Digital Dictionary E-Book

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 674

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

"Digital age", "digital society", "digital civilization": many expressions are used to describe the major cultural transformation of our contemporary societies. Digital Dictionary presents the multiple facets of this phenomenon, which was born of computers and continues to permeate all human activity as it progresses at a rapid pace. In this multidisciplinary work, experts, academics and practitioners invite us to discover the digital world from various technological and societal perspectives. In this book, citizens, trainers, political leaders or association members, students and users will find a base of knowledge that will allow them to update their understanding and become stakeholders in current societal changes.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Introduction

A

Accessibility

Agricultural Robotics

Anthropology

Art and Robotics

Artificial Intelligence

B

Between Digital Transformation and Cultural Evolution

Blockchain

Brain–Computer Interfaces

C

Coding

Communication

Community

Computer

Computer Science

Computer Security

Contributory Economy

Contributory Governance

Course Guidance

Critical Thinking (Education for)

Crowdsourcing

D

Data Economy

Data, Information, Knowledge

Digital Commons

Digital Humanities

Digital Inclusion

Digital Skills Repositories

Digital Sovereignty

Digital Transition

Disability

Diversity

E

Eco-digital Responsibility

Educational Digital Technology

Electronic Voting

Empathy

Ethics

F

File Formats

Formal Language

Free and Open Source Software

Free Licenses

Free Software (in French National Education)

H

Habitele

Hacking

Health Data

Human-system

I

Indexing

Information Ethics

Innovation

Interoperability

Intimacy/extimacy

IT (in General Education)

IT (Teaching of)

J

Jim Gray’s Paradigm

K

Knowledge Organization

L

Law (Professions of –)

Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems

Library

M

Medical Imaging

Medicine, Health

mHealth

Military Robotics

Mobiquity

MOOCs

Museums

O

Open Science (Dissemination)

Open Science (Origins)

P

Predictive Justice

Processors

Proprietary Licenses

R

Rob’Autisme

Rob’Éduc

Robotics and Society

Routing

S

Science Fiction

Seniors (the Internet)

Smart City

Social Contract

Social Network

Sociotics

Source Code

Surveillance Capitalism

Surveillance Studies

T

Training

W

Web 2.0

Work

Glossary

List of Authors

Index

Wiley End User License Agreement

List of Illustrations

Chapter 8

Spiralist innovation and Pisano’s quadrants

Chapter 15

Interconnection of routers

Guide

Cover

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Introduction

A

Glossary

List of Authors

Index

End User License Agreement

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Series Editor

Fabrice Papy

Digital Dictionary

Edited by

Marie Cauli

Laurence Favier

Jean-Yves Jeannas

First published 2022 in Great Britain and the United States by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms and licenses issued by the CLA. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms should be sent to the publishers at the undermentioned address:

ISTE Ltd

27-37 St George’s Road

London SW19 4EU

UK

www.iste.co.uk

John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

111 River Street

Hoboken, NJ 07030

USA

www.wiley.com

© ISTE Ltd 2022

The rights of Marie Cauli, Laurence Favier and Jean-Yves Jeannas to be identified as the authors of this work have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s), contributor(s) or editor(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of ISTE Group.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022932447

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-78630-788-0

Introduction

Marie CAULI1, Laurence FAVIER2 and Jean-Yves JEANNAS3

1Université d’Artois, Arras, France

2GERiiCO, Université de Lille, France

3AFUL, Université de Lille, France

Why a digital dictionary?

The project of a Digital Dictionary is a challenge, as the term “digital” has become omnipresent in our discussions and increasingly indispensable in order to describe the penetration of information technologies in our lives. For example, in French, to the adjective “numérique”, meaning digital, has been added a noun – “le numérique” – which raises questions and reflections: “Dictionaries remain somewhat perplexed by the digital, and their definitions often refer only to the etymological and technical aspect – a sector associated with calculation, with numbers – and above all to devices opposed to the analog” explains Doueihi (2013). However, everyone agrees that “the digital designates something else” (Doueihi 2013). This “something else” refers to a cultural transformation whose importance continues to grow: “A digital man is not simply a man who uses digital tools, but a different man, who functions differently, who has a different relationship with what surrounds him: space, time, memory, knowledge...”, explained Vitali-Rosati and Sinatra (2014). The Digital Dictionary proposes precisely to illustrate these “differences”, starting with just a selection of them, before incorporating all those that are missing and may be added as later versions are released.

Definition of digital

Digital, as a noun, has entered our language to designate a mode of recording sounds, images or videos as an alternative to analog. The compact disk replacing the vinyl record is an example. The progressive digitization of all types of information (text, sound, audiovisual) has gradually established what some authors have called the “global screen” (Lipovetsky and Serroy 2007). The diversity of devices required to produce and read analog information has been replaced by the multiplicity of screens and the “all-screen”. However, this overall screen is not yet enough to build “the digital”: the Internet is its other constituent. The generalization of access to the Internet at university, at work and then in homes in rich countries has transformed human practices, which now take place in a hybrid world, both physical and digital. For Abramatic (1999), the Internet is the “first means of communication to have been conceived in the digital age”. Its specificity is that it is “the first means of communication that combines telecommunications and computers from its conception” (Abramatic 1999). By integrating audiovisual signals, time-dependent signals that had not been taken into account at the origin of the Internet, it becomes the infrastructure of the digital world as a unified phenomenon. Media convergence is the result: printing, radio, television and cinema are no longer different technologies, the universality of digital language is asserted.

Digital as culture

This technical infrastructure, while it makes “digital” possible, does not sum it up. In English, the use of the term digital is rarely as a noun. When Brügger (2018) focuses on digitality, it is to show the essential duality to which it refers between a material dimension and signals, digital bits (binary digits), which can convey different layers of texts (those that are directly machine-readable and those that are human-readable). These two aspects are important, according to him, since they establish the framework for how users may interact with the digital medium (the technical device or artifact) and the digital text (“knowledge of both aspects of digitality is important, since each in its ways establishes a framework for how users may interact with the digital medium and the digital text”). What “le numérique”, in French, introduces is the idea of a new culture rooted in machine-mediated reading, writing and social practices. This is not so much an industrial revolution, as Cardon (2019) notes, as a breakthrough comparable to that of the printing press, for “it is above all a breakthrough in the way our societies produce, share and use knowledge”. Just as the printing press was much more than a new mode of production and reproduction of books by becoming the vector of religious (the Reformation), political and economic transformations, digital technology is creating a new world, a new civilization. According to some authors, and we do not yet know where it can lead us.

Digital words

Giving a view of and thinking about such a protean phenomenon by means of lexical “views”, classically forming the entries of a dictionary, makes it possible to unravel the tangle of English terms, sometimes Frenchized, that designate half-technical, half-social realities, and which we have difficulty knowing exactly what they mean, even though they are so familiar to us. Neither quite a dictionary, nor really an encyclopedic dictionary, the Digital Dictionary highlights the words and things of an unstabilized culture which is being created before our eyes. It would like to contribute in its own way to what some have called “the intelligibility of the digital”, because “the digital is a fact that we live with without always being able to understand what it is, or the meaning that should be given to it” (Bachimont and Verlaet 2020; online presentation of the journal Intelligibilité du numérique).

The power of usage

This dictionary, which is partial due to the number of subjects it covers and eclectic due to the diversity of the fields addressed, illustrates the extent of the interaction between humans and information technologies, as intended by the promoters of the Internet. Abramatic (1999) explained:

The design choices of the Internet have pushed intelligence to the extremities of the network (i.e. in the computers that serve as interfaces with users or those that store and deliver information). This feature allows the Internet to take advantage of advances in computer hardware and software in “real time”. It is this capacity to evolve that makes it possible to envisage using the Internet for uses that were not taken into account when it was conceived.

Technical choices have made the Internet an application-driven communication medium. The Web (a hypertext publication system operating on the Internet network), alongside electronic messaging and file transfer (FTP), remain the major applications of the Internet from which multiple uses are created, backed up by online services which are the source of wealth for digital companies (notably the famous GAFAM, Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft), but which also give amateurs a new power. In this respect, the technical choices of the network have made usage a driving force in the technical development of the “information society” alongside technologies and standards (Abramatic 1999). The development of the Web toward Web 2.0, by offering unequalled possibilities of user-generated content, has added to this a questioning of the distinction between amateurs and professionals, multiplying the uses and categories of users involved in the development of the digital world. It is therefore to the Web that we owe, for the moment, the most spectacular development of our digital practices: “The Web, more than the simple presence of computers, has determined a major change in our practices and our relationship to the world. As a result of the omnipresence of the Web in our lives, the digital is everywhere” (Vitali-Rosati and Sinatra 2014).

Facing the “totalizing” digital

Digital technology is everywhere and no one can escape it, for better or for worse. Digital exclusion, as pointed out in several official reports in France (the Court of Auditors’ report in 2020 (Cour des Comptes 2020), the Defender of Rights’ report in 2019 (Défenseur des droits 2019)), is the corollary of widespread dematerialization, including public services that refer people to the Internet so that they no longer receive users at the counter nor authorize phone calls unless it consists of a connection with a robot. This exclusion can have multiple causes: lack of access to the network (the digital divide), disability, and illiteracy. Added to this is not only the omnipresence but also the fragility of digital devices and tele-procedures (online procedures) which have become compulsory for carrying out the most varied tasks: registering for university, making declarations to the authorities, buying, paying and sometimes even voting... The exploitation of personal data and traces of online activity left unintentionally feed personalized advertising. Violation of computer systems, disabling them and data theft are among the consistent dangers of our digital daily lives. In short, the “totalizing” nature of the digital world and the difficulties inherent in the new world it creates require the pooling of knowledge and its transmission to the large number of people by mediators of all kinds.

In search of inclusion

However, in addition to these difficulties, this digital world is also one that redistributes the capacity for action among users by overcoming the opposition between professionals and amateurs, between experts and non-specialists. Thus, the rise of self-education, on the one hand, and the ease with which applications can be designed, on the other, increase the number of non-passive uses of digital technology, which are not limited to the publication of information in the context of citizen journalism or collaborative encyclopedism, or to contributions to scientific projects in what is also known as “citizen” science. Low-code or even no-code development, which allows applications to be developed with minimal programming effort, enables professionals with little or no computer skills to build digital tools targeted at their activity. The same is true for the construction of “artificial intelligence” applied to a multitude of fields. However, at the same time as a wide and “active” use of digital tools is being deployed by making them accessible to the greatest number of people, the need for expertise is increasing and a specialized digital technology is being invented and perfected to transform medicine and science in general (“e-science”, digital humanities), but also hospitals, agriculture and factories (Factory 4.0), a great variety of aspects that this first version of this dictionary is just beginning to cover. Far from being the exclusive technology of a service society, digital technology affects all sectors of activity, while at the same time adding the interconnection of objects to the interconnection of people (Internet of Things). On the one hand, digital technology makes the use of increasingly sophisticated tools commonplace; on the other hand, it reinforces the need for expertise and lifelong learning. It induces a never-ending race to update versions, systems, knowledge, etc. Consequently, its ubiquitous nature, or what we call its “pervasiveness” (from the Latin pervadere, meaning “to insinuate, to spread, to invade”), does not only create injustices: it excludes or includes. The Digital Dictionary is a tool for inclusion.

A research object for all sciences

While digital technology is both a set of techniques and a culture, is it the subject of a science? In French, the plural is required: digital sciences. Gérard Giraudon defines them as follows: “The digital sciences are fundamentally linked to microelectronics, mathematics, computer science, human-machine interfaces, signal processing (sounds, images, etc.) and their communication (protocol, networks, etc.), as well as to the design of more or less autonomous communicating systems (robotics, personalized assistants, etc.)”1. In English, we distinguish the term informatics from that of computer science, the former having a broader meaning than the latter (see the definition in the Cambridge Dictionary2). In short, while digital technology does indeed run across all the sciences, it is not itself the object of a single science, unlike computer science. In addition to the digital sciences, there are several initiatives that seek to build a multidisciplinary field that can bring together specialists in information technology and the human sciences. This is the ambition of web science, conceived in 2006 by Tim Berners-Lee. It is backed by the Web Science Trust, a non-profit organization whose goal is to support the global development of web science, which was originally launched in 2006 as a joint effort between MIT and the University of Southampton. There is also a global network of “Internet and Society” research centers (the NOC), including, in France, the CNRS’ Centre Internet et société, composed of its own “Internet and Society” research unit attached to the Institut national des sciences humaines et sociales (INSHS), created in 2019, and the “Internet, AI and Society” research group, created in 2020, bringing together researchers from different disciplinary backgrounds. These examples illustrate the attempts to construct the digital as a multidimensional object.

An alphabetical guide

The Digital Dictionary aims to identify the multiple facets in which the multidimensional object that is the digital world is embodied, thanks to the contributions of experts, academics and experienced practitioners. We had to conduct this project in an interdisciplinary manner. This is the significance we give to this work, which brings together contributions from a range of disciplines. It offers an overview of a boundary object and invites a collective intellectual approach. Indeed, there is a large number of works on the digital world, but they are not yet sufficiently interconnected. Thus, this dictionary brings together knowledge that is divided into fields and a specialized readership that still communicate very little with each other. It presents itself as the beginning of a fruitful synergy between the different contributors and their research objects. In this case, if it carries the risk of eclecticism or insufficiency, it is able to identify the areas to be taken up in future versions. This dictionary contains more than 80 entries. The choice to limit the number reminds us of what is the basis of a dictionary: to propose a certain number of notions that can be read separately or in relation to others. Some 50 authors invite us to discover new concepts and insights, be they technological or societal, that they have extracted from their fields of research. The entries differ in style and approach, but reveal the interdisciplinary dimensions of the digital issue. With this alphabetical guide, everyone – trainers, political leaders, associations, students and users – will find a foundation of basic knowledge to answer their curiosity and questions, but also to shed light on their practice, and even to influence political decisions for those who have responsibilities. At a time when the Covid-19 pandemic has further accelerated the digitization of our activities, this dictionary also wishes to offer avenues of reflection that could help us to prepare for a digital citizenship at the same time as a digital citizen, which cannot be reserved for the expertise of a few. In addition to being equipped and connected (which remains an unresolved issue for everyone), everyone must be made aware of and trained in the consequences of these tools and the issues involved. In order to be and remain in tune with the times, to regain control of one’s autonomy and freedom, continuous learning and an enlightened attitude have become essential.

Thinking digital, thinking in the digital age

Promoting the development of skills for everyone means looking at access to knowledge and its dissemination in the school system and the public sphere. As far as research is concerned, science is undergoing a global overhaul in terms of the density of production, the contribution from more contributors and the speed of dissemination. It is renewing research practices and intensifying interdisciplinary collaborations in view of the interweaving of technological, educational, social and ethical issues. However, scientific sources are under-exploited and rarely reach the public sphere. They underline the importance of the organization of the knowledge system and the role of researchers in disseminating cross-disciplinary thinking as widely as possible. As far as the educational system is concerned, the teaching of IT and digital culture is encountering a difficult adaptation process within an institution that is constantly questioning what it should transmit and who should transmit it, and remains blocked in its evolution by a form of collective indecision.

In addition to these factors, there are others. These include the use of English, which, in addition to its terminology, leaves its mark on foreign sociocultural functioning and ways of thinking; the simplifying logic of the computer, which shapes our ways of thinking; the linguistic palette, which is insufficient to capture an unprecedented reality, as well as unanticipated categories that limit the formulation of questions; unequal access to equipment and its use; etc. Other problems arise from the difficulty of concretely representing the digital world, which is made up of software based on algorithms, Internet routers, satellite connections, cellular telephones and sensors. All these connected objects, between radiation and matter, mask material infrastructures and geostrategic issues. Moreover, this partial perception is part of a context where magical thinking is developing, flattering the continuum of full and immediate access to all our demands and the prospect of a future full of promises. All of this is fed by a daring science-fiction imagination, mobilized around the human–machine relationship and their possible fusion. Science fiction has become the preferred mode for imagining what might happen and for exploring, in a fantasized mode, the trajectories that these changes might follow.

This lack of knowledge spares neither the ordinary person nor the decision-makers involved in the development and implementation of policies, whether they are members of the administration or elected officials, leading them to make decisions based solely on budgetary considerations, or worse, under the aegis of digital communicators rather than experts in the subject.

However, we are at a turning point, both in the history of the digital world, but also in the history of humanity. These issues must not remain in the hands of a few. They must enter the public sphere, and citizens must have sufficient general digital literacy to get the fullest possible idea of the power of the changes and grasp all the issues at stake.

Paradigm shift

Indeed, the absolute interdisciplinarity of digital technology leads to a real paradigm shift in form and content. These transformations are distending boundaries, encouraging decompartmentalization, shifting hierarchies and modifying spatial and temporal representations. Today, information and images are available and instantaneous throughout the world without an intermediary or object (work). They trigger a kind of stupefaction in the face of “infobesity”. Space is shrinking and bringing societies closer and closer together, but paradoxically creating distance and exclusion in living together. All areas and all human activities are concerned. New meanings are given to property, intelligence, information (or disinformation), trust, friendship, etc.

The economy

Digital technology is profoundly changing the way we produce, trade and consume, and is reshuffling the cards of entrepreneurship and business models. In tourism, for example, the Internet has become indispensable: no hotel can do without TripAdvisor or Booking.com. Similarly, consumers, who are not well trained or informed about alternatives and issues, can hardly escape the services of Google, Facebook or Apple to get around, communicate, entertain themselves, search for information or order products. This new model, which lowers the marginal cost of goods and services, operates on three main motivations: data, near-zero-cost copying and multitude. It allows for increasing volumes of data, facilitating the management, transmission and processing of increasingly big, rapid and powerful information due to the recent generations of algorithms. This exponential appropriation of information allows a very precise measurement of phenomena and their consequences. It is used in a wide variety of application fields. However, the “digital revolution” is not just about technology, it is inseparable from the liberalization of the telecommunications sector on a global scale, in which the United States, through a few players, has taken a hegemonic position. Moreover, the digital economy refers to the sector shaped by the computer, Internet, audiovisual industries, etc., but also to the induced effects in terms of multiplication of goods and services, dematerialization, profitability and productivity (efficient use of existing infrastructures, such as hotel rooms, professional or personal cars, etc.). The main driver of this metamorphosis, which is disrupting the traditional economy, is the Internet, which is opening up a service economy to a global clientele through large platforms. By integrating a service or a useful skill into the product (the mattress offers quality of sleep), by diversifying the range, it generates a system that assumes that the more applications and users there are, the lower the costs. But while the user accesses a volume of information, often by paying for the services, the operators take over the users’ personal data. These new forms of contribution or conditionality make it possible to ultra-individualize the supply–demand relationship. They multiply the products, offers and services that are similar to a luxury that has become “natural”. However, at the same time, they capture and direct consumers with profiling techniques. Moreover, the digital economy is one of the leading recruiters in France. It develops new forms of organization that are more horizontal, mobilizing teamwork, multidisciplinarity, shaking up the hierarchy without, however, superseding it, making generations cohabit without establishing parity, activating “collaboration” with partners and subcontractors worldwide. It diversifies and facilitates means of payment, and also develops cryptocurrencies that offer the hypothesis of an alternative to the official state currency (such as bitcoin). It is developing new ways of storing and exchanging value on the Internet without a centralized intermediary, presented as an infallible process for securing and archiving transactions (such as the blockchain).

Work

The digital economy also extends to the workplace. In many cases, developments in professional activities are only presented in terms of benefits. Thus, technical progress has so far affected material production tasks with mechanization and automation, but more and more “intellectual” operations can be carried out by information processing systems (telecoms, hotel business, water distribution, etc.). Other professions are likely to be reconfigured with artificial intelligence (training, law, medical and social services, etc.). Strategic jobs (organization of complexity, IT jobs, jobs in direct contact with users) will increase. Crowdwork (the execution of micro-tasks online and in telework, paid by the unit) is developing, as well as traditional work activities (delivery, cleaning, transport, etc.) passing through digital platforms and often ensuring the majority of the income. This crystallizes the difficulties faced by workers, who are obliged to declare themselves as micro-entrepreneurs, while the employer claims to be a “neutral intermediary”, responsible only for putting people in touch with each other and escaping the obligations of labor laws or taxation. Thus, digital technology acts as a catalyst for and amplifies the organizational changes that are already underway: organization, standardization, centralization, chaining and splitting up of tasks, and the rise of networked coordination. For workers, it also increases the risk of permanent presence and connectivity, with a duty to respond immediately. The growth of online and mobile work is multiplying the issues of concern: increased surveillance of workers, more frequent job changes, management of work by algorithms, ergonomic risks caused by human–machine interfaces, psychosocial consequences of the resulting new work organizations, as well as the questioning of labor laws and social protection of workers. Finally, particular attention must be paid to the under-representation of women in this sector in order to avoid a social regression in view of the growth and need for jobs.

Technical changes and scope of application

In everyday life, the trend is to handle more and more equipment, computers, smartphones, tablets and other connected objects. They invite more and more simplification and user-friendliness. Intuitive and more ergonomic, the touch screen is the most successful example. The race for applications with the capacity to provide a granularity of use that is as close to the consumer as possible leads us to imagine a future where connected objects could anticipate our needs before they are even formulated. The idea that they are “smart” is creeping in and is made possible by the miniaturization of devices (privacy recorders, mobile phones, televisions, cars, bicycle sharing systems, alarms, surveillance, bank accounts, etc.). Worse still, the system interfaces themselves involve conditioning the user, even before they have access to the content of the tools.

Moreover, all the sectors in which we are led to evolve or that we approach in our daily or professional life are impacted. In the field of health, powerful algorithmic models are being developed (diagnosis, monitoring of an epidemic), and the same is true in precision agriculture (irrigation, weather), in the field of policing (law enforcement management) or in the military. Their impact raises questions about the profound changes they are causing. The increasing introduction of automatic systems in machines and the systems’ levels of autonomy raise questions about the decision-making process and, consequently, the regulatory bodies associated with it. For example, the evolution of combat techniques with machines that are faster than humans and never tire raises the question of delegated decision-making when carrying out certain tasks, the overall control of the maneuver or the possibility for the human being to take over. Art is also a field of application for artificial intelligence. Its ability to analyze and reproduce all the properties of a work raises questions about the boundary between imitation and new works, whose esthetic originality should be legally recognized. New exhibition or collection access devices are reinventing museum visits and tourist activities through virtual or augmented reality, or through mobile applications, experimenting with new cultural concepts. In the same way, the interactions between digital tools and the mental functioning of users (novices or experts) or between intellectual approaches and artificial processes, can lead to profound changes in the behavior of experts in terms of overconfidence, complacency, loss of adaptability and expertise. Another dimension of these tools concerns extensions, psychic and corporal implants that replace or augment deficient human functions. Thus, brain–computer interfaces (BCIs) open up prospects for new forms of interaction that are likely to increase human performance, in particular, the ability to control material assistants or the communication of disabled people. However, unlike cyborg representations, BCIs do not decode intentions or read minds, and several technical, human and ethical challenges remain to be overcome in order to improve their use. Similarly, the robot, being outside of time and outside of conventional social space, is likely to meet with empathy and even adhesion to its requests. By reproducing the natural human state, the robot is not required to follow social conventions. Presented as neutral, it can serve as a reinforcement for disabled people, doubly penalized by social conventions and the gaze of others. It makes us forget that it is indeed a human being who controls the machine.

The uses of digital technology and its effects on the user

Digital technology is transforming human behavior in terms of access to information, consumption and leisure. The change is taking place through uses. These develop through a digital transition process and vary according to gender, status and age, but also the potential offered by the environment. Digital technology is also not self-evident for everyone. Apart from the promises of opening up, substitution and even re-enchantment, there are many risks of vulnerability, fragility and even exclusion. Insofar as it is now a major component of our ecosystem, it poses real challenges in terms of inclusion, which are not without ambiguity between positive effects and risks of cognitive and social division.

Moreover, while the classical concept of identity is based on external characteristics, namely name, date of birth, place of residence, signature and immutable biometric elements, such as eye color and fingerprints, identity on the Internet is first and foremost the result of the digital traces we leave behind: communication traces, location information, proof of consumption, but also forced choices. It also results from the way we present ourselves and the quest for visibility that is accentuated in the interconnected world. This creates a need for visibility that can be satisfied on social networks or on blogs, supported by the “likes” of many “friends”. All these elements have an impact on private life, on a career and on relationships, and they can change the relationship with reality and tend to make intimacy and confidentiality disappear. Its amplifying effect increases the vulnerability of the most fragile. Finally, the values of freedom, democracy, justice and trust have been undermined by digital services. Ownership and control of personal information must be guaranteed by law. Similarly, the collection of data should not be possible without the informed consent of users (who often accept the terms of use without reading them, because the text is incomprehensible or deliberately too long), and the means of obtaining this consent should be fair. Anonymity must be preserved. Legislation pays special attention to maintaining and strengthening these, thereby defining the notion of “fairness of an online service”. In France, the GDPR (European General Data Protection Regulation) entering into force was a new response in order to slow down the amount of unsolicited information being sent. It inaugurated the set of new legal challenges that the CNIL3 identified and for which it is a reference.

The future and its risks

The future of the digital age requires genuine reflection, both on the scientific and technical level and on the social and political level. The various implications of digital technology, which are considered to be matters for experts, must be assessed in their proper light, especially as their effects are accelerating and amplifying and as other “revolutions” are underway (artificial intelligence, nanotechnologies, etc.). This is why, faced with the individual, social and political consequences of the development of technologies and their continuous renewal, and faced with the issues surrounding the transformative effects of digital technology, it is essential to acquire the basics of what are now called “digital sciences”, to prepare for continuous professional development, to have a global vision of the possible applications of information technology at all levels of society and to regain control of a field that is beyond our control, in order to preserve its benefits without suffering its adverse effects.

The memory of knowledge and the transmission of culture

Digital technology is not just a communication space. It has also become the essential repository of the knowledge produced. Not only are publications of all kinds going digital, but so are the libraries that capitalize on them. Far from being only storage spaces, they are real as well as virtual places where one can find what is no longer available on the cultural market (books, photos, films, music and all cultural products), while discovering new ones. Access systems, whether they be search engines on the Web, content selection mechanisms on television channels or online library catalogs, condition the digital visibility of past and present culture. They are decisive for the transmission of culture and knowledge, today and tomorrow. Access to scientific publications on the Web is, for example, an essential issue for overcoming the health crisis of Covid-19 that we have been experiencing since March 2020. Similarly, the possibility of finding archives and unpublished documents is essential for the training of future generations. The digitization of libraries, as well as the systems of knowledge organization created for the digital world through the various systems of document classification, are areas where commercial logic and cultural logic must not overlap. Digital visibility and, beyond it, referencing and indexing, but also interoperability (the possibility of making different systems communicate), implement mechanisms that reconfigure the traditional logics of cultural transmission and access to information. The way in which digital systems classify and restore information is not free of bias, which can only be highlighted by a multidisciplinary study of these systems from a technical and ethical point of view. Nothing is or will be accessible today or tomorrow if it is not visible in one way or another on the Web. This shows the extent to which the conception of digital technology conditions the construction and memory of human knowledge.

Challenge to society

The first question concerns security. In a society where more and more elements are computerized, security flaws are numerous. In the absence of a response from the public authorities, or its inadequacy, self-education and associative support that is built on the fringes of institutions must provide the means to avoid systems being taken over by various powers. The industries themselves can easily fall prey to cyberattacks (nuclear power plants, hospitals), especially since they do not have the skills or the means to deal with them. These attacks can be dramatic, but they should not obscure the number of lucrative scams that many individuals fall victim to and need to protect themselves from. The arrival of voice search and visual search is gradually becoming more and more commonplace, as the range of smartphones is updated. These new uses will turn into regular uses, then into expectations and, finally, into requirements, foreshadowing a loss of expertise in certain areas. At the same time, however, they are opening up possibilities for surveillance and control. All these small changes and new uses, taken together, mask a hidden power that institutes a form of surveillance culture that could become a way of life. They represent a danger to our freedom. Without being alarmist, a real reflection on the loss or theft of data, as well as on the control of procedures carried out by digital technology, must be carried out in order to regulate them on a political, legal and ethical level. While some companies have become more powerful than states, who will protect the information? How can we prevent its exploitation?

The increase and intensity of risks are also identified around the hegemonic, concentrated and competitive phenomena of powerful economic players (the GAFAMs and companies with the same model). They have established themselves as the world’s leading stock market capitalizations and have been able to reorganize the economic field by imposing new models and new types of competition that stifle all forms of genuine opposition. More important than a state, these actors shift the places of power. The same is true of the resources that enable the manufacture of technological materials, which are held by a few countries: China, the United States, Russia and, to a lesser extent, Canada and South America. In addition to the monopoly of material resources, there is the crucial issue of the future and stability of the infrastructures that are held mainly by the United States, which are in the process of being counterbalanced by the rise of China and Russia. This raises major political questions, made more complex by the competition from new, faster entrants. Thus, the virtual space is crossed by crucial geopolitical stakes, bearing the seeds of profound redistributions of geopolitical maps, which constitute factors of tension and are the subject of unprecedented legal battles. Moreover, the strategy of global control has extended, on the one hand, to many states that have set up access, blocking and surveillance procedures, practicing “state censorship” and, on the other hand, to democratic countries that have set up processes that compromise freedom. It calls for new forms of economic regulation and governance that are likely to loosen the grip that providers have on data, making data sharing mandatory with the consent of users or taking charge of new services in common goods. It questions the effectiveness of the rules governing the power of these companies, and, in particular, the current ineffectiveness of sanctions.

Challenge for the state

Looking back in history also makes us aware of the change in the relationship with the state and even the notion of the state, which are being redefined. The state is gradually being transformed into a platform state, a provider of applications, and we can only observe the withdrawal of the public administration from its traditional obligations. This is reflected in the dematerialization of the administrative relationship, and its counterpart in the relationship and support of the citizen. Thus, in the public sector as in the private sector, human relations are being eliminated in favor of a Web that offers standardized assistance, often leaving the user alone, helpless or disenchanted. Finally, social protection makes us aware of the need to rethink the social contract. Originally based on the idea of a citizen that is considered as unique, this principle is now challenged by the obligation of transparency and the desire to predict. For if we know that some people run more health risks than others, will it be possible to maintain equal treatment for all? Digital technology also raises questions about the radical changes in the perspective of the legal world, which should protect citizens. It disrupts the traditional way of interpreting the sources of law, and, in particular, laws, in the face of a predictive justice based on statistics, which puts aside the semantic understanding of texts and the individualized judgment of particular cases.

Emergence of new models

No one can deny the benefits of digital technologies, but new models need to be devised. The main benefit is the development of knowledge and its availability. Everyone can build up expertise without a degree. If digital technology makes people captive, it also allows creativity to be exercised. If it produces abandonment and disinvestment, submission and even addiction, digital technology brings together individuals and not societies. It gives rise to new forms of mobilization and citizen or political organization. The many actors involved, working in networks, articulating themselves around communities, have built up a treasure trove of experience, skills and references from which everyone can draw. They contribute to the transformation of territories and implement a culture of sharing and cooperation that spreads quietly and can be put at the service of democracy. However, the idea of a new age that is assumed by self-organized social dynamics must be refuted and must give way to a new model that combines bottom-up and top-down methods. Moreover, the digital economy fosters innovation. Citizens can now interact directly on a peer-to-peer basis, whether in market exchanges or in fundraising. They can collaborate, co-construct and so on. These fertilizations of collective intelligence represent unprecedented opportunities (collaborative consumption, Wikipedia co-production and knowledge dissemination, communities). In this sense, by fostering social links, this digital model feeds a cooperative mode and reactivates the notion of common goods. Moreover, we often talk about civic and political apathy, public debate undermined by false information, violence or radicalization online, and yet new figures of digital citizenship are emerging. These are expressed in different ways: the sharing of unprecedented information that thwarts censorship, a form of resistance to the generalized connection, and voluntary non-use. In the face of control and censorship, in the face of the exported economic model that has been imposed, new alternative means are developing and instantaneous information channels are changing the means of conducting mass actions. If not, it is still possible to refuse invitations to follow sites or reject useless products and services, to make good use of passwords, to have control over the tools one uses. Free software and licenses have been produced on a voluntary basis, allowing one to run the program as one wishes, to modify the source code to make the program do what one wants, to redistribute them to whomever one wishes. These “free” systems, benefiting from specific licenses, make it possible to avoid control by the developer or the sponsor. Digital technology therefore also provides the means to avoid being completely locked into the considerable monopolies it has created.

Education, citizenship and digital literacy

This is why digital literacy training for all is no longer an option but an obligation. It must encourage us to decipher our technological environment more accurately in the face of the disorientation into which technological progress is leading us, especially as it is ambiguous. As a means of surveillance, it also makes the freedom to express oneself and to create possible for millions of people who were previously silenced. Because digital technology has become a condition for the individual’s development, and because it is at the heart of our country’s economic, social and cultural future, everyone must equip themselves with a digital kit in order to act consciously in the digital environment, to understand the rudiments of computing and the Internet, to imagine the physical functioning of the computer, to grasp an English-speaking lexicon that escapes them doubly because of the distance of the language and the numerous neologisms, to discern the precautions to be taken to avoid the dispossession of personal data, but also to seize the opportunities. This approach is essential to avoid a simplistic or reductive vision based on clichés and generating defensive reactions, in short, to equip ourselves with the tools available in order to tame the techniques and mobilize them as vectors of collective development. To do this, the digital world, which is both omnipresent and addictive, must be understood in a way that is different from the everyday, familiar objects and services. This presupposes a form of culture that is capable of resisting the dominant strategies and influencing technological decision-making. In this context, schools play an important role in the dissemination of digital culture, even if this objective goes beyond this institution alone. For example, with massive online courses such as MOOCs4, teaching has been broadened, opening up new ways of learning. The teacher–student relationship can give way to interaction and even intercreation. The teaching of disciplines and their evaluations have been transformed. Digital tools can become a remedy for school failure. However, this necessary digital culture implies a clear understanding of what it covers. Even if the reference points are becoming blurred and the levels of expertise are heterogeneous, everyone is concerned: while some older people may be at a loss when it comes to digital technology, others have become very active on these networks and are aware of the issues. As for the digital natives, born with these tools, they handle them intuitively but do not necessarily understand the meaning of transformations and do not necessarily grasp the stakes. Indeed, while we are fascinated by the digital skills of some young people, this does not mean that they have a social and political understanding of it. The use of a technology has consequences for their vision and representation of the world. Moreover, although access and equipment are practically assured, even if some areas are still poorly served, many people have difficulty using the tools efficiently, solving the remaining computer problems (bugs, updates, etc.), entering the online procedures or making a reasoned choice about dubious advertising offers. This energy that is spent on clarifying the obscure or even unintelligible offers of the major operators, or on solving multiple technical problems, results in a general discouragement that leads to blindness with regard to the harmful consequences that must be protected against. This requires an initial, ongoing and permanent educational strategy in the face of the perpetual renewal of digital technologies. It is the first step in creating a collective awareness on this subject and taking advantage of the benefits it can bring. The culture of the free, the commons and collective intelligence should be an integral part of it. However, a victory against the threats that digital technology poses to our societies, for the benefit of a citizen and emancipator digital technology, implies a digital culture with several dimensions: scientific and technical, political, ethical and legal. This is the mission that the authors of this book have set themselves to raise awareness.

References

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Bachimont, B. and Verlaet, L. (2020). Présentation de la revue Intelligibilité du numérique [Online]. Available at: http://intelligibilite-numerique.numerev.com/.

Brügger, N. (2018). The Archived Web: Doing History in the Digital Age. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

Cardon, D. (2019). Culture numérique. Les Presses de Sciences Po, Paris.

Cour des Comptes (2020). Rapport public annuel. Annual report [Online]. Available at: https://www.ccomptes.fr/fr/publications/le-rapport-public-annuel-2020.

Défenseur des droits (2019). Rapport annuel d’activité. Annual report [Online]. Available at: https://www.defenseurdesdroits.fr/fr/rapports-annuels/2020/06/rapport-annuel-dactivite-2019.

Doueihi, M. (2013). Qu’est-ce que le numérique ? PUF, Paris.

Giraudon, G. (n.d.). INRIA. Encyclopædia Universalis [Online]. Available at: https://www.universalis.fr/encyclopedie/inria/; https://www.universalis.fr/encyclopedie/inria/2-des-sciences-du-numerique-aux-sciences-numeriques/ [Accessed 24 August 2021].

Lipovetsky, G. and Serroy, J. (2007). L’Écran global : culture-médias et cinéma à l’âge hypermoderne. Le Seuil, Paris.

Vitali-Rosati, M. and Sinatra, M.E. (eds) (2014). Pratiques de l’édition numérique. Presses de l’université de Montréal, Montreal.

1 INRIA, Encyclopædia Universalis [Online]. Available at: https://www.universalis.fr/encyclopedie/inria/ [Accessed March 14, 2021].

2 Available at: dictionary.cambridge.org.

3 The Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés is an independent French administrative authority. Its objective is to ensure the protection of personal data. It plays a warning role but also advises, controls and sanctions, providing information to the public.

4 MOOCs: Massive Open Online Courses.

A

Accessibility

Nathalie Pinède

MICA, Université Bordeaux Montaigne, Pessac, France

Accessibility is emerging as a major concept with regard to the disability-digital articulation. Accessibility can be understood as a component of “access” (Fougeyrollas et al. 2014), even if we often encounter effects of superposition and confusion between the terms “access” and “accessibility”. Nevertheless, while there is no consensual definition of accessibility, certain constitutive dimensions allow us to distinguish it from the concept of access, which is more positioned at a political and theoretical level. The geographical aspect, correlated with the notion of distance and the inscription in a space, constitutes a first dimension. But with accessibility, it is also a question of perception by people, particularly in terms of ease of access, which paves the way to a differentiated apprehension depending on the individual. Finally, accessibility is significantly operational in nature and linked to practices, particularly in the form of norms and standards. Thus, accessibility shifts the generic issue of access to a more subjective vision, at the center of which individuals, in all their diversity, must find their place. This is the meaning of the definition of accessibility proposed by the French Interministerial Delegation for Disabled People (Délégation interministérielle des personnes handicapées) in 2006, an open definition based on both personal and environmental factors:

Accessibility enables the autonomy and participation of people with disabilities by reducing or eliminating mismatches between their abilities, needs and wishes on the one hand, and the different physical, organizational and cultural components of their environment on the other. (DIPH 2006)

From a digital perspective, accessibility therefore consists of “providing equal access to physical and digital environments, by offering safe, healthy places and resources adapted to the diversity of people likely to use them” (Folcher and Lompré 2012, pp. 89–90). These lines reflect the shift in responsibility that has marked the change in representations of disability: it is no longer the person who must adapt to their environment, but the environment that must provide the conditions for quality access for all people, regardless of their differences and beyond an approach restricted to disability/disabilities. As such, accessibility is indeed one of the facets of an inclusive society, as a necessary, though insufficient, condition.

The expression “digital accessibility” is not without ambivalence. It can be understood in two ways: accessibility through digital technology or accessibility of digital technology. The first approach, accessibility through digital technology, considers digital technology and information and communication technologies (ICT) as opportunities to access resources or services that provide added value in a situation of impediment or limitation (so-called “enabling technologies”). The second approach, digital accessibility, involves acting so that interfaces, tools and contents can be consulted and manipulated by people with disabilities (visual, auditory, motor, cognitive, for example) and therefore in acting on the obstacles that can make ICTs “disabling” technologies. In this context, digital accessibility mainly concerns websites, digital services of any kind, smartphone applications, digital documents, in connection with software, standards and various media. This includes issues of physical accessibility (perceptible dimension of the website or digital document for all), but also accessibility to content and knowledge. Accessibility therefore implies both access through the senses (sensory level), but also through meaning (production of meanings).

Of course, these two sides of digital accessibility are neither contradictory nor exclusive of each other. They are symmetrical and representative of a dual vision of accessibility that can be interpreted either from the point of view of opportunities for access and participation via digital technology, or from the point of view of the risks of impediment derived from use (Pinède 2018). On the latter point, digital accessibility has been a right for people with disabilities for the past 20 years or so, on pain of reinforcing exclusions. In this way, regulatory, normative and regulatory frameworks exist at different levels and they are all part of an inclusive political and social will, particularly in connection with the development of e-government and e-services, and the accessibility of web content.

At the international level, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG1), proposed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), are an authoritative international reference framework setting out the technical methods for distributing Web content according to standards that meet accessibility criteria.

In France, in 2009, the implementing decree of May 14, 2009 of article 47 of the law of February 2005 defined the General Accessibility Guidelines for Public Administrations (Référentiel d’amélioration générale de l’accessibilité [RGAA]), based mainly on the WCAG, which in 2019 became the General Accessibility Guidelines (RGAA version 42). The RGAA is both a predominantly technical standard and a methodology for checking compliance with international rules for public communication services. In 2016, the promulgation of Law No. 2016-1321 “for a digital republic” added in Chapter 3, “Access to digital for the vulnerable public”, new obligations for administrations and an extension of accessibility obligations for other categories of companies. At the European level, since 2010, these accessibility principles have also been included in digital strategic plans. Directive 2019/882 of 17 April 2019, on accessibility requirements for products and services, is thus a significant step forward, both in terms of the scope of the services concerned and the emphasis placed on the principles of universal design.

This is another decisive aspect of accessibility approaches: the methodological dimension and the use of design methods, such as user-centered design (UCD), universal design (Choi 2005), associated with a consideration of the user experience (UX Design). The strength of these different approaches is to translate this concern for integrating the diversity of user figures and needs into the heart of the implementation process of technical devices or the design of goods and services. Moreover, the field of digital accessibility is one where innovation is very present in order to develop solutions in terms of systems and interfaces adapted to the variety of individual situations and contexts of use. Thus, many technical aids to communication are proposed to alleviate the difficulties of consulting content and browsing on computers or cell phones for people with disabilities, by offering compensation for the various types of sensory disability: interfaces with voice synthesis, virtual keyboards, voice amplifiers, access to the written or oral content of a message, assistance in understanding a written or oral message, etc.

These elements of framing thus show the presence of a consequent arsenal to accompany the accessibility of digital environments. However, several paradoxes can be highlighted. First of all, the reality of the application of these measures in the field remains very contrasted and struggles to impose itself, despite the regulatory obligations. On the other hand, the entry through WCAG and RGAA type standards is a necessary but insufficient one. Beyond access standards, it is also a question of uses and singular experiences of devices and contents in a multidimensional environment. Digital accessibility aims to “speak” to as many people as possible, which cannot be achieved without certain forms of translation, or even reduction, of the informational and esthetic richness of the interfaces. Finally, the search for inclusion for all through the prism of accessibility is not free of a paradox, that of an acceptance and legitimization of digital ineluctability, within which recourse to technology to access services and content supported by technology is often imposed.

While accessibility obviously involves regulatory, technical and normative aspects, it also calls the social representations at work into question, for example, in the relationship that system designers and content mediators have with sociotechnical devices. In this respect, information and awareness-raising initiatives are crucial to changing certain prejudices. It is therefore crucial to think about digital accessibility beyond interactions with tools, in an extended and revisited sense from the point of view of the technical, cognitive and symbolic mediations at the heart of digital uses by and for people with disabilities.

References

Choi, S. (2005). Universal design: A practical tool for a diverse future. International Journal of the Diversity, 6, 116–124.

Délégation interministérielle aux personnes handicapées (DIPH) (2006). Définition de

l’accessibilité : une démarche interministérielle. Document, Ministère de la Santé et des

Solidarités, Paris.

Folcher, V. and Lompré, N. (2012). Accessibilité pour et dans l’usage : concevoir des situations d’activité adaptées à tous et à chacun.