To conclude this third volume of the series “Computing and Connected Society”, some perspectives on the hyperconnectivity situation will be presented. It seems useful, before addressing them, to return very briefly to the context and the main results of the analysis carried out so far.
After telematics (1970–1980) and the information superhighway (1990–2000), society as a whole is confronted with a third wave of social computerization, the digitization of society, which this time is massive and based on a communication system with platforms and social networks acting as pivots. The digitization of society refers to a global and transversal process, affecting all areas, sectors, socio-professional categories, work and home and each individual and at the heart of the most private and intimate relationships.
The creation of an offer accompanied by diversified services has contributed to a globalization of connection, to the diffusion of content by communication companies who hold a quasi-monopoly today and have enabled the United States of America to establish their hegemony. The importance of users, hundreds of millions of people, sometimes billions, depending on the applications, is at the heart of the strategies at work. The diffusion of uses on a planetary scale and their abundance cannot be understood without taking into account three main and unavoidable characteristics which mix business model and uses, thus forging an economy of hyperconnectivity, namely:
This socioeconomic model of “hyperconnectivity” generates a production, a display of the self, a visibility of singularities and an unsuspected circulation of data, while promoting unparalleled monitoring and diffuse social control. In the configuration studied, the government, being itself engaged, accompanies the digital economy which imposes the conditions of hyperconnectivity injunction, allowing the longevity of this socioeconomic model. Without this frantic global hyperconnectivity, the system could not optimally function or expand. Thus, free access for the user, its counterpart, advertising and sale of data, and the mode of activation by intense solicitations favor this connection, which in return leaves more traces and personal behavioral data. As freedom of expression, action, publication and exchange extends, social control extends with it by feeding on traces, often unbeknownst to users, of the content they left through Internet connection, through navigation and the willingness to voluntarily expose themselves. Given the importance acquired by these devices in relational, communicational or social practices, the concept of negotiated renunciation is a contribution to analyze the issues of hyperconnectivity. It makes it possible to understand that at every moment, the user must make choices between acceptance and subordination to obtain access to free services in return for having their data traced in order to feed the value chain relating to relational practices which are monitored, calculated and exploited by communication companies. For them, algorithmic innovations are a solution to identify and prescribe the uses, allowing the reinstation of a media diffusion, in contradiction with the first conception of decentralized networks based on the double TCP-IP protocol and the values of sharing and exchange. Let us not forget the neo-liberal inscription of this societal orientation, favoring empowerment, personalized staging and importing the entrepreneurial model in every activity, forcing people to stand out, to distinguish themselves and to compare themselves. This non-stop hyperconnectivity has a direct consequence which is too often and perhaps deliberately discarded or ignored in the name of a growing dematerialization of exchanges1. It impacts energy consumption more and more, which generates the production of carbon dioxide (CO2) and greenhouse gases (GHGs), sources of global warming and climate change.
A question arises: what could happen to this model of hyperconnectivity that seems too unsustainable, although it continues to expand and enlist more users? To try to answer this question, we propose some reflections around three dialectical perspectives: emancipation – technological, social and economic subordination; exhaustion of the free model – reconfiguration; and energy bomb – climatic impasse.
As seen previously, users have to deal with massive data flows as part of the process of contemporary digital appropriation, leading to the need to benefit from prescriptions and recommendations in order to identify themselves and continue their network activities. Thus, they are ready to accept algorithms that trace their uses, in a negotiated renunciation. Let us now attend to a new form of dissemination, one that is less new, that would hide its marks to maintain the user experience and generate social innovations to exploit. We would be faced with a form of limited subordination by voluntary renunciation. The lure is at its peak when users and distributors come together to produce services and goods, making up the business model, allowing the very existence of “pure player” companies or giants of the communication industry. Users would be both hostages and protagonists of developments in the economic value of social activities. The citizen-consumer user, who is valued in these network and media environments, can then abandon the debate around these by seizing them, in favor of bringing economic, cultural globalization up to standard, even instrumentalizing social activities for commercial purposes. As a result, users of digital networks would not emancipate themselves, while domination would persist. While reproducing the context in which uses evolve, they would be part of an ecosystem of domination in which power and influence would prevail, losing the opportunity to deploy digital technologies with emancipation as a goal. However, freedom of action persists, since renunciation is not alienation, and the situation tends to open to a contemporary subordination to hyperconnectivity’s injunctions of domination.
Another perspective that can be evoked is that without waiting for the intervention of regulatory bodies emanating from public authorities or professional regulatory authorities, forms of resistance are organized. Exasperated by the practices developed by communication industrialists, some users want to protect themselves (like in a consistent way in Germany and Scandinavia) against untimely investigations in their privacy by configuring their browser as much as possible to no longer be “tracked” or by installing ad blockers, software meant to prevent the display of invasive advertising (bear in mind that in order to increase their revenues, more and more websites tend to give priority to displaying advertisements on the content itself), disrupting the economy of advertising space sales, but also the value creation and marketing of personal data recovered and then sold. Others limit2 cookies as much as possible, moving to anonymous networks like Tor, or using alternative hosts, social networks and search engines, whose business model is based on revenues expected from sponsored links, but these are not displayed, according to them, by associating query and user profile. The tendency of this practice to expand and strengthen itself could disrupt the current socioeconomic model, unless industrialists and advertisers find solutions as the following examples seem to indicate. Indeed, faced with the decline in advertising revenue generated by these practices, communication industrialists retaliate by offering ad blocking software, but these are affiliated with advertising groups, allowing only the display of their own advertisements, and other publishers of ad blocking software accept, for a fee, to let “acceptable” ads (on a white list) through. Some sites force the user to disable their ad blocker software if they want to view their webpage content. This is unless the offered strategy is based on a differentiated offer combining a freemium offer, with free access, but with various restrictions (of features, access, etc.) or if they encourage users to purchase a paid version, a premium offer with a higher added value through paid access.
Despite the search for better equipment efficiency and energy control policies, the extent and intensity of this hyperconnectivity, in full growth, largely annihilates the expected energy gains. As for the rebound effect, it participates more and more, contrary to what was hoped, to the increase in energy consumption. Let us not forget the importance taken by 4G and soon 5G in the field of telephony and mobile Internet, and the use of video by advertisers which is very energy-intensive in terms of bandwidth, all of which increase the digital weight of exchanges, requiring significant electrical energy, and an increase in consumption. What seems most important to remember is the massive development of Internet access and therefore the increasing share of users in areas that are still little or not concerned today. The demographic shock associated with the multiplication and the intensity of uses would favor tomorrow’s energy bomb which would have three consequences: the multiplication of electrical production sites, the inequitable distribution of capacity and electric power and the use of fossil fuels generating CO2 and greenhouse gases, sources of global warming. We are in this area at best before a climatic impasse, at worst before even stronger harm is done to the climate. For some people, nuclear energy seems to be an essential element in the fight against global warming, since this energy source can lower the level of fossil fuels. However, because of the inherent risks of this means of electricity production, the extreme difficulty in storing radioactive waste for hundreds or even thousands of years, the vast majority of countries gave up this energy, also due to the colossal costs for constructing and dismantling nuclear plants. This element is to be linked to the continuous price drop of renewable energies (photovoltaic and wind). For example, in India, where the use of DICT is increasingly important, solar power production (photovoltaic panels) is more competitive than producing electricity with coal. Unfortunately, the deployment of renewable energy is much too slow. As a result, the increase in electricity capacity for the use of DICT greatly depends on fossil carbon energy, coal and, to a lesser extent, other energy sources, such as oil and gas. Also, 77% of electricity in this country comes from coal. Keep in mind that because of significant losses between primary energy (before the transformation of raw materials into energy), its transportation and the consumption of final energy, only a quarter of the electric energy produced can be truly consumed. It is therefore necessary to produce a lot and to pollute in order to consume this energy. As for some countries, turning to gas for electricity production is not much better since its contribution to global warming would be much higher than the IPCC estimated3. Thus, efforts to reduce CO2 emissions could be canceled in the absence of methane (CH4) reduction4.
We have just proposed an analysis of the economic, social and environmental issues of hyperconnectivity. After a socio-historic approach developed in volume 1 by André Vitalis to address the computerization of society, the second volume allowed Laurent Gayard to address the darknet in a geopolitical dimension. This third volume discussed the consequences of hyperconnectivity, industrialization and the commodification of social interactions. We hope to continue the work in the “Computers and Connected Society” series with the subject of legal issues.