Man in his digital environment I / Part 1 - Culture

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We are immersed in a digital world. This is profoundly transforming our lifestyles, our relationships with others, our relationship to knowledge. New questions are emerging, on the societal, economic, technological, legal, etc. level.

At the end of 2012, in the prestigious Council Chamber economic, social and environmental, of the company's stakeholders, of Higher Education and Research and the Powers public officials, socio-economic leaders and students have been shared these questions and exchanged in a major debate focused on three societal themes of everyday life: the culture: "Does the connected man know everything?", health: "what does the patient know - what does the doctor know? », the city: "how does the city open up to the digital citizen?".

delevoye"Addressing the issue of Man - in the general sense, of course, of the human being, man and woman - in his digital environment is both to help inform our fellow citizens about what I will call the digital imperative and not reject the decisive contributions of a revolutionary breakthrough in many ways." begins by stating Jean-Paul Delevoye, President of the Economic, Social and Environmental Council. 

"I have just pronounced the word 'revolutionary'." Yes, we are living a real revolution. Like we do not yet see the ins and outs, we call the current situation of "crisis". In reality, it is rather about a great or profound change that we should be talking about, under the double impact of energy and, of course, digital. The future is no longer the projection of past, as it could have been in the last century - I am thinking of the Soviet Plan or the Alvin Toffler's futurology, for example, both of which drew a future traced out to advance -, no, the future today challenges the past. We're changing eras, and we're let's start finding out. We are becoming aware of the necessary adaptation of society, of its structures, its leaders. We understand more and more the need to incubate innovation. and encourage risk-taking. Digital technology is changing our social structures as well as our our mental structures, our representations, our relationship to time, space, the other, until the construction of our identity. Isn't the third largest community in the world after China and India not facebook, which surpassed one billion users in September 2012?
This revolution sometimes makes you dizzy: I was recently told that my i phone had twice the computing power used by NASA computers in 1970 for the Apollo 13 mission! More importantly, it affects all areas. » he continues.(...)

And to conclude: « Je would like to stress that the digital world accompanies as much as it initiates, facilitates as much as it produces new practices. These are based on three pillars:
- Dissemination of information (but what about its prioritization, its understanding?)
- The emergence of the individual in his capacity for choice and expression (but what about his capacity for What about the collective bond?)
- The structuring of a company by the network more than by power, status or hierarchy, a a society that is more horizontal than vertical, a society that needs to be regulated rather than controlled.

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Part One / Culture: "Does the connected man know everything? »

rubypascal Visual recognition technologies, new means of access and discovery of digitised heritage, by Pascal Ruby, president and CEO of Xedix. (Synthesis by Hélène Héron, Engineer-Student of the Corps desMines, InstitutMines-Télécom)

The problem "Does the connected man know everything? " leads to two angles of study:

- the behaviour of the connected man: what do we do when we are connected? That do we want to know?
- access to knowledge: what are our means of access to knowledge? How do new technologies can they help us?

1) Behaviour

The human being is surrounded by connected screens (smartphones, PC, television, tablets) that capture 90% of our content access time (based on Google data). Only 10% remains devoted to newspapers and radio. Each terminal has its own function: the mobile phone for social activities and instantaneity, computers for productive tasks, and shelves for entertainment and shopping. Television has a much more central place.
It is the context (place, available time, objective of the task, state of mind) that determines the terminal. used. In most cases, the use of terminals is sequential: 90% of interactions started on one terminal and continued on another. The main activities on the Internet are sending and reading emails, social networking and searching for information.

Humans often use two screens at the same time, and in 80% of the cases, the two activities are independent ("multitasking" logic). Television is the most widely used screen at the same time. than another terminal. Television guides our research: we are looking for information and we exchange with our contacts about what we see and what we are seeing. let's watch (this is the concept of "Social TV"). Television perfectly illustrates the 20% of cases where two screens are used for correlated activities.

In a wide variety of situations, connections provide access to "found time". Access to content is most often found on mobile phones and the search is spontaneous in 80% cases. The environment makes us ask ourselves questions and leads us to look for information. This is how almost all content searches pass at some point or another. another by motive.

The person uses this recovered time to:
- zapping (not very productive)
- daily organizational actions (e-procurement, planning)
- and more interesting in our case: spontaneous requests for information

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2) Access to knowledge

A distinction must be made between instantaneous responses to questions raised by our environment (we know what we are looking for and can formulate it) and the process of active discovery (we cannot yet formulate what we will discover).

1er case I can formulate what I'm looking for.  It can be a price, a release date, etc. The majority of screens no longer have a keyboard. The image is a universal language for searching anytime, anywhere and on any screen. Access is much easier by the photograph that is taken (the object) than by a description. text on the keyboard. The application used formulates the question, the image specifies the purpose of the question: for example, we photograph a package and the application gives the answer to the colour of the bin to be used for sorting. This restitution in the form of augmented reality can also be used in museums: Display of a localized description of the details of a painting and overprinting of comments posted by our personal contacts. Here we use applications that have known purposes.

2th case knowledge is not accessible through text.  Audio and video content is not always annotated with text due to costs and delays. of production and opportunities for use. The use of the Internet makes it possible to find resources to transform a textual question into a visual language. The technology enables bounce from one search mode (text) to another (image, sound,...)

3th case I don't know what I'm looking for.  The content itself is the object of the question and a keyboard is of no use in this case: what is the content? is this piece of music? Who is this speaker? What is this building? Whose painting is this? ... Multimedia recognition technologies (visual recognition, sound recognition) create new ways of accessing information.

4th case knowledge is not formulated in the text.  Each person who annotates content such as an image uses his or her own vocabulary and describes the contained in its own way. The interest of the ability to search by image appears here very clearly for exceed the manual tag limit. Thus an application for decorative arts captures a work of art or the atmosphere that surrounds us and returns visually compatible heritage archives.

The image is in this case a means of discovering contents that are not necessarily accessible by other means.
The technology can help me identify the formal characteristics that describe the entire digitized archive (www.egonomy.net). Technology can identify my visual preferences and invite me to converge on a range of content that interests me by combining learning techniques and visual recognition.

In conclusionmen are permanently connected and spend more time interacting with each other with the contents. Multimedia recognition technologies are opening up new avenues access to knowledge and informal discovery. They are complementary to access to  "encyclopedic" by keyword and their combination (semantic text + image) still opens up more perspectives.

About Pascal Ruby

Pascal Ruby founded XediX in 2009 with the aim of enhancing multimedia content. In three years of close collaboration with CEA LIST, XediX has developed a strong expertise in the field of object or people recognition in images and videos. This know-how is now used for the transfer of relevant information to mobiles or connected televisions and for the intelligent discovery of large image or video databases. XediX offers its services online (http://www.senseetive.com). Previously, Pascal Ruby held several positions at InStranet, a knowledge management software solution. Pascal Ruby is a graduate of Ecole Polytechnique and Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées. 

morandpascal– Culture and digital: new behaviours for individualsby Pascal Morand, Managing Director of ESCP Europe (Synthesis by Hélène Héron, Engineer-Student of the Corps desMines, InstitutMines-Télécom)

The term "culture" can be taken in a broad, anthropological sense, relating to representations stemming from the values, knowledge and history structuring a social group ; or in the strict sense, then referring to the knowledge itself, as in the scientific fields, for example or artistic, in connection with the creative process from which they originate. The internet leads to a greatly increased amount of information available, as well as a strong creative potential. Is it therefore necessary to cultivate encyclopaedism, as Rabelais recommended, or to prefer a good head? made to a full head, following Montaigne.

The digital revolution

Digital technology is giving rise to a profound transformation in the modes of production, production and distribution. consumption and exchange, thus inducing an economic and social revolution. It transforms the relationship to work, leisure and consumption, to others and to oneself, to space and time, leading to societal and cultural upheaval.

A released worker?

The digital revolution is at the source of the contemporary wave of globalization and is also, at On a global scale, the main factor increasing inequality. It leads to fragmentation of the value chain in the economy and a profound shift in business models; resulting in unpredictability and anxiety. NICTs (New Information and Communication Technologies) Information and Communication) are at the same time a major source of information for the professional development and freedom from organizational rigidities by breaking down rigid hierarchies and shifting the boundaries of relationships at work. The share of immaterial work is increasing and this type of work is spilling over into our personal lives. Young people generations have changed their relationship to work and hierarchy and aspire in particular to remain in contact with social networks in their workplace.

A consumer actor?

Mass production gives way to customization via new industrial processes induced by digital (3D printing...). Moreover, the share of the internet is growing faster and faster in the distribution, worldwide (30% of online consumer purchases in China, China and the United States). in 2012, compared with 12% in 2010), also on the second-hand market (in connection with the crisis and the sustainable development issues). The power of initiative and freedom of choice are not for This is all the more amplified because Internet users are passive in more than two-thirds of their Internet use. The the relationship between brands and the internet is changing. In the past, brands used to do "marketing digital" in addition to their traditional advertising. Both types of marketing (classic and digital) are now available. digital) are completely intertwined with an ever-increasing share for digital marketing.

Shifting the frontier of solitude

Participation in social networks is strong but uneven. The digital divide is generational: 70% of French people use the Internet but only 25% of retirees. Worlds virtual and real are conjugated and merged: the internet becomes a complement of life, in particular via online games. On the other hand, digital technology enables the development of solidarity networks (help, family support). The relationship to loneliness is modified by the time spent on the digital.

Space and time revisited

Space and time are revisited by digital technology that turns the world into a village. The Internet of objects transfigures the relationship to everyday space. Real time is becoming generalized. Simultaneity and impatience are at the heart of contemporaneity. Man is attracted by speed and movement. that represent life compared to the immobility associated with death. This phenomenon had already produced a century ago with the advent of the automobile in particular; digital technology gives it a another dimension. This acceleration of time has a centrifugal effect, leaving on the side number of citizens, and causes by reaction an aspiration to slowness.

The future of creation and culture

With regard to culture "in the strict sense", the potential for creation is increasing, as is its potential to be used in a variety of ways. democratization via websites that allow artists to express themselves. While doing body with the cultural foundation, creative expression is nourished by an amplified crossbreeding. From new forms of expression and diffusion of creation are appearing. Thus in the framework of the film Ridley Scott's participative "Life in a day", Ridley Scott called on Internet users to tell a fragment of their lives. The film, full of vitality, reflects cultural diversity.

From Fordism to Immaterialism

Mankind has entered a new technological, economic and social era, that of immaterialism - a concept defined philosophically by Berkeley - which succeeds Fordism, and will induce new ways of living and thinking. Immaterialism is spreading, equipped with a double face: the immateriality of cognition (multiplication of content thanks to digital technology, knowledge, etc.). encyclopaedic) and the immateriality of perception (creation, design, communication, branding, etc.), which refers to the idea developed by Berkeley that there are realities only through the way whose things are perceived. Contemporary immateriality constantly brings together these two components.

About Pascal Morand

Professor at ESCP Europe, Director of the Institute for Innovation and Competitiveness i7. A graduate of HEC, Doctor of State in Economics, Professor of Economics at ESCP Europe, specialist in international economics and the relationship between economics and culture, he was Director General of the French Fashion Institute (IFM) from 1987 to 2006 and then Director General of ESCP Europe from 2006 to 2012. He has conducted numerous studies and missions, notably on behalf of French and European public authorities.

verdierhenriConclusion by Henri Verdier, Chairman of the Cap Digital competitiveness cluster (Synthesis by Zineddine Alla, Engineer-Student of the Corps des Mines, Institut Mines-Télécom)

"I would like to share with you, at the end of this morning, some thoughts that are more focused on on the economy and industrial strategy. I am, however, very pleased with the societal dimension of this work. It is important to perceive the extent to which an industrial revolution is not only scientific and technical breakthroughs, but also social values and aspirations, social order, and the economic, or even the organisation strategy of institutions and public authorities. Only one example: we could not understand the School instituted by Jules Ferry, with this teaching in groups of 30 students, based on segmented subjects and specialized teachers, without to understand the influence of Taylorism emerging at that time.

Yet, and this is the topic I would like to discuss with you today, even in these global economic and social transformations, there are driving agents of change, whose methods, strategies and programs need to be understood.

I would therefore like to share with you a reflection on Marc Andreessen's famous proclamation: "software devours the world." In an article in the Wall Street Journal, the famous entrepreneur (creator of Netscape) and investor (co-founder of the Andreessen-Horowitz Fund) predicted that the most of the traditional industries, which believe they are protected by the material dimension of their activity, are going to be attacked in the next ten years by companies from around the world. digital, and that this fight will be epic. We have a lot of reason to believe that he has largely right.

Companies from the software industry, operating as Silicon startups Valley, have thus changed in a few years:
- the music industry, the publishing world through its progressive industrialization;
- the world of advertising, with the emergence of new players who intervene between advertisers and customers within the value chain;
- the tourism sector, in a more emergent way, via sites such as TripAdvisor or start-upsup like Airn'B, who organize peer-to-peer room sharing;
- the transport industry, as shown by the irruption of the Uber company, whose taxi service The high end of the range is supported by a powerful "big data" approach;
- energy, with the upheaval of smartgrids, smart and controlled grids, the home automation and the smart house. The internet revolution in the energy sector has begun, with the same risks of new monopolies, and perhaps the need to invent an energy neutrality ;
- urban planning, and smart cities. One need only think that the island of Malta chose, six months ago, the IBM company to organize its water distribution network. Thinking of the city as a coherent, integrated system, brings urban planning into the software industry philosophy ;
- finance, with Silicon Valley startups financed through crowdfunding, i.e. a logic that dispenses with banks and venture capitalists in order to carry out financing directly by the citizens. I would like to stress that this development is not without questions. banks, insurers, by pooling risks, organise a certain amount of risk management. way to civil peace. A world of direct funding is not necessarily a more peaceful world. and better organized;
- But I could also have talked to you about High Frequency trading, which now represents more of 70 % of NYSE trades;
- education, which is now becoming a high-end market, as shown by the project course, initiated by Stanford University and piloted by startup creators from Silicon Valley, which combines face-to-face and distance learning, and has recruited more than one million of students in less than six months around the world;
- the health sector, part of which is part of a consumer market logic shaped by Internet;
- defence, with the development of guided drones, or with modern combatants at the cutting edge of a network of fifty logisticians, which are a kind of computer running on the theatre... operations;
- the art of governing, with an intense reflection on the openness of the administration as an platform, allowing to organize the ambient creation in a more participative way.

All these examples illustrate this ongoing global revolution, which raises major questions political, economic and social issues, which were discussed throughout the day. But they also show the need to understand the impact of the technological dimension of this revolution. First of all, there are the consequences of Moore's Law, i.e., the fact that the power of the computers doubles every 18 months, long before the invention of microprocessors. It's primarily an investment rule, just like the drop in computer prices, divided by two every two years. However, this development has consequences that are difficult to grasp by our common sense: if it continues, the explosion of computing power over the last twenty years will be a major factor in the The next few years will be 1,000 times greater than the previous 20 years. There is no such thing as For a long time, the high price and scarcity of computers determined the organisation of companies. around computer resources. Today, everyone has two to three chips on them, probably about ten before ten years.

The second transformation is the Internet itself. Not only is the human network interconnected, but above all an innovation infrastructure with its own characteristics: neutral, open, interoperable and peripherally controlled. No one can decide to whether or not to allow me to deliver my service on the internet. Such a platform at the service of the bearer innovation is a very precious asset, the preservation of which is fundamental.

In addition, there is a complete upheaval in the strategic industrial landscape. It is thus possible to to call on a workforce that can produce for next to nothing, like Foxconn and its one million employees, which holds a virtual monopoly on global IT production  general public. More than a billion smartphones are in circulation today, with GPS, an accelerometer, compass, touch screen and power available to few computer specialists at the history lesson. New funding strategies are being accessed. We can rely on the Cloud Computing, which allows early-stage innovators to lease processing power to the demand, without prior investment in infrastructure. The mental, technological and strategic is upset about it.

It is also a rather different society, new, and discovering itself as new in its own eyes. She gradually becomes aware of her power by playing and experiencing, in a joyful way to discover this power to act. In France, I am thus observing the arrival of new generations of people. of entrepreneurs, especially from the grandes écoles, who have done an incredible job. They are better prepared, are more daring, have a global vision and an effective command of English. These transformations will have profound consequences within the French company.

This revolution is also a state of mind. Several works by historians have shown to what extent it something unique happened in Silicon Valley in the '60s and '70s. In this meeting place from the military industry and the hippie movement, has emerged this "creative ethos", combining creativity and managerial efficiency...
This movement is finally taking on a political dimension, as shown, for example, by the speech of President Obama at the Democratic Convention in 2011, which elaborated on the themes of personal responsibility, individual initiative, challenge to be won by trusting those who dream, experiment, undertake and take risks.
That doesn't mean we should be fooled. There are also perils in this development. The For example, the software has a very strong capacity to fit into old industries and to take the value chain control. Thus, Amazon has gradually integrated into the market by offering logistics solutions; and then used data mining to implement a data mining engine for the recommendation with a near-perfect knowledge of opinion movements: nearly 50 % of the books sold by Amazon are sold thanks to its recommendation engine. Tests are in the process of becoming a more profitable book publisher, and are leading to a growing concern about the possibility of a dominant position in publishing.

These are also activities which, by construction, have a strong tendency towards monopoly. Even if only because every new customer adds value to the service: just like in telecommunications, the individual utility derived from a service grows with the number of users. It may be necessary to one day think about a takeover of power by the political field of certain major platforms digital.

Finally, the development of "Soft Power" must be taken very seriously. Not only for the preservation of languages, but above all because it involves a value system and a mentality implicit, consubstantial to this wave. In receiving these global services, we also receive political representations about what is a contract, privacy or a democratic society...

This is why it is necessary to be attentive to the strategies of global innovation players and to try to perceive what the next steps will be. The first thing to realize is that this movement is attacking all industrial sectors, the deconstructed and rebuilt them without respecting their vertical integration. Thus, Google, testing its totally autonomous "Google car", not so much to make cars as to redefine the organisation of the automotive industry, by designing a real operating system for the car...

We will also witness, using the title of the book I co-authored with Nicolas Colin, from the advent of an economy of the many. This is characterized by the ability of digital technology to offer major platforms that collect and stimulate collective creativity. Wikipedia, the largest encyclopedia in the history of mankind, worked for ten years on with eight employees. Facebook, with 3500 employees, serves a billion users. The talent, the content, intelligence and exchanges are now on the users' side.
The advent of Big data then, which without going as far as pure empiricism, makes it possible to construct knowledge even in the absence of informal knowledge. The development of "machine learning" is thus spectacular, like this program of the Montreal hospital which allows to diagnose one day before pediatricians, the children who will need care intensive. This field is naturally correlated with the field of artificial intelligence: Dr Watson, tested in American hospitals, is a computer that accompanies the medical visit and suggests diagnoses by interrogating the Internet in natural language.

Finally, I insist on this "return to reality", via the Internet of Things, which will integrate all the objects to our digital interactions between humans, and thus exponentially develop the field of possible relationships. This work on the physical world focuses in particular on the body. with, for example, the development of exoskeletons for the elderly. I believe Moreover, biomechanics and the interface between the digital world and the body are producing technological advances faster than biotechnology.

This new world is promised to us by radical innovators, imbued with the culture and the Silicon Valley methods. We need to understand them and take them seriously, otherwise... they will bring entire sectors of the economy under their control...

About Henri Verdier :

Entrepreneur and president of the Cap Digital competitiveness cluster. A former student of the Ecole Normale Supérieure, Henri Verdier was the managing director of the company Odile Jacob Multimedia, developing with Georges Charpak a set of educational materials for La main à la pâte. In 2007, he joined Lagardère Active as director in charge of innovation. In 2009, he joined the Institut Télécom as Director of Foresight, in charge of creating the "Digital Future" Think Tank. He is co-founder of MFG-Labs. A founding member of the Cap Digital competitiveness cluster, he was vice-president from 2006 to 2008, before being elected Chairman of the Board of Directors. He is a member of the Foresight Committees of ARCEP and CNIL and a member of the think tank Futur numérique of the Institut Mines Telecom.

Continued / Part Two :  Health - What does the patient know? What does the doctor know?

Access to the third part: The City - How does the city open up to the digital citizen?

 

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