Session (en anglais) animée par Igor Galligo (Université Paris 8 ; Université de Leuphana ; Automedias.org)
Intervenants: Geert Lovink (Institute of Network Culture, Amsterdam), David Chavalarias (CNRS), Hadrien Pelissier (Technostructures.org)
Propos:
In contemporary activism there is a growing realization that there is
an urgent need to distinguish between tools for (save, decentralised)
organization and (broad) mobilization that scale up. Social media
platforms have mixed the two up (news & personal messages), up to
the point of becoming unworkable, exhausting, unleashing mental health
crises, on top of creating dangerous situations in terms surveillance.
The social media hegemony is not yet broken but there are many cracks in
its architecture—and appeal. While the Internet Question seems stagnant
and unresolved, the hype caravan has moved on. From VR, crypto and Web3
where now all in the grip of ‘AI' as the latest marketing term for
machine learning and large language models that feeds its generic
’summary’ content back into the Web. While the ‘infuencer’ persona is in
decline, the mass obsession with likes, views, comments, swiping from
one TikTok video to the next, retweets funny memes continues. What will
disrupt the 'bored billions’ is the automation of mediactivism (already
visible in the current waves of fake news and deep fakes). While
officials raise the ethics issue of AI for Good, asking the impossible
question how to buid ‘responsible’ extraction software, hackers,
designers and other artists are coding subversive tools that disrupt and
undermine the totalitarian system of control, ‘polluting’ data bases,
turning fake news and monstrous images upside down. The message is
clear: the world prepares for planetary cyberwarfare. Are you ready?
