The Digital Era 3

For 200 years, industry mastered iron, fire, strength and energy. Today, electronics shape our everyday objects, integrating chips everywhere: computers, phones, keys, games, household appliances, etc. Data, software and calculation frame the conduct of men and the administration of things. Everything is translated into data: the figure is king.

This third and last volume of the series examines the creative destruction induced by digital, modifying manners and customs, law, society and politics.

I / Questions of society: discretion, transparency and liberties.

1 Return of the Leviathan?

2 On the use of social networks and e-mail

3 myths & utopias: towards a "new society"?

II / Questions of interest: evolution or rupture?

4 Economy: moving into the post-industrial economy

5 A new creative destruction?

6 Digital Innovation & Trusted Society

III / Political questions: does digital have a master?

7 Challenge for public action: to undergo, guide or coerce?

8 A case study: regulating algorithms

9 Digital and reason of State: an impossible equilibrium?

IV / Prospects: a new avatar of technical progress?

Magic of progress or end of history?

Discrete data, perception and representation of reality;

Schizoidism of digital change.

Jean-Pierre Chamoux is Emeritus Professor at Paris-Cité University in France. He has advised France, The World Bank and Europe in leading telecommunications operators towards the digital era. Professor Chamoux also chairs the Comité Jean Fourastié.