Digital Civilization. Let's open the debate!

Digital technology has profoundly affected our lifestyles: communicational and societal changes, new thought patterns, perceptions, new ways to build our inner circle, new means of production… The spectrum is wild and not limited to technology.

To encourage discussion about our relationship to digital and induce awareness of its vast political issues, the National digital council published Digital Civilization. Let's open the debate! The National digital council is an independent advisory commission, created in 2011, responsible for conducting an open reflection on the relationship of humans to digital. This work retraces the results of the reflections of the year.

With this work, the National Digital council focuses on knowledge, preservation of attention, circulation of false information and democracy. Many questions run through this book: Does digital allow us to be an actor? How to think about the human and social link with the digital? Is the truth precarious in networks?

First, digital technology is a major stake in the public debate. This book is a resource supporting citizens in the construction of their knowledge and encourages them to take an active part in the thinking process of digital topics. It questions the human relationship to digital while promoting the emergence of a public debate around these questions that are turning upside down our way of life. Moreover, this work is of particular interest in the context of the upcoming presidential election and the PFUE (French Presidency of the European Union).

Many subjects are covered in this book and I could not mention them all here. The theme of truth and democracy are of particular importance in times of fake news. The council points out that digital is not the cause of misinformation. It is a tool which could however be exploited by certain actors in order to satisfy their own interests. 

It therefore seems necessary to fight together against misinformation by promoting the emergence of cooperation between States, platforms and citizens. It is then a question of recreating the link and to Open the debate to the different actors of the public debate: citizens, researchers, representatives, states…

Therefore, this book gives all the keys of understanding, deciphering the functioning of this new world to allow the debate and answer all these questions. It is a real resource supporting citizens in the construction of their knowledge and it is for this reason that I encourage you to read it.

It also closes this first year of office during which files, trips on the territory, the organization of a study day bringing together many public and research actors, a bi-monthly newsletter, interviews and exchanges have been carried out.