In the book " Digital civilization. Let's open the debate!" that it has just published, the National Digital Council presents a synthesis of thoughts, proposes keys to understanding and a method for building a path that is a bearer of social progress. "Without considering digital technology as a miracle cure or an absolute evil, it can be seen as an opportunity for change.
The book is organized around four chapters, four moments of reflection:
- The digital revolution, between hope and disenchantment ;
- Thinking about our relationship to digital ;
- Reclaiming the digital ;
- Politicizing digital technology and putting it at the service of the living.
The digital revolution, between hope and disenchantment
"We have entered the digital world and everything has changed. In the space of barely three decades, the large-scale deployment of information technologies has enabled the circulation and processing of data on a scale never before achieved, leading to unprecedented daily practices. Everything has changed..."."Our consumption patterns have changed... Our relationship with institutions has changed"."Many of us had high hopes for this modern Internet revolution (...) We thought that the world would flatten out and that only good things would come of it."But the wind has changed (...). Today, the idyll seems consummated, and the dystopian visions of the digital world seem to prevail. What happened? How did we get here?The authors of the book ask: what was the moment of divorce? The Snowden affair? The Amesys, Palantir, Cambridge Analytica scandals? The social rating in China?
"Economically, the concentration of power, whether individual or held by large groups, has become unparalleled."On asocietal level, we have learned that algorithms and the data economy within dominant social networks can endanger the very production of reasonable consensus.
"Let's face it, many of us were so surprised by this dystopian reversal that we still haven't come back from it. It is not uncommon to observe some of the most committed actors in the digital dynamics and the most convinced of the digital revolution, deeply worried about it.""However, it is quite likely that the utopian and then dystopian phases of the Internet represent only two sides of the same wave and that there is in fact a great continuity in the evolution of our relationship with the digital."While some people were acclaiming the citizen power of the digital, others were preparing to take the prize with interests that were sometimes very far from the general interest... And inevitably, in the absence of collective rules of the game, major imbalances appeared."After remaining on the sidelines of the digital space for several years, the States, aware of the exceptional potential but also of the disorders that the new digital economy can generate, have largely returned to the forefront, sometimes to the detriment of a form of creative freedom.Thus, in France, " while supporting the emergence of a French and European ecosystem of innovation (let's mention the start-up nation), the French public authorities, aware of the reversal of opinion and the major risks involved in the uncontrolled or malicious use of digital tools, have largely changed their priorities. The action is tightening around the issues of accessibility, digital regulation, defense of democracies and protection of citizens.
In Europe, the digital issue has become preeminent. After the first major regulations to protect citizens through their personal data (the RGPD), Europe is trying to rebalance the economic taxation of multinational companies and is preparing to adopt two important texts: the Digital Market Act (DMA) and the Digital Services Act (DSA).
Thinking about our relationship with digital technology
The book then looks back at the work of the National Digital Council since its creation in 2011.In 2011, the Council was essentially composed of personalities from the economic world and is in the process of "conquering" this new space. From 2012, the composition of the Council evolves and allows to integrate in the subjects treated those which touch the citizenship. More than twenty reports are published, some of which will lead to decisions by the political authorities.
In 2020, "as digital uses invade all aspects of our lives (...) and as digital solutions to the health crisis arouse the interest of a part of the population", the Council's mission changes. It then chose " to look at the digital object from different and complementary angles. (...) To the interactions on the networks which often enclose, press and oppose, the National Council of the digital preferred the listening, the long time and the dialogue in order to try to radiograph in a raw way the digital phenomenon, and to understand its systemic form ".
Reclaiming the digital world
The third stage of the reflection: reappropriation. If digital technology " can be a source of disturbances and troubles", " the accessibility to a multiplicity of information can be useful and emancipating, on the condition that it is accompanied by the formation of a new critical spirit and a technical culture allowing each one to preserve his capacity of discernment, his capacity of free and enlightened choice in this new universe".For the authors of the book, "it is possible to take advantage of digital tools to enrich our modes of construction and transmission of knowledge and to strengthen our capacity for analysis and our new critical spirit". They mention various examples of platforms based on real cooperation between actors or on the support of peer learning. Wikipedia, in the first place.
"These cooperative platforms have innumerable variations in music, cinema, novel writing, etc. They allow for numerous learning experiences: writing, reading, criticism, identification and verification of sources, sharing of interests, collective creation, and a little code. They allow for a lot of learning: writing, reading, criticizing, identifying and verifying sources, sharing interests, collective creation, a little bit of code...".The challenge today is no longer to computerize, digitize or automate, " but to put ourselves in a position to do so, that is to say, to develop the new knowledge necessary to adopt the technical environment.
"If citizens and professionals are not involved in the design and experimentation of the digital devices themselves," the authors point out,"they will not be accepted by the populations and their massive and uncoordinated diffusion risks short-circuiting social systems and local economies. Conversely, the launch of research-action projects aimed at the co-design and experimentation of contributory digital devices at different scales and in different professional spheres would allow the development of technologies thought out by the inhabitants and useful for the economic, social and ecological development of the territories.The work then declines several themes:
- Around the economy of attention (Our attention, taking care of it to avoid wasting away) and the legal, economic, technological, social, educational and political levers that could be mobilized to reverse the course of events. "New rights need to be created (the right to be better informed, to be able to set parameters, etc.), prohibitions need to be pronounced (against abusive designs, for example) and support needs to be provided (to the alternative models deployed).
- Around the truth, false information and counter-narratives (Truth, remaking a common narrative). " Beyond the direct impact on the loss of capacity that results for each individual, this new economy amplifies the balkanization of the public space. The book takes up here the reflections of the National Digital Council around the complex phenomenon of false information and the mechanisms of manipulation.
- Around democracy (Democracy, a matter of trust): "For several years, most Western countries seem to be facing a process of deconsolidation of democracy. What role has the Internet played in this process? How to respond and adapt to the new social situation transformed by technology ? The book discusses participatory and deliberative experiences " often considered as the great remedy to the relative disavowal of representative systems ". It asks " Can we imagine a democracy of contribution that would promote the emergence of concrete solutions to problems that, seen from above, seem inextricable, even a form of co-construction of public action? He then returns to the profusion of initiatives that have emerged during the health crisis to imagine how " these communities could enrich public action, enable it to be organized differently and recreate links ".
- Around a flexible state, which would foster the development of Digital Commons. "In the digital age, it may no longer be a matter of delegating, in a top-down manner, but of accepting the bottom-up action of citizens who wish to contribute. Beyond delegation, we could imagine the co-production of public services. A system in which the State would not be "at the top" of the pyramid of power, but at the heart of the complex network formed by all the inhabitants of a country, with the major responsibility of providing them with the rules of the collective game and the data enabling them to play it.
Politicizing digital technology and putting it at the service of life
" Digital technology, like any new technology that has appeared in human history," the authors conclude, " has played an important role in the emergence of the disruptions that affect us individually and collectively, but we are convinced that it can also have a fundamental role in their resolution.In order to promote these resolutions, " it is more necessary than ever to think of technology not as a means, but as an environment, and to stop making simplistic judgments about its supposed benefits or harms. Positive experiences exist, which could serve these collective objectives. They deserve to be known and debated .
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