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Intervention in Milad Doueihi Cigref . I suggest you explore this interesting analysis of the Canadian historian of religion

Guests of Grand CIGREF as Witness , Milad Doueihi challenges players of Enterprise Digital! His questions help to plant the new decor that is necessary for business leaders today, as society in general. While digital is both a science and a culture that introduced new values, new criteria on our cultural heritage, the company can it keep its business model, its options to create value inherited from the previous crop?

Milad Doueihi, author of "For a digital humanism", philologist and historian, Chair of Digital Culture at the University of Laval in Quebec.

Thank you to CIGREF giving me the opportunity to share with you some thoughts on the digital world. I would like to address this first question: why is it a digital culture?

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It is already thinking about this evolution of our vocabulary, not only French but also in English, the portion was done fairly seamlessly between computers and digital. In English, we went from "computing" to "digital." In French computer, which is still there, to digital. Now, in this semantic evolution, there is a connection with the technicality that is fundamental, essential in the social and cultural dimension of what today's culture and especially digital culture.

We must also remember that computer science is a rather special. It began as a branch of mathematics and has had the power to empower themselves rather quickly, to create its own registry. Once it has established itself as a science with all its rights, it has also become an industry. Only the chemistry that is quite similar in that computer. The sciences are not large industries. Computers and chemistry are the only ones of very large industries. But computing is not just an industry, it is also a culture. Indeed, it has become, by its very nature, accessible to all. It not only changed our lives. Its raw material is available. The code requires a form of skills, but it is accessible to young people as to anyone who is interested.

The digital process of the spirit of geometry to the intuitive mind ...

The first dimension of the transition to digital computer can also be made by taking the thought of Blaise Pascal who theorized about the fact that there are two minds: a mathematical mind and a spirit of finesse. According to Pascal, the spirit of geometry is the mastery of the technical rules. But once it goes to the people, to the people as they said in the 17th century, it becomes the intuitive mind. It seems to me that this mutation between IT and digital, we saw something similar to what Pascal described this passage to the spirit of finesse beyond the spirit of geometry. This is very important because it allows us to say why and how the digital culture.

Of course, we will not enter the Byzantine discussion about a definition of culture. I will take a beautiful phrase of Nietzsche who said that "culture is what changes our view of objects on our news, our heritage." When thinking and considering closely what the digital today, he did just that: it changes our view of heritage. We are currently digitizing our printed heritage, our culture, museums, cultural institutions. At the same time, it produces new objects that did not exist and, in that hybridization between the two, there is emerging a new look. Emergent especially new perspectives on what is both the individual, the individual and the community. In this sense we can think that the digital culture. It is this dimension that gives the first digital that huge cultural weight.

Of the algorithm to sociability ...

Second dimension, digital has achieved something pretty amazing, you know better than me as specialists, IT is a world based on a scientific basis, algorithms. But nevertheless, with a world that is dedicated to forms of regularity, it became a place of great sociability. This tension between normative forms listed and where there is the role of what might be called the "effective use" is the cultural dimension of digital clean. Just look at the current platforms to see that we can not require users to certain types of uses. These are practices that change platforms. It is this dynamic between platforms shaped by ideas received by the imagination of the technique, which simultaneously allows users to change them.

A new local cultural dimension

We are facing the emergence of new criteria. Criteria for both cultural, political, social and economic. We can talk about values ​​that emerge with new practices and uses of digital technology. Beyond the criteria are benchmarks that did not previously exist, except in a rather theoretical, and are now updated. An example, geolocation enables new uses nearby. It created new values ​​for both economic and social even though it existed long before. But with its large-scale deployment in the techniques, especially with the convergence of cellular and conventional network, we see the emergence of new values. In addition there are also, and this is one of the contradictions of today's digital culture, not a conflict but a tension between the global dimension (which is something rooted in a Western English usage associated code and programming languages), but currently receives a trend that will accelerate, use very local. For example, when traveling with the "hidden god" that is Google, each time you land in a country, he insisted to give you the results of research in the language of the region where you are. Try to convince him that he give them to you in another language! Why, because Google has created criteria for relevance in both the near and geolocation. The results of research, with its implications, are articulated in terms of this positioning. 4 years ago, it did not exist.

It is often said that there is a form of homogeneity in the digital culture, but I think we see the return of local cultures. This is an advantage because it will allow a form of coexistence, cohabitation, even if we negotiate between the specificities of both territorial, linguistic, political, social, and a form of continuity which is integrated through the structure or the platforms.

Index to the face ...

There is a very important cultural change today with social networking, what is sometimes called a little faster "sociability digital." We are seeing a transformation of what I call the transition from culture to culture index of the face. The culture of the index, we all know, the list is tabular. It's very simple, a relevance criterion established with the order given to us. The culture of the face, it is not "Facebook" despite his name ... I refer to a beautiful text written by an anthropologist, ethnologist of the 20th century called "the aesthetic value of the face." What he observes is that to understand a different culture, one must look at the face in an arbitrary form of meeting. It takes very classic example of a German who meets a Japanese. Are exchanged between the two eyes and it looks in this cross is that the formation of an idea that expresses the cultural difference and otherness.

Today, with sociability, the role of the image, personalization platforms that exploit the presence of the image in its full extent, is being overcome some difficulties presented by the index. How will we negotiate this change? Which way will it lead to new practices, new values? It remains to be seen.

A mutation of identity

A final cultural dimension to me absolutely essential, is how digital culture has managed to transform our identity and the person itself. We all have different usernames, different accounts devoted to work, family, friends ... But the digital change fairly radical identity. For digital identity is polyphonic in the sense that it is multiple and it is difficult to collect. What is important to remember is that digital identity is constituted as an archive. Why? From the perspective of the computer system, identity is the assembly, the history of the presence on the network. It is this aggregate which constitutes the personality. You may have noticed, for example if you order a book on an online platform, as I experienced: I wanted to offer a book on the gardens of the desert to a person who was s' installed in the desert. For months I got to offers of gardening books of the desert because the algorithm decided that was what interested me! We must convince him to move. We can retain the notion of traceability extreme digital identity. With traceability, there are problems, but also the promises in terms of the private security. There is also a concept that did not exist before, it is the measurability of identity.

The identity was something of quality, it has become measurable. We see here something decisive. In France and in Europe since the 18th century, the state introduced the measure in all its functions, but now we are currently building measures that affect the identity of almost intimate. This change in an amazing way within our presence in the digital world. It is in these transformations of identity and constructions found through measurement and traceability, how the digital culture is truly unique.

Has the student surpassed the master?

Digital is very misleading in my opinion. He began by trying to imitate, copy it very familiar and well known. Just remember the first web pages, which are still called "pages", because there is something that we take a lot (especially in France) called the book ...

Today, digital is going to be empowered, to free themselves from this legacy which we are familiar. It is now imposing, which is very interesting because liability issues become central to impose its own records and benchmarks. This is the real dimension of civilization and culture that is digital.

Milad Doueihi, our guest tonight, for two years with us in our reflections on what will be tomorrow's digital world and what may be the company in this world. Milad Doueihi someone is amazing in many respects. He is a historian of religion in the modern West. He is the Chair of the Digital Cultures at the University of Laval in Quebec, that chair has been created recently and CIGREF supports. It is also the author of numerous books including the latest on the very significant changes in society and civilizations in this digital world. Including that which marked a milestone in the history of CIGREF "the big digital conversion," because he inspired us a lot. It now comes his new book "For a digital humanism" that guides our thinking tonight.