A collective work, inspired by the discipline founded by Régis Debray, invites us to think about the metamorphoses of the present in order to understand those of tomorrow.
Bringing together around twenty authors from various disciplinary backgrounds, the aim of this book is not to outline plausible futures for the future (futurology), nor to opt for divination (the art of predicting the future through sacrileges or false sciences), but to understand what is at stake in today’s metamorphoses, and how these influence the future over a twenty to thirty year horizon.
What mediology can bring to the study of futures
Situated at the crossroads of several disciplines (semiology, history of technology, sociology of media and philosophy), mediology, conceptualized by Régis Debray, is interested in the phenomena of transmission (circulation, formation and persistence through time) over the long term. In other words, the essential question is how ideas become ” material forces “capable of acting individually and collectively on minds to the point of transforming the structures and political, economic, social, moral, military developments of a society.
As Pierre-Marc de Biasi points out in his introduction, “ As much as the object itself, mediology is therefore also interested in this organic set of configurations and structures (techno-industrial, professional, institutional, community, symbolic, etc.) which allowed this tool to be designed, manufactured, distributed, legitimized, valued and made operational. » This work therefore does not invite us to explore a simple sociology of media, traditional (such as books, television) as well as digital, “from the kiosk to TikTok” (Clara Schmelck); it questions the medium function, in all its forms. This is what mediology would like to bring to light, over the long term, since the birth of writing, from the graphosphere to the hypersphere, according to the terms consecrated by mediologists, and without being absorbed by immediate news. In essence, as Régis Debray explains in his preface, ” The mediologist who is interested in the becoming-force of forms does not interest ideologues. He is concerned with the sidelines: the repercussions, the popularization, the misunderstandings. The after-effects. How this or that idea can touch ground, and what it costs. »
The contribution of mediology here is not measured by the constitution of scenarios that would be a question of probabilizing, nor by the capacity to forge a systemic approach to the future, or even to systematically flush out the dominant prejudices of the future. The different contributions, on the other hand, give us food for thought on the weak signals useful for projecting ourselves into the future through an approach to the medium. It is in this perspective that the three main parts of the book are articulated, focusing on digital technology (the study of data, algorithms and materials), beliefs (conspiracy, relationship to science and truth) and the associated consequences for the common (fragmented, according to Daniel Bougnoux).
An ecology of transmission for the future
According to the longue durée approach of mediology, each era has its own dominant transmission media, its “in-betweens”, which shape the way in which ideas and cultures are disseminated, particularly for the ” higher social functions » (religion, ideology, art, politics). From this point of view, we can note the diversity of contributions, without claiming to be exhaustive, on the environment (Catherine Bertho-Lavenir, Monique Sicard), our relationship to data and technologies (see for example the chapters on data by Paul Soriano, algorithms by Jean-Yves Chevalier or cyberspace in 2042 by Pierre D’Huy), politics (from conspiracy theories by Françoise Gaillard to the role of the leader by Philippe Guibert) or even religion (Jean-François Colosimo).
In a transversal manner, we can note the usefulness of mediology to approach the future relationship between emotions and politics. Thus, as Pierre-Marc de Biasi observes in his introduction, ” imagining the future means forming the hybrid, mobile and composite image of an entity that superimposes three layers of memory: the hauntings, nostalgias and ambitions of long history, the scattered and non-totalizable figure of the recent past, and the kaleidoscope of anxieties, doubts and confused aspirations that sum up our immediate horizon of expectation. ” The dynamics of emotions in politics cannot in fact ignore the medium and the structures, discourses and political protests.
This transmission cannot ignore consideration of the relationship between time and politics, as Paul Soriano invites us to do: ” civilization, cultures, institutions or even stories, are all devices for give yourself time ; and democracy even offers duration to everyone, as opposed to societies where the dominant enjoy a monopoly onidleness. And if “living together” is also living at the same timeshare a duration, share a story and live it together day by day, then the dismantling of time, the desynchronizationalso affects the social bond, by multiplying the “temporal ghettos” “The construction of democratic time horizons also depends on the functions of the medium, which can shed light on the world to come.
Finally, a final cross-cutting theme is that of ideas of the future such as ” material forces ” of our democracies, without falling into a form of ” fetishism of the immaterial “. Relying on the ” revolutionary moment ” is not the same as anticipating ” the indefinite future “, this opposition must now be reflected in the shadow of the concept of ” perma-crisis “, whether it is about climate disruption, rising inequalities and geopolitical earthquakes. However, ideas of the future – and their mediations, as the book shows – are politically important for collective forms to bring out the common in our democracies.
