Thesis supervisor:
Antoine Picon
This book unfolds like a Chinese landscape painting that the eye slowly takes in. I use this form because I am describing a panorama. It is not made up of mountains in the mist or bushes swept by the wind, but of data processing centers, delivery warehouses, social media feeds…
I explore the hypothesis that the Internet is part of a general movement to reduce society to small-scale components, which allows its mechanisms to become more fluid. An idea from chemistry—the decomposition of matter into powder before recomposing it—is also applied to social relations, memory, and humans in general.
Just as reducing matter to powder accelerates chemical reactions, reducing society to powder allows for the accelerated decomposition and recomposition of the matter that makes up humans. It allows for a multiplication of reactions within society, of human production, of social chemistry: the combinatorial nature of passions (Charles Fourier), the hyperfragmentation of work (Mechanical Turk), the decomposition of knowledge (Paul Otlet), the Internet of neurons (Michael Chorost), and society through the aggregation of emotions (Facebook). This is what I call the "cloud society." Thesis
defense on Tuesday, January 8, 2019
Year of thesis registration
: 2012
Doctoral school
: City, Transportation, and Territories (VTT)
Composition of the jury
Thesis supervisor: Antoine Picon (University of Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée, Doctoral School of City, Transportation, and Territories, Techniques, Territories, and Societies Laboratory) Thesis
co-supervisor: Pierre Cassou-Noguès (University of Paris 8, Doctoral School of Practice and Theories of Meaning)
Emmanuel Mahé (National School of Decorative Arts)
Nicolas Thély (University of Rennes 2)
Nathalie Roseau (National School of Bridges and Roads, LATTS)
Karen O’Rourke (Jean Monnet University, Saint-Étienne)