Ci’Num 2007 _ impressions
De retour des entretiens des civilisations numériques…
Ci’Num 2007 was the last year of a three-year cycle of conferences involving experts around the world. Invited as expert the first year, and as workshop co-leader and leader this third year, I have to say that I feel that the adventure should not stop here!
This year’s participants elaborated on 4 scenarios [Collapse + Imperialism + New enlightenment + Hundred Thousand Flowers] to imagine their future, and build a world in which they would want to live in:
The mechanics of 2007’s scenarios is based on one major assumption: That the form which our future will take will largely depend on how we address global planetary constraint in terms of environment, climate and exhaustible natural resources.
Scenarios started by the Beijing Olympics and the result of the American election… I know that many of us are impatiently waiting for the current administration to leave :)… but… shouldn’t we think instead about other hot topics like the replacement of fossil fuel? I liked the following maps as they helped navigate the text:
Among the experts: Derrick de Kerckhove, Director of the McLuhan Program in Culture & Technology and Professor in the Department of French at the University of Toronto, Edith Ackermann, Honorary Professor of Developmental Psychology, at the University of Aix-Marseille 1, France. Currently a Visiting Scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture, and a Visiting Professor at the University of Siena, Department of Communication. Francis Pisani, consultant in technologies, also known for his influential blog: transnets, Henri Van Damme, director of many research labs at the CNRS before becoming a professor at the Ecole Supérieure de Physique et Chimie Industrielle, Isaac Mao, Engineer, the most influential blogger in China and activist, Abdoulah Cissé, law professor at the university of Bambey (Senegal), Izumi Aizu, Deputy Director of the Institute for HyperNetwork Society… Some pictures below…
(Cela dit en passant, I do love taking pictures of screens). Derrick de Kerckhove speaking, and Edith Ackermann at the back, on the right. De Kerkckove gave a beautiful introduction to Ci’Num, inviting us to think about computers as the extension of thoughts… He showed the TED video of Jeff Han.
Mao presented his really interesting concept of “sharism” (not communism or socialism).
Isaac Mao, Edith Ackermann, Abdoulah Cissé, Francis Pisani preparing for the Saturday morning session.
Daniel Kaplan is the creator of the program Ci’Num. He is the “Délégué Général” of the FING (Fondation Internet Nouvelle Génération) and is the President of the European Institute of e-learning, EIfEL. Kaplan, along with Hervé Leguyader, General director of AEC, Agence Aquitaine pour la Societé de l’Information, also did a fantastic job of introducing, presenting, and moderating… the event.
Left, Daniel Kaplan, and Hervé Le Guyader; right, Joël de Rosnay, President of Biotics International and writer, author of 2020: Scenario du futur (2007).
Kaplan elaborated the program with Céline Verchère-Morice, head of usage, and Miguel Aubouy, head of creativity, working at the MINATEC… I can’t help but wanting to let you know what the MINATEC is… It is the Laboratoire d’électronique et de technologie de l’information; Departement Conception et Integration dans les Systèmes; Service Microsystèmes et Objets Communicants, Laboratoire des Idées… (The longest title ever. Sweet ;)
Right, Céline on the foreground; left, Miguel on the foreground.
I co-lead the first workshop with Joël Golder, consultant, Golder Partners, also a collaborator of Daniel Kaplan in the making of the program for Ci’Num. Golder told me that he compiled about 156 methods to lead groups to think creatively. This time, when it came to dissect the scenario and extract ideas for challenges (we had to produce two challenges per scenarios; and we were assigned the following ones: Imperialism and New Enlightenment), Golder asked participants to write on post-its ideas that would play for and against the scenarios… Funny ideas erupted. In a second stage, participants voted for the best ideas to be flushed out to become a challenge.
Some post-its… The TAZ, refers to the text by Hakim Bey: Temporary Autonomous Zone.
Among the total 16 formulated challenges, and after a very long combinatory session, 12 remained to be explored the next day.
I particularly liked Céline and Miguel’s approach to the second day workshop and how they designed it: Participants had to choose a challenge they liked to explore—I was animating the Savoir-vivre la Megapole. The exercise all started by asking participants what was scary about the challenge they chose. The goal was to find solutions, practices, and ways to address fears and by that help people express their desires and decide of actions to take in order to answer their challenge.
Left, on the foreground Dominique Laousse from the RATP, Prospective and Innovative Design; Right, Henri Van Damme sitting, and Joël Golder standing.
Among the challenges and action to take onward, I like the c3rb3r3.net concept, a site for hackers (apparently hackers use the number “3” instead of the letter “E”, so the word is in reality cerbere, the mythological dog with three heads, guardian of the door of Hell) to bring some breath to a sclerosed government; or again the Eden en Réseau project (And not only for the Hell and Paradise association ;) The project intent was to bring people together to learn how to nurture trees, and survey them remotely and in network, like for Tamagotchi, the toy that demands constant attention. These are ideas to be continued… so are the Habemus Corpus, the United Network, the Ethics for Augmentations, the Carbo Dollar, etc…
All actions were presented to the public who was asked to vote for 7 challenges total with the object below:
Voting machine.
I was quite abashed that of the 7 challenges chosen, none was considering the city and its urban environment, and none was attempting to bridge North and South!!! The challenges were presented to politicians on Sunday. As a “concepteur du futur”, I found the reformulation for the politics a little… tamed. I have to say however that I quite admire the ability of Marcel Desvergne, Director of AEC to speak to both the concepteur and the politician ;)
Some action going on… Left, Laurent-Pierre Gilliard from AEC presenting c3rb3r3.net; Right, preparation talk behind the curtains: Eric Culnaert from AEC with Jacques François Marchandise from la FING. Thank you Thierry Ulmet from AEC and Jean-François Laplume for the organization…
Let’s make Ci’Num spread and continue (I did meet wonderful people, and BTW learned that “compteur d’insectes” is a real job, and that every tree in France is tagged!). I certainly think that the three Ci’Num years deserve a well designed publication and for all these projects we thought about to continue and to morph…
