Body-to-body
French Sci-Fi author Alain Damasio explores a new battlefield: that of the human body, disrupted by the technological vision of Silicon Valley.
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If one wants to understand social networks - people who interact with other people, voluntarily or not, through technology - one must now seriously consider the physicality of their members. The body is a stake from both the perspective of its representations and social activities, and even of the heritage that will be transmitted in the end. Encore!
Alain Damasio, in his latest book "Vallée du silicium", describes the impact of technology on the relationship with the body and consequently on our human relationships. A striking insight to understand the world we are entering.
Damasio's four bodies
For the author, the "first body" is the one lived, which feels, which is made of bacteria, blood. "It merges with our spirit, our brain, our language centers." This body is that of the immediate, the sensitive. It gets sick, it can feel tired. It also ages. This body would be increasingly disinvested as a concept. In his essay Western Attitudes towards Death from the Middle Ages to the Present Philippe Ariès already revealed how we gradually moved from familiar or "tamed" death in the Middle Ages to "forbidden" death, a true taboo in contemporary societies. Technology and Silicon Valley would therefore make this declining body even more unacceptable. A vision that echoes the more than controversial speeches of figures like Bryan Johnson or with huge investments in startups promising a form of eternal life.
The "rebody"'(raccorps in French) is the body that is monitored, interfaced for Alain Damasio. "It is detached from oneself to come and serve as a wrap or as an isothermal combination over the first body, a sort of digital burqa." Interface-body, if we want to feel it again, we must measure it. A connected watch will tell us how we slept. It's the device that allows a person to reclaim their body. We lose a form of direct perception. "It is technology that incorporates itself and it is the body that is solicited to be able to simulate reality around it." Apple's Vision Pro plays with the synesthetic capacities of our brain. By artifice, we will develop new incarnations of our beings. Both enhanced (being able to fly over a forest made of lines of code) and restricted (stumbling in your living room and not smelling the scent of trees or air). This rebody poses enormous societal questions, notably on activities that are now very intermediated (work, romantic encounters...). Or even the evaluation we make of other humans (in China, "social credit" is already in place).
The "decobody"(décorps in French). The result of four centuries of hygienist society, "flesh and scent have fled matter for (...) the light of optical fibers." The purpose of this decobody: to leave the first body intact, to sanctify it. Even if it means abandoning it completely in favor of an audiovisual life in sum.
On the contrary, the "rebodily"(accorps in French) is the resistance of our body - and in a certain way of our humanity - to the pervasive impact of technology in our lives. "It insists, yes, the vivid, in us. Through desire, through anger, through suffering." A chaos that rejects technological perfusion and that leads Damasio to bring back the living, the visceral, in short, a human with his passions, his mistakes, his pitfalls.
Humanity wants more
Alain Damasio's reading is fascinating (and absolutely vital to understand the next 20 years). While we barely dare to legislate on fake news, and timidly start asking for accountability from TikTok & co, the market is already delving deeper into sacred territories: the biological, the possible futures from birth, the relationship with the other.
However, humanity is rebelling and not only thanks to its sad passions or its vices. The "rebodily", to use Damasio's term, explodes in various ways, to recreate a good living. A few examples in bulk:
Gen Z are leaving dating apps and returning to them more out of default than true enthusiasm. It's probably the return of the magic of discovery. In Singapore, the Rave scene is not only a place of freedom for subcultures but also for families like the Kampong Kids. Moreover, the first thing organized in totalitarian regimes is the secret party, a moment of struggle and heart renewal.
In China, on the occasion of Qingming (the "Tomb Sweeping Day"), the cosmetics brand DOCUMENTS released a conch-shaped incense burner, which plays with the sound of the sea; a sound that reveals itself when you put a seashell close to your ear. A very real, tangible childhood memory that is hugely successful among Chinese social media users, between a non-technological ritual, a time of meditation and reflection, and a possibility if desired to share this experience online.
Good living is undoubtedly the best counter-power to technology that is too invasive. Digital liveness - the quality or state of being alive - inherently contains this notion of qualifying the type of existence we want to lead with technology.
Figure of the week: 41%
In Brazil, 41% of citizens fear a decrease in human interactions according to CX Trends 2024. A ever-increasing vigilance on what we lose vs what we gain with digital uses.
Amazing links
At DIRT (excellent resource recommended by
), it is reminded that writers and artists are decimated not primarily by artificial intelligence but by rising rents.On the Nieman Reports side, Vincent Bolloré is analyzed as well as his impact on political discourse in France.
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