Lisbon talk, Feb. 08, 2019

1. 1
Seminário doutoral discute investigação em
ciências da comunicação
"Reinventing social communication
to build a democratic technological future"
Michel Puech, Lisbon, Feb. 08, 2019
michel.puech@sorbonne-universite.fr

2. 2
summary
is it "democracy XOR sustainable future"?
why the power of technocracy?
why and how far is the stalemate a communication and technology
problem?
reinventing social communication
the power of communication digital technology and its specific values
system
do it yourself today: a democratic technological future
– my research field: contemporary values systems and particularly their
links to technology
– my position: technophilic candid post-political Dao-Buddhism 平然

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is it "democracy XOR sustainable future"?
XOR = exclusive "or"
– = you can't have both, only one of them
● related issue: democracy XOR technology?
– argument: the present state of affairs (in politics...=
communication)
● D. Trump democratically succeeding B. Obama, with an aggressive clearly
anti-sustainability program
– and Pdt Obama didn't/couldn't do much... largely because of a democratically
elected Congress
● "yellow vests" in France, a very popular protest that was ignited by a
slightly higher tax on Diesel car's fuel
– gasoline; for the most polluting type of automobile
● "populism" in power or threatening to in a lot of democratic countries

4. 4
is it "democracy XOR sustainable future"?
– → the role of sustainability problems in all this, more or less
directly
● a) global sustainability
– new global awareness: we are an unsustainable species
– Leakey, Richard E., and Roger Lewin. 1996. The Sixth Extinction: Patterns of Life and
the Future of Humankind. Reprint edition. New York: Anchor.
– humans were the most stupid living species ever: they knowingly destroyed their own
ecosystem
– Oreskes, Naomi, and Erik M. Conway. 2014. The Collapse of Western Civilization: A
View from the Future. New York: Columbia University Press.
– ⇒ the divide in political opinions and policies is being aware or not of this (a)
● b) climate crisis
– a special and central case of (a)
– moral pessimism : Gardiner, Stephen. 2011. A Perfect Moral Storm: The Ethical
Tragedy of Climate Change. Oxford University Press + Jamieson, Dale. 2014. Reason
in a Dark Time: Why the Struggle against Climate Change Failed – and What It Means
for Our Future. Oxford University Press.
– → suggestion: the moral improvement of a majority is an education and then a
communication task/duty

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is it "democracy XOR sustainable future"?
● c) economic injustice
– corporations imperialism
– they are more powerful than nation-states, and most of them are tech-related now
– they never were elected
– a slogan seen in street demonstrations :
"those that we have elected have no power
and those in real power we have never elected"
– inconvenient best-sellers :
● Stiglitz, Joseph E. 2012. The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided
Society Endangers Our Future. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.
● Piketty, Thomas. 2017. Capital in the twenty-first century. Translated by
Arthur Goldhammer. Harvard University Press.

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why the power of technocracy?
defining technocracy
– not the power of "technology" (nor science)
– but of administration and business/economic "sciences"
● not hard science or real technology
– = bureaucracy
● in every modern organization, large corporations as well as public
administrations
– Graeber, David. 2015. The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity and the Secret
Joys of Bureaucracy. New York: Melville House.
– (solution attempt: Graeber, David. 2014. Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis, a
Movement. Random House.
– PG is a leader of the "Occupy" movement
– → idiocracy
● that is my personal answer to the obsessional "why Trump?" issue
● Judge Mike, Idiocracy [fiction film, 84'], 2006

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why the power of technocracy?
– argument: my own sad teaching and debating experience: how easy a
solution a "virtuous tyranny" can be (...)
●
the logic being: (democracy XOR sustainability) ⇒ technocracy
● a bureaucratic sustainability imposed to the 99%
● = the "yellow vest" typical insight (bumping into the "idiot"/populist again?)
no!
– reasons for resistance and hope: the acceptability of technocracy
(invented in the 18th
century for modern democracy) is now over
● the 1 % structural injustice is gathering consensus (aginst it)
– see previously mentioned best-sellers and new social movements
● desintermediation everywhere
– Google and Wikipedia (the Web) as the first-line resource for knowledge, online retailing,
networking, traveling...
– a digital alternative for more direct access to everything
– whereas technocracy-bureaucracy pretends to be the indispensable intermediate for
accessing anything

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why and how far is the stalemate a communication and technology problem?
"soft power" supersedes hard power
while institutions and (traditional) resistance are still fighting for
hard power
● = missing the radical shift due to communication technology
● which explains the chronic inefficiency of technocracies trying to set up
"hard" changes (ex: climate action, financial rules, Brexit)
– argument from soft changes that had hard consequences:
● the Internet desintermediating traditional medias
● massive adoption of mobile phones in the world
● vegetarian food (or less meat consumption) → the influence of social digital
networks (YouTube videos)
– → parody: "The hardness of soft power changes"
– alluding to Granovetter Mark S., "The strength of weak ties", American journal of
sociology, 1973, p. 1360 1380.‑

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why and how far is the stalemate a communication and technology problem?
top-down and bottom-up communication
horizontal / vertical communication
horizontal then bottom-up
in a cultural ecosystem of various collectives
– human, institutional, digital, perhaps AI …
"values system" for the digital agents ≠ conscious and explicit
creeds
but rather: a diffuse and evolving "cloud" of sensitivity and
(un-)acceptability mental molecules
– the evolution and then forecast for this mental cloud → communication
technology
● ≠ hard teaching and propaganda

10. 10
reinventing social communication
● better: follow how it is reinventing itself and enter the Harmony in all humility
"new social movements"
– Occupy, 1%, etc.
– Castells, Manuel. 2012. Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the
Internet Age. Cambridge, UK; Malden, MA: Polity.
– Ostrom, Elinor. 2011. Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for
Collective Action. Cambridge University Press.
–
– a post-political governance of the commons ↔ the digital
● because the "open source/standards" culture is at the root of the Internet
● because of global awareness/empathy
– Rifkin, Jeremy. 2011. The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in
a World in Crisis. Cambridge: Polity Press
● + specific whistle-blowing on environmental, political and economic evildoing

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the power of communication digital technology and its specific values system
"post-political"?
– non-institutional + non-ideological + horizontal, flat
– can digital culture accomplish that?
● no, says Wu, Tim. 2010. The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of
Information Empires. New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
if we let the digital in the hands of "masters"
● yes, says Zittrain, Jonathan. 2009. The Future of the Internet and How to
Stop It. Yale University Press,
because the Internet is like no other communication technology
● focus on this spec: p. 70 "Generativity is a system's capacity to produce
unanticipated change through unfiltered contributions from broad and varied
audiences."
– = social production, intellectual and moral added-value, unpredictable constructive
initiatives, irresistible collaborative collectives, and so on
● → let's be all together generative, in the ordinary

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do it yourself today: a democratic techanological future
– → micro-actions
● food, transportation, housing, clothes, vote...
● in a world of abundance, under the "burden of choice"
in a world of global communication, in a web of potential global awareness
● micro-actions → global wisdom (molecules in a cloud)
– → wisdom, reinvented:
● 1. action ≠ discourse
● 2. individual "virtues" in the ordinary technosphere: awareness, autonomy,
courage, benevolence, humility
– a stimulating trend in the "virtue ethic" and particularly Eastern/Asian version
– ex: notion of satiety = to have enough
● 3. post-political
– acknowledging the obsolescence and "falling in disuse" of politics, its being ridiculously
out of fashion
– including the SHS-1970s software "SHS software from the seventies" ( Social and
Human Sciences)

13. 13
do it yourself today: a democratic techanological future
reinvesting ethically the ordinary
● Puech, Michel. 2016. The Ethics of Ordinary Technology. New York:
Routledge.
● at the ethical personal level (Michel Foucault, Paul Ricoeur)
– with actions, behaviors, and not discourse
inventing a post-political governance of the commons
– at the collective level, a (post-)political notion of human collectives
– communication ↔ education: in the new digital context
– we are in dire need of a robust and pragmatic theory of
communication↔education
● which is ironically what we are trying to do as academics
– suggestion: flourishing and harmony, new values (Dao-Buddhists and
not technocratics)
this presentation and much more here: http://michel.puech.free.fr