Upside down

"Trust" is one of those words that invariably haunt the vocabulary of politics. Politicians of all eras have made it their lexical reference (1) recurrent if not their electoral slogan (2). Confidence thus appears to be the touchstone of the relationship between the two.

Today, France is paying a justified tribute to the four passengers on the Thalys train who saved passengers from carnage by stopping and controlling a mad and heavily armed terrorist. Heroes! Claimed by all the world's media. Heroism is not one of the most prized values in France.

The emergence of a living cooperative network...The Internet is undoubtedly the prefiguration, still crude, of the global brain that is forming before our eyes. The web can be defined simply as a hypermedia interface capable of processing information. It can integrate a considerable number of documents and information,

The confiscation of the privilege of violence in the hands of the State has gradually led to the development of the policed society and civilization. The rules of civility and politeness not only contribute to the maintenance of order in a society, but are also an expression of the need for

Although the word is extraordinarily topical, terrorism has not been born with the contemporary era; on the contrary, it has undergone a dramatic metamorphosis. The genius of man in the exercise of violence has taken many forms, among which terrorism has very distant ancestors. Without wanting to make history

The construction site of collaborative democracy opens up an immense space within which citizens are not mere bearers of categorical interests but identified and active builders of a continuous exchange. This is a process of reciprocal learning, of translation of knowledge and not of massive aggregation or delegation.

With the emergence of digital, virtual and electronic networks, the concept of information has radically changed in nature. It takes on new dimensions and produces anthropological consequences, some of which are still indiscernible. The metamorphosis of information into hyperinformation implies another way of seeing, of becoming aware of reality,

The great conquest that the contemporary era has made on the human spirit is the discovery of the certainty of our uncertainties, of the uncertain destiny not only of each individual, but of all humanity. This advance relieves, a few millennia away, the spirit of Epicurus and provides the answer to his anguished question:

Call back. Upside down: Dictionary of Contemporary Mutations or the Directory of Changing Times. This has been the raison d'être of this section for the last two years. It is intended for those who do not want to spare a reflection on what we are becoming. It is conceived, like a kaleidoscope of

Contemporary complex societies have a special character: their single decision-making centre, the State, has gradually found itself in competition within a multidimensional and polycentric space. Less well known than liberal theorists such as Hayek or Popper, Michael Polanyi is the one who has most inspired research.

The protection of property and people has changed in scale and goes far beyond the strictly territorial dimension. The new security takes care of flows rather than limits. The pathetic construction of new walls is ineffective in stopping the flow of immigrants or terrorist penetration. For borders do not allow

The great movement of individualisation in our Western societies is bringing a radically new character to our societies: it privatises the social bond. The democratic creed is getting rid of the mass of "people", an obsolete and demonetized concept, it is getting rid of the bonds of sovereignty shared between rulers and

While waiting for the surge in the number of "intelligent objects", the ordinary mobile phone is a particularly effective tool for better understanding and tracking our social interactions. To know in detail the intimacy of our private life. Some researchers speak of "reality searches".

Every human being has a double inheritance: a genetic inheritance and a "memetic" inheritance. The first is widely known, the second much less so (1). The memetic heritage covers the world of culture, ideas and knowledge. This heritage is not superimposed on the genetic heritage;

The market economy brought, in the impedimenta of its conquests, an old concept born a few millennia ago in the shadow of the olive trees of ancient Greece: democracy. Like the market, democracy is the expression of a freedom: the freedom to choose between several programmes, the freedom to elect

The acceleration of history and the expansion of the present have the sudden and symmetrical effect of putting all the past at a distance. We no longer inhabit it, it no longer speaks to us, it no longer tells us history, it only appears to us in the form of interposed, mysterious traces that

Modern liberalism is not totalitarian but it is uncompromising; it provides a maximum program in which governments will choose what is most appropriate according to the conjunctural circumstances or the institutional context. It is thus highly functional since it provides a very wide repertoire of measures

Trust is a basic fact of life in society, it is also the most effective form of reducing complexity. Trust establishes a very singular relationship with time: by granting trust, we anticipate the future; we act as if we were certain of the future.

Orwell was right; he was simply wrong about the date. Contemporary society is imperceptibly becoming a surveillance society as technology changes. And this slow but incoercible transformation is taking place in spaces at the heart of which democracy is being undermined. Big Brother took place in a

For a long time, the emergency mode of action was confined to exceptional circumstances. The recourse to emergency was an exceptional device intended to circumvent the gravity of the usual structures in the medical, judicial, economic, political or social fields. The exception of the emergency is no longer the rule today because the phenomenon