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Translation by AB – August 5, 2023
Translation notes:
There is always a difficulty in accurately translating the French term “technique”, in the sense here of the Technique, generally speaking, as a phenomenon, and not of a technique for a specific purpose. To avoid confusion, we’ve decided to translate “technique” by “technology” (adj. “technological”), despite the fact that the French word “technologie” is not exactly what we mean here.
The Informatization Age that emerged in the middle of the 20th century responds to what we have called a “need for automation” ((1) Automation), and this technological regime is still going strong behind the mask of ruptures and innovations. The possibility of this Age was sown much earlier in our minds, even before the major turning point of the 20th century, when physics and mathematics initiated a radical transformation of our representations of reality (and therefore of our imaginations): reality is no longer made up of essences subject to histories, but of processes or events which, through their permanence or repetition, give rise to essences. This conceptual reversal, which has spread throughout our entire belief system, has finally found a way out in, among other things, the technological system itself.
We engage here in a descriptive exploration of this phenomenon.
Disclosure
Thinking about technology today is no easy task. When we consider the rather vague term “technology”, we no longer conjure up the image of diverse, well-categorized objects, each fulfilling its own function, but rather that of a worldwide system in which a myriad of technological effects combine and respond to each other. So, we are obviously distraught, sometimes worried and flabbergasted when some effects, such as those of generative AI, spread and seem to transform society at high speed.
Even if thinking about technology isn’t easy, and isn’t indeed always very interesting, regularly questioning, both collectively and individually, our relationship with it (tools, objects, activities…) seems to us to be a necessary exercise in our own “humanity”, for at least two reasons. Firstly, it is obvious that our technological environment responds to our needs and desires alone (in fact, to someone’s needs and desires), and therefore characterizes us radically: to be human is to be technological (and, yes, even the artist!). Secondly, let’s face it: human being is itself an “object” and even an “effect” of the technological system. We are therefore directly concerned by the dual question of 1) how we use this system and depend on it? and conversely 2) how this system uses us and depends on us?
The answers that each of us can perceive for herself or himself, whether theoretical or practical, therefore condition an active relationship to daily existence and, quite simply, sustain our “well-being”. This is why we have said that technological progress, which complicates, opacifies and conceals (“closure”) more than ever in the age of computerization, must be escorted by an endeavor to unveil (“disclosure”), an effort that is collective and therefore, we insist, individual (Tristan Harris and the swamp of digital ethics).
Here, we continue this endeavor by focusing on those famous “automatic things” which, in our view, characterize the technological inspiration of the Informatization Age.
Systems
While techniques have constantly evolved over the course of history, technology has also always been a system with the human being, and what we refer to here as a “technological system” is not just the set of technological devices at our disposal (tools, processes, organizations…), but the complete system made up of these devices and ourselves, identically qualified as “technological individuals” or “technological existing beings”1. With this in mind, at first glance we can’t see any difference in nature between, say, the Babylonian or Egyptian technological systems and our own, except of course for a difference in scale, speed, intensity… in short, power. In all cases, technological existing beings, humans and devices, interact to produce more or less spectacular “macroscopic” effects (the pyramids, the Great Wall of China, Amazon, light pollution, global warming…).
However, the “informatized” technological system differs from its predecessors in one essential respect, which we propose to highlight in three ways.
Firstly, the informatized system forms a genuine organism in which all technological existing beings participate. From a technological standpoint, then, there is hardly any “ontological” difference between the human and the tool (or device), both of which participate in the “life” of this organism like cells (or perhaps even proteins) in a body:
The human being and the tool combine, hybridize, even merge (physical, neuronal prostheses…), and the tools also associate directly with each other (internet of things, cloud…), etc. Mixture of genres…
The second way of differentiating the informatized system uses Simondonian language (Gilbert Simondon, “philosopher of information”?). We’ll confine ourselves here to this brief but necessary allusion: all technological existing beings, humans and tools, share the same “associated milieu” or “pre-individual reality”, perhaps that “organism” referred to above, which is generated as technological existing beings come together.
Finally, the third attempt follows in the footsteps of economist Michel Volle, who uses the invaluable term “automation” in the field of what he calls a “new alloy” between human and machine, a kind of human-automaton. By definition, an alloy has properties that none of its components possess. The human-automaton is thus more than a human and more than an automaton. More precisely, Michel Volle uses the term “EHO–APU”, an acronym for “Être Humain Organisé – Automate Programmable doué d’Ubiquité” (“Organized Human Being – Ubiquitous Programmable Automaton”)2, underlining the particular characteristics of each component of the alloy. On the one hand, the human being as a member of a social organization; on the other, the automaton as “essentially programmable, i.e. capable of accomplishing all the tasks that it is possible to program” and “endowed with Ubiquity”, i.e. capable of accomplishing these tasks in a “logical space” indifferent to location, the computer being merely the interchangeable support of this space (an algorithm can be executed in any machine).
It seems to us that these three attempts disclose a system typical of the Informatization Age, in which technological existing beings, humans and tools, merge, form alloys, participate in the same organism or in the same pre-individual reality… It remains to add that this remarkable feature of the informatized technological system is due to the materialization, in this “logical space”, of the universal “currency” that is information. But this point is reserved for the third part, which will be devoted to an example of automatic medicine.
0) Vantage point
This radical change of technological regime is obviously not driven by political powers, which are incapable of creating a common future (they limit themselves to a more or less forced narration of existence, including through violence), but by the “conatus” of financial powers based on a liberal economic infrastructure, now planetary, unchallenged from the United States to Europe, from Africa to Asia… barely veiled by ideological vociferations and warlike agitation. Thus, informatization is achieved first and foremost through economic activity, organization of companies, segmentation of work into roles and skills, and so on. It is here, from this vantage point, of great interest to the sociologist, a little to the anthropologist and so little to the philosopher, that we must observe change in action. Here are four examples: “design thinking”, “user experience”, new “personas” and new “corporate missions”.
1) Design thinking
Let’s start by looking at the evolution of design. We no longer manufacture objects congruent to the project that human beings will use them, thus obeying the classic cycle (idea ➔ plans ➔ production ➔ distribution ➔ use), but rather devices that integrate human beings from the outset as “technological” elements among others. This is how “design thinking” was born at Stanford in the 1980s, a collaborative design method integrating all human protagonists, known as “stakeholders”, into the design process (see also Artificial Intelligence-Art in its infancy). Let’s take a look at the following example, bearing in mind that the human “stakeholders” are actually within the design of the device – in this case, a meal delivery service – and not next to it (emphasis added)3:
Take the example of a meal delivery service in Holstebro, Denmark. When a team first began looking at the problem of poor nutrition and malnourishment among the elderly in the city, many of whom received meals from the service, it thought that simply updating the menu options would be a sufficient solution. But after closer observation, the team realized the scope of the problem was much larger, and that they would need to redesign the entire experience, not only for those receiving the meals, but for those preparing the meals as well.
The menus were then modified; the company changed its name, etc. but also, as part of the enlargement of the “problem” and of its “solution”, all employees were given new uniforms (!):
The new, chef-style uniforms gave the cooks a greater sense of pride. It was only part of the solution, but if the idea had been rejected outright, or perhaps not even suggested, the company would have missed an important aspect of the solution.
The elderly, like the cooks, are considered, in the design of this meal delivery service, as technological existing beings in a relationship (the meal itself, or the transport service, are others) whose effect must be “regulated” and “optimized” in the service. We ourselves, let’s be sure, are always seen in the same way as “stakeholders” in devices far broader than those we believe we are dealing with (the best-known example today is that of data collection carried out in the context of one service – information retrieval, etc. – with a view to another service – targeted advertising, etc.).
This is how the process of designing the “device” becomes confused with realizing the device (“Agile” methods, etc.), which in turn becomes confused with operating the device. To use the Simondonian lexicon once again, design, realization and operation are the “phases”, in the sense of possible rather than successive states, of the same “being”: the device, for example, the meal delivery service.
2) User experience
Business has progressively developed a vocabulary and processes that coincide with the wavefront of human/tool hybridization. Products and services have thus been replaced ad nauseam by “user experiences”, an expression that became widespread in the 2010s, more or less simultaneously with the “digitalization” we mentioned in (1) Automation:
These user experiences even have their own definition in the ISO 9241 standard4 :
User experience includes all the users’ emotions, beliefs, preferences, perceptions, physical and psychological responses, behaviors and accomplishments that occur before, during, and after use. The ISO also lists three factors that influence user experience: the system, the user, and the context of use.
Experience understood in this broad sense is based on an “empathetic” approach of the stakeholder, who is no longer a user with a functional or usage relationship with the device, but also with an emotional relationship with it (so the cook must feel proud). This technological mode of empathy is supported by a culture of aphorism, a kind of “algorithm” of emotion, reminiscent of the principles at the heart of Dalio’s Machine, highly prized by the business world. For example5:
Want your users to fall in love with your designs? Fall in love with your users.
3) Personas
A traditional company organized around its product or service according to the usual cycle (idea ➔ plans ➔ production ➔ distribution ➔ use) has little chance of participating in the great game of informatization. It needs to transform itself, and at the very least 1) move, for its employees, from a “simple” demand for know-how to a demand for empathy (which we like to call “technological”), 2) rethink the way it operates in terms of processes, and consequently 3) invent new management methods (see also Companies: changes in the face of complexity).
Take, for example, the proliferation of “Chief [ Something ] Officers” and other more or less exotic titles that flicker on professional social networks like neon lights in a busy street. Beyond the usual explanations linked to the internationalization of jobs or the cultural matrix of Silicon Valley startups, it seems to us that this phenomenon is linked to this peculiar fusion of individuals within the informatized system, who must specify themselves not only by their “know-how-to-do” (in French: “savoir-faire”) but above all by their “know-how-to-produce-an-effect” (“something”) in the technological system, without necessarily specifiable results, what we also call “know-how-to-be” (in French: “savoir-être”).
This is how, for example, the “Chief Trust Officer” (“CTrO”) came into being6:
Fundamentally, the chief trust officer must ensure the integrity of the company in an internet economy where any fault or misstep is known instantly and amplified exponentially by a relentless social media. A company today must ensure its customers can trust the company to make decisions with ethical intent and not only about the quality and value of its products.
Thus, again, appeared the “Chief Listening Officers”, “Chief Happiness Officers” and other “Chief Culture Officers” … All these roles are not massively widespread; they are still unstable, but they bear witness to the need to grasp human characteristics as so many technological parameters to be measured, controlled and therefore “managed”.
4) Mission
As a final illustration, the company must make its “mission” – i.e., its role in the technological system – understood in a new way by everybody: customers, employees, “stakeholders”, etc. It must in fact make a discourse in which this mission is placed in a functional relationship of “user experience” with the system. As we have just seen, the object or the service thus fades into the background, behind the omnipotence of the effect produced, which is no longer local and confined to the human/tool relationship, but which can extend and spread throughout the system-organism “exponentially”. The company’s mission must therefore take on a quasi-holistic dimension.
Finnish company KONE, for example, doesn’t sell elevators but supports the “People Flow Experience”; Microsoft doesn’t sell software but has a mission to “empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more”7; Pinterest isn’t an online image-sharing service but “gives everyone the inspiration to create a life that they love”8; Southwest Airlines doesn’t just sell air travel but “connects People to what’s important in their lives through friendly, reliable, and low-cost air travel”9; Nike doesn’t sell shoes and shorts but “brings inspiration and innovation to every athlete* in the world. *If you have a body, you are an athlete”10; or, finally, Harley Davidson doesn’t sell motorcycles but “more than building machines, we stand for the timeless pursuit of adventure. Freedom for the soul”. Etc. Pure marketing? Not only…
Beyond this rather disconcerting arrogance, we note that the semantic field is not that of the noun, which would designate the classic product-service, but always that of the verb and movement (“flow”, “achieve”, “create”, “connect”, “innovate”, “adventure”…. ), while the human being is generically defined and integrated into these processes without any real ontological singularity, and thus devalued, with terms like “people”, “person”, “everyone”, or by Nike’s implacable syllogism: if you have a body, then you’re an athlete! We will see later how “individualization” overcomes this drawback.
Automation and process
These fairly standard observations are recalled to support a more general idea: the Informatization Age coincides with an “anthropological breach” (perhaps a rather strong term that could be toned down to “cultural breach”) insofar as, in this system that technologically confuses human and non-human beings, everything is a process. For example, not far from the more general “user experience”, “customer experience” is defined as11…
… the totality of cognitive, affective, sensory, and behavioral consumer responses during all stages of the consumption process including pre-purchase, consumption, and post-purchase stages.
The process is the main “object”. But when we say “everything is a process”, we have to specify to what extent. Are we talking about 1) the technological system alone? Or 2) the whole of reality, which would no longer be made primarily of essences, but primarily of events? Indeed, we’re talking about both! The technological system proceeds from this new vision of reality, and vice versa, what we meant earlier by “coincide”.
Before we come to this global breach, we’d like to add a few words about the link between “automation” and “process”, two concepts that seem to go hand in hand. We said in (1) Automation that informatization cannot be understood in itself, but rather as a response to a compelling need, in this case a “need for automation”. A strange expression, really… For no one seems to have a need for “automatic things” in the depths of their being. There are, however, those moments when we say to ourselves in full awareness: I’d like not to have to do this or that myself; I’d like to get rid of this worry… These moments of conscious need (or even desire) for automatic accomplishments indicate that more permanent double human character: a vital drive for appropriation (always more…) combined with a demand for economy of means (… with always less). So, of course, our possible integration into technological processes, i.e., into “automatic things”, presents itself as an absolutely miraculous and irresistible solution.
Thus, the concept of “process”, technically defined as an “a series of actions, changes, or functions bringing about a result”12 appears naturally to support automation: “actions, changes, or functions” in fact emanate from all these technological existing beings which are in informational relationship and the “series” can therefore be carried out automatically, as in the biochemical broth of this new form of life: the informatized technological system.
Process Philosophy
Let’s turn now to the cultural breach we were talking about. The technical definition of process does not do justice to the deeper meaning we wish to emphasize, which is closer to its original Latin meaning (“advance, progress”)13: the “series” itself in the activity of being accomplished, independently of aiming for a “result” or for a completion. The process should then correspond in the language to a pure verb, like the corporate mottos given as an example above, and not simply designate an operation aiming at a result.
Generalizing this process model to all of “reality”, we obtain the so-called “Process Philosophy” or “ontology of becoming”14, which asserts the primacy of event over substance. The Process Philosophy was invented by the English mathematician Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947), best known as the co-author with Bertrand Russell of the famous “Principia Mathematica” (1910-1913). Whitehead indulged in some genuine metaphysical reflection in his masterpiece “Process and Reality”, published in 1929. Before him, processual inspiration had sometimes permeated Western philosophy (let’s remember Heraclitus in the first instance: “On those who step into the same rivers, different and different waters flow” – but also Hegel and his “dialectic”, etc.), and after him, Process Philosophy would be enriched by numerous and highly diverse contributions throughout the 20th century. In France, we might mention the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari (“rhizome” …), Bruno Latour (“actor-network”, “hybrids” …) or Gilbert Simondon (“transindividual” …), etc.
How can we better understand the scope of this metaphysics, which grants primacy to the verb over the noun, to process over substance? Here we take up one of the illustrations presented by the French theologian André Gounelle in a clear presentation of Whitehead’s philosophy (in French…)15. Gounelle compares reality to a play, and essences to characters. So, he says, substantialist philosophy first introduces the characters (the miser, the penniless widow, the young man in love, the matchmaker, the valet…) and then the play brings events to life for them:
Their story is not that of their essence, but about “circumstances”: circum-stare, that which stands around. Events are [ in French ] “péripéties”, from the Greek “to fall around” …
For Process Philosophy, on the contrary, characters are constituted by events and can therefore only be determined at the end of the play:
Their sorrows, their passions, their angers… make them who they are. They are not outside; they are not beside their story. They are their story.
So, the roles of “Chief Listening Officers”, “Chief Happiness Officers” and other “Chief Culture Officers” will become determined at the end of a “play” still in progress. Some won’t survive; others will emerge…
It’s this same reversal that seems to characterize the breach we are observing within the technological system. In the language of Process Philosophy, technological events make us what we are rather than just occur to us. At the end of the play, we’ll know who we are (who we became), but also who are the non-human technological existing beings allied to us: ChatGPT, the autonomous car, the connected watch, the computing cloud, the smart city, the metaverse…
In the meantime, let’s keep talking; something will come of it…
Quantum
Process Philosophy can thus play an important role as a descriptive and interpretative matrix for the Informatization Age. This coincidence is no mere chance. What happened at the turn of the twentieth century to inspire these radical and simultaneous evolutions, both in philosophical thought and in the technological system? Among other things, it was the quantum revolution that turned science and technology on their head, along with our most fundamental representations of reality. This revolution set off a veritable shockwave that spread throughout the twentieth century (no one perceives it as such today, but let’s be sure: it permeates the entire human system).
So, it’s no chance either that Whitehead was a mathematician and, as such, a player in the reinitialization of mathematical thought, but also perfectly aware of the quantum and relativistic revolution. Physicists are also excellent examples of Process Philosophers. Italian physicist Carlo Rovelli, for example16:
In the world described by quantum mechanics there is no reality except in the relations between physical systems. It isn’t things that enter into relations but, rather, relations that ground the notion of “thing”. The world of quantum mechanics is not a world of objects: it is a world of events. Things are built by the happenings of elementary events: as the philosopher Nelson Goodman wrote in the 1950s, in a beautiful phrase, “An object is a monotonous process”.
In other words, our usual objects are actually processes perceived as (relatively) fixed, and therefore named and “ontologized” by nouns, like the Heraclitan river, a flowing process statufied as a “thing”.
Things, words
How can we explain the passage from a long series of hesitant trials to a being summed up in a name? Why do attributes end up lodged in a substance like a flock of pigeons returning to the pigeonhole?17
Substantialism and naturalism (A reading of Philippe Descola) coincided with the development of various technological systems with “substantial holds” on the world. Objects perceived a priori can only be appropriated with other objects crafted a posteriori: tools, of course, but also words, and in particular numbers (The Proof by Googol (1) et (2)). And since this seems to work, wouldn’t this be a kind of proof that reality is indeed substantial and not event-driven? There are two objections to this. Firstly, over the long term, i.e., on the scale of technological ages, it doesn’t work all that well: objects always have a provisional character and end up in the archives, filed alongside our old representations of reality. The second objection, which subsumes the previous one, is that Process Philosophy does not deny the existence of the object, but assigns it a secondary status, derived from the event. Thus, substance (reality seen ultimately as such) and its capture (by the technical system) are constantly codetermining each other.
Strictly speaking, we’d have to call the tools and words we use “technological objects”, in the general sense of artifacts of grasp. But if humans become allied, even fused, with these artifacts (The Mirrors of the “I”), and if at the same time reality comes to be perceived as woven from events or processes, then there is apparently nothing left to grasp. The technological object becomes obsolete, as we are enmeshed in processes that require only a local shell of exchange and translation from the technological existing beings. Ultimately, we could do without words, i.e., language, and simply participate in the automatisms of the new system. Didn’t Elon Musk, in the role of “vassal” (Elon Musk, special vassal), promise that “humans will be able to do without language within 5 to 10 years”? Fortunately, the play is not yet on…
Human system
This Process Metaphysics may seem excessively abstract, and especially useless when it comes to thinking concretely, as suggested in the introduction, about our conditions of existence in the technological system. But to take full advantage of this, to step out of our condition of technological existing being for a moment and “raise” our gaze, we need to associate it with a practice. For the moment, we have nothing more to propose than this first suggestion for “meditation”: stop all “automatic” (involuntary) activity, take the time to observe all the “technological existing beings” around us (chairs, streets, lighting, TVs, fans, smartphones, clothes, human beings…) and then, in a highly unusual gesture, internalize them, incorporating them into ourselves as if they belonged to our essence. It is through this gesture, and after a “long series of hesitant trials” as Bruno Latour put it, that we raise our gaze and, even if the landscape we see is still far from distinct, contours are already appearing. The sketch is as follows.
We need to break with the idea – sometimes supported here, let’s face it – of technology primarily as an environment for the human, and thus with the idea that there is a “techno-system” in the sense proposed by Jacques Ellul (Jacques Ellul and the Technological System). The critical thinking of this philosopher of technology was guided, in the 1950s-1970s, by the observation of the integrating effects of informatization, assembling a dehumanizing “megamachine”. But now, in a kind of dialectical gesture, we have to contrast the idea that, on the contrary, the human being is literally one with the technological system: the megamachine is indeed human, all too human. In fact, we could just as easily call the technological system the “human system”, inseparably made up of human beings and their tools, process substances, subjects and verb complements. Technology does not stand between human beings and “nature”: it is one with them, and it is this whole human system that, becoming an organism, develops in the natural environment as in a biotope.
These human (or technological) systems have come and gone, but informatization has for the first time succeeded in effectively integrating the human being into processes as a technological existing being. More precisely, in the full sense of the Process Philosophy, the human being emerges from technological processes. So, at the same time, we must fully accept this “decline” – after all, when we want automation, we shouldn’t bemoan the fact that we are dominated by technology – and assume full responsibility, both collective and individual, for this system-organism. If our “ontological privilege” remains to be supported, if only morally, then the question remains as to how, especially after we have put an end to all divine transcendence. Unless, for that very reason, we are calling for its return…
5) Individualization
After this necessary “metaphysical” detour, let’s come back for a few moments to the economic activity driving the Informatization Age, and add a fifth observation. Professional social networks, the mecca of personal marketing18, are now being shaped by a new language tinged with Process Philosophy, which we can now better interpret. There are countless examples, like this one that appeared a few days ago in our LinkedIn “process” (emphasis added)19:
In the not-so-distant future, products will no longer be just “things” but intelligent companions that anticipate our needs, adapt to our preferences, and seamlessly integrate into our lives. Tech-enabled products will revolutionize daily experiences, where AI-driven insights, interconnected devices, and personalized features create a world that feels tailor-made for each individual.
This is followed by a demonstration video of Obi, a robotic feeding device that enables elderly or disabled people to eat without (human) assistance.
Three “technological existing beings” collaborating in an automatic feeding process: the eater, the feeder and the eaten.
This “world that feels tailor-made for each individual” obviously cannot be a world of stereotyped objects and uses, but a world where what happens to each person is singular, a world of “experiences”. Experiential individualization thus appears as a “marketing” cover for automation:
So, we “need” automation (to relieve ourselves or to have more with less) while at the same time “needing” to be unique (in order to be recognized). Both these contradictory needs seem to be satisfied in the informatized technological system by this “techno-philosophical” resolution: we are intensely what happens to us at every moment. Technological relief and technological recognition thus remain as ephemeral as the effects of a sedative, re-injected with each new experience. Each of us will appreciate for ourselves the benefits and costs of this new technological existence.
Yin, Yang
As a final recap, we suggest this meditation by mathematician Alexandre Grothendieck20 :
I’m thinking here of the “yang” form of the desire to know – the one that probes, discovers, names what appears… It’s having been named that makes the knowledge that has appeared irreversible, ineffaceable (even though it might later be buried, forgotten, cease to be active…). The “yin”, “feminine” form of the desire for knowledge is in an openness, a receptivity, in a silent welcoming of knowledge appearing in deeper layers of our being, where thought has no access. The appearance of such openness, and of a sudden knowledge that for a time erases all traces of conflict, comes as a grace once again, touching deeply even though its visible effect may be ephemeral. I suspect, however, that this wordless knowledge that comes to us in this way, at certain rare moments in our lives, is just as ineffaceable, and its action continues even beyond the memory we may have of it.
Of course, the “desire to know” is neither the darker “need for automation” nor the clearer “need for recognition”, but it stems from the same vital impulse. Grothendieck recognizes, as a language expert like any mathematician, a tension in this very impulse between the determination of the name-tool of things to be appropriated in a substantial world, which he understands as the “yang” form of the desire to know, and the “yin” form of a “receptivity” to events, of an “openness” as an “ephemeral” and infra-conscious “grace”. If this yin form closely resembles the technological experience of our “tailor-made” world (“where thought has no access”), for Grothendieck it possesses the grace of a rare enlightenment.
The Informatization Age thus presents the features of a (re)appearance of yin, but in a degenerate and specious form. If, then, “the whole backbone of the history of philosophy, and therefore of our age, is the history of the victory of the alpha-yang trait”21 – what we in the modern West call “reason” – it is highly probable that, despite the appearances of a fluid, almost oriental technological system, this trait still dominates.
1. ↑ The term “existing being” is used here in the sense proposed by anthropologist Philippe Descola (A reading of Philippe Descola). Although it’s a little conceptual, we prefer it to “individual”, which implies a few too many things, such as a process of individuation.
2. ↑ (in French) Michel Volle – December 7, 2007 – Prédation et prédateurs (p.134)
3. ↑ Rebecca Linke / MIT Management, Sloan School – September 14, 2017 – Design thinking, explained
4. ↑ Wikipedia – User Experience
5. ↑ Dana Chisnell quoted in Medium
6. ↑ Salvatore Stolfo / Forbes – March 2, 2021 – Make Room For The Chief Trust Officer In The C-Suite
7. ↑ Microsoft – About
8. ↑ Pinterest – Company
9. ↑ Southwest – About
10. ↑ Nike – Mission
11. ↑ Wikipedia – Customer Experience
12. ↑ The Free Dictionary – Process
13. ↑ Latin Dictionary – Processus
14. ↑ Wikipedia – Process philosophy
15. ↑ André Gounelle / YouTube – April 2018 – Make Room For The Chief Trust Officer In The C-Suite
16. ↑ Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy – Alfred North Whitehead
17. ↑ (in French) Bruno Latour / article prepared for Isabelle Stengers (under the supervision of), L’effet Whitehead, Vrin, Paris, pp.196-217. – Les objets ont-ils une histoire ? Rencontre de Pasteur et de Whitehead dans un bain d’acide lactique. – “Comment expliquer le passage d’une longue série d’épreuves hésitantes à un être résumé par un nom ? Pourquoi les attributs finissent-ils par loger dans une substance comme un vol de pigeons de retour au pigeonnier ?”
18. ↑ Users of a network such as LinkedIn will also have noticed that the professional and the (sometimes very) personal are mixed indiscriminately, proving once again that the social network is the “robotic arm” of the human being, an integral technological existence constantly individualizing itself in processes without borders.
19. ↑ V Ray / LinkedIn – July 22, 2023 – Post
20. ↑ (in French) Alexandre Grothendieck / pdf still available on the website of Laboratoire d’informatique de Paris Nord – 1986 – Récoltes et semailles (p.248) – “Je pense ici à la forme « yang » du désir de connaître – celui qui sonde, découvre, nomme ce qui apparaît… C’est d’avoir été nommée qui rend la connaissance apparue irréversible, ineffaçable (alors même qu’elle viendrait par la suite à être enterrée, oubliée, qu’elle cesserait d’être active…). La forme « yin », « féminine » du désir de connaissance est dans une ouverture, une réceptivité, dans un silencieux accueil d’une connaissance apparaissant en des couches plus profondes de notre être, où la pensée n’a pas accès. L’apparition d’une telle ouverture, et d’une connaissance soudaine qui pour un temps efface toute trace de conflit, vient comme une grâce encore, qui touche profond alors que son effet visible est peut-être éphémère. Je soupçonne pourtant que cette connaissance sans paroles qui nous vient ainsi, en certains rares moments de notre vie, est toute aussi ineffaçable, et son action se poursuit au-delà même de la mémoire que nous pouvons en avoir.”
21. ↑ Mathieu Trentesaux / Mumen – May 14, 2021 – Structure de la base de données des ontologies formelle – 3 – “Toute l’ossature de l’histoire de la philosophie et donc de notre époque est l’histoire de la victoire du trait alpha-yang”