Homo Numericus

From Amazon to Tinder, from Google to Deliveroo, there is no facet of human life that the digital revolution has not streamlined and dematerialized. Its objective was to reduce costs by forgoing face-to-face interactions, and it was a direct result of the free-market shock of the 1980s, which sought to expand the marketplace seamlessly in every possible dimension. Today, we can be algorithmically entertained, educated, cared for, and courted in a way that was impossible in the old industrial society, where institutions structured the social world. Today, these institutions have been replaced by monetized virtual contact.

As the industrial revolution did in the past, the digital revolution is creating a new economy and a new sensibility, bringing about a radical revaluation of society and its representations. While obsessed with the search for an efficient management of human relations, the new digital capitalism gives rise to an irrational and impulsive Homo numericus prone to an array of addictive behaviours and subjected to intensive forms of surveillance. Far from producing a new agora, social media produce a radicalization of public debate in which hate-filled speech directed against adversaries becomes the norm.

But these outcomes are not inevitable. The digital revolution also offers an exciting path, one that leads to a world in which everyone deserves to be listened to and respected. It explores a new way of living that is historically unprecedented, that of a society based neither on individualism nor on the hierarchical model of earlier civilizations. Are we able to seize the new opportunities opened up by the digital revolution without succumbing to its dark side?

Autorentext

Daniel Cohen was a Professor of Economics at the École normale supérieure and founding member of the Paris School of Economics. His many books include The Wealth of the World and the Poverty of Nations, The Infinite Desire for Growth, The Prosperity of Vice and Homo Economicus, the (lost) prophet of modern times.

Inhalt

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Part One
The Digital Illusion
I. The Body and the Mind
Terminator
Reason and Emotions
Descartes' "Error"
Artificial Intelligence

II. Stultify and Punish
A Wild Thought
The Capitalism of Surveillance

III. Waiting for the Robots
The Death of Kings
The Industrialism of Services
The Thinking Robot
The Stake of the Century

IV. Political Anomie
Impoverishing Growth
Working Class Suicide
A Political Revolution
Vox popoli

Part Two
The Return of the Real
V. The Social Imagination
The Law of 150 Friends
Bonobos and Chimpanzees
Four Possible Societies
The Secular Age
The Triumph of Endogamy
The Post-Modern Mentality

VI. Winter is Coming
The Crises of the Twentieth Century
The Climatic Clock
The Society of Addiction

VII. In a Hundred Years
The Society of Abundance
Back to Science Fiction

VIII. By Way of Conclusion

Notes
Index