Being visible (or invisible) in the connected world
#11 Newsletter - Vanessa Bertinotti
Today my WhatsApp account was blocked.
A small gesture, invisible to others, yet it made me think about something much bigger: how truly reachable are we in today’s world? Are we the ones who decide, or is it actually the system that decides whether it still wants us in the game?
Naively, I thought I was the one deciding!
For a few hours, I didn’t know if I would ever regain access to this app I use to communicate with the world. It was as if, all of a sudden, a door had closed without warning. Then, magically, I’m not quite sure why, tonight I was given a second chance: access was restored. But I lost all the history. All the conversations, the traces, the little signs of years of contact and connection.
A month ago, on September 19th, I announced in newsletter #8 my decision to leave social media particularly Instagram, Facebook, and X.
A choice I felt was necessary, to lighten the load, to return to a space of authenticity.
But this decision also opened up a deeper reflection: if I truly wanted to be coherent, perhaps I should step away from everything. Even this newsletter, which was born as a space for freedom and reflection, is ultimately another social space, a platform like the others, only with a slower, more intimate, more contemplative rhythm.
But still, within the network.
And so I ask myself: are these radical exits, these choices of “total disconnection,” truly helpful?
Or do they risk becoming just another form of reaction, an attempt to escape something that, in reality, is already part of us?
I’ve been reflecting a lot on these themes. For this very reason, in my podcast “Salute e Biohacking”, I’ve decided to feature several interviews dedicated to exploring how we can coexist with the digital world, how to find balance between presence and silence, between visibility and inner depth.
We live immersed in a web of apps, social networks, notifications, and profiles. Everything is designed to keep us connected, to make us seen.
But what happens when we suddenly disappear from a part of this network?
When someone decides they no longer want us or when we are the ones who choose to disconnect?
I’ve asked myself whether it’s truly possible to be “outside” of it all. Outside of WhatsApp, social media, the endless flow of news. Maybe, technically, it’s possible.
But emotionally, mentally, energetically?
It’s as if reality itself keeps us inside, as if our field, the one quantum physics describes as entangled and interconnected, could never really detach from the rest.
And deep down, we’re only a step away from an even deeper shift…
The real issue, soon, will no longer be whether or not we are present on social media, but how we will be able to interact with the physical world.
How will we pay if we no longer have a phone? How will we enter public spaces, access services, work, move around, simply exist, without our digital identity?
The phone is becoming our key to reality: our ID card, our wallet, our voice, our pass.
And how much longer will we truly be able to “leave it all behind,” if everything has already become digital: money, documents, essential services?
We already caught a glimpse of this with the beginning of the pandemic: a world where physical distance was compensated by control and digital presence.
And there’s another, even subtler aspect: memory itself has become digital.
After this WhatsApp block, I lost everything: conversations, images, memories.
I hadn’t backed up on iCloud, and in an instant, it was all gone.
I realized that today, if we don’t save something in the digital world, it’s as if it never existed. Photos, once physical and tangible, now live only on screens and servers.
Even our memory has become external, entrusted to a system that can erase it with a single click.
So, is it really possible to “step out of the system”?
When memory, identity, money, communication, and even our very presence have all become digital… Perhaps if we choose to step out, we simply cease to exist.
Or rather: we stop being recognized by a world that now acknowledges only what is connected.
Quantum physics, after all, tells us that nothing exists on its own. Every particle is in relation to another, in a continuous exchange of information, even at a distance.
Maybe the same is true for us, and for our digital being: every thought, every message, every online presence leaves a wave, a trace, a vibration. We are not separate from the digital world, we influence it, and it influences us.
As observers of reality, we change it simply by looking at it or by choosing not to look anymore. And so the question is not really: “Can I disconnect?” But rather: “Can I be connected consciously?”
Can I decide how visible, how reachable, how present I want to be?
Maybe true freedom today isn’t about disappearing, but about choosing where and how to manifest ourselves, with intention, with balance, with presence.
I recommend listening to episode 171 of my podcast “Salute e Biohacking”, titled “Come costruire comunità resilienti” (episode in italian, but in YouTube you can generate subtitles in any languages). In this episode, I interviewed Marco Della Luna, a lawyer and psychologist, with whom I explored how to create strong, autonomous, and conscious communities in an increasingly fragile and hyperconnected world. A conversation that touches on freedom, communication, perception, and shared reality.
Watch the full interview on YouTube:
… and what do you think?
With gratitude,
Vanessa ❤️