both and discard the work in case that the same user has been registered under different identities. Personal data are also necessary to ensure the automatic prize allocation in its different categories, that being the participant, voter, commentator, etc.

2. Participants must register with the Writing Club and upload their works in one of the suitable formats to the Family Stories call within the time limit. No work will be accepted after the deadline.

3. Every participant may submit a maximum of one work, which must be original and unpublished.

4. Participants cannot withdraw their work once the call closes. If the work includes a video, the participant must maintain it at least for one year in the platform where it was uploaded.

5. Authors whose works are selected for publication on the collective e-book waive the right to receive any monetary allowance for the royalties the book might generate.

6. The organization will not communicate with participants concerning the contest terms and conditions.

Voting system and Jury – Winners

During the voting period, all participants must score a minimum of 10 works by other participants; otherwise, the participant will not opt to any prizes or the publication in the collective e-book.

At the end of the voting period, the number of stars awarded to each work will be counted. Votes from users who did not vote the 10 works minimum will not be taken into account (the system guarantees the dropping of those votes until completing the minimum of 10 votes per user).

100 works will be preselected based on their score, and a jury will be in charge of distributing prizes according to the quality of the submissions. The Jury reserves the right to award works not included in those 100 preselected works if they consider that the quality of the texts is worth it.

Results

1. The final result of the contest and the allocation of prizes will be disclosed on [date]. Awardees will be communicated via email or telephone.

2. If the winners’ notification is returned as an invalid email or phone, the user will be disqualified.

3. Winners accept and authorize the Club to mention their names and the prizes obtained on the Writings Club website or in any other commercial, media, or publishing company that might be used by the Writing(s) Foundation to inform and make public the result of the contest. Likewise, participating works could be disseminated from the moment of submission to inform about the competition and to encourage participation.

Participants must be the rightful authors and legal owners of the texts. Should any irregularity be found, the Club will eliminate the work and ban the user from the platform.

Winners transfer their dissemination rights to Writing(s) Foundation from the moment they present the text for publication in the formats and conditions determined. This transference will not imply exclusive rights, allowing authors to disseminate their work as decided after the presentation on the contest. The right to disseminate applies worldwide, and it will apply for the maximum timespan permitted by the appropriate normative in Spain. Participants will transfer the publication rights of the chosen works to become part of a possible collective publication. This publication will have an affordable price, and its benefits will be destined to the support of activities within the Writing(s) Foundation. Any disseminations will explicitly cite the author’s name.

The organization reserves the right to withdraw from the contest any work considered in violation of the terms and conditions or reported by other users.

In relation to images and videos, the participant should be able to prove authorship or prove the right of use by the owner of the intellectual, industrial, or image rights. Explicit permission from people who appear in the photograph should be granted when necessary for its exposition or dissemination, exempting the organization of any legal responsibility.

4. Participation in the call entails the unconditional acceptance of the terms and conditions aforementioned.

Resolutions taken under unforeseen circumstances in the terms and conditions will lay solely on the contest organizer, who will resolve to the best of their ability, without any right to appeal by the participants.

5. Image and text rights will remain the authors’ despite transferring the organization the publication in the terms and conditions indicated and always citing the name of the author. Participants registering on the Foundation must use a valid email and a physical address. The automatization of the contest process requires an authentic identity and a verifiable physical address to allocate prizes.

6. Winners consent the access to their personal data (name and image) to communicate the contest result. The use of personal data will not entail any economic compensation.

7. No correspondence will be entered into from the organization side concerning the call. Due to the automated process of the Club calls, all steps are established and will be announced on the web in due course.

8. In compliance to the established law, Writing(s) Foundation informs all participants that data obtained in the microsite Writings Club will be collected by Writing(s) Foundation and Talleres de escritura Fuentetaja, or through other entities that will carry out data processing and will be accommodated to the corresponding electronic file of Writing(s) Foundation. Said data would be used to identify the participants of the Writing(s) Foundation, and also for the development of commercial campaigns (via telephone, SMS, email, and any other telematic medium), with a general or personal aim. At any time, you will be able to exercise your right of restriction, access, rectification, and cancelation of your data free of charge. To use this right, you will need to contact our Customer Service via email to info@fundacionescrituras.org

9. Participation in this contest entails the unconditional acceptance of the terms and conditions as well as the Writing(s) Foundation criteria concerning any conflict resolution.

Ethical agreement

Voters agree to comply with the Ethical agreement defined in the following link:

Ethical agreement for participants, voters, and commentators

The agreement contains fundamental concerns for the good end of the call. If you have not read it already in previous calls, it is imperative that you read them carefully now since they summarize the spirit of this Club and the basic norms of conduct that we have at heart. Disregarding this pact might exclude participants from the contest process.