http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/jun/19/what-would-thoreau-do/?insrc=toc

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/jun/05/chang-rae-lee-dystopia/?insrc=whc

[...]

he outpouring of ideas is central to The Circle, as it is in part a novel of ideas. What sort of ideas? Ideas about the social construction and deconstruction of privacy, and about the increasing corporate ownership of privacy, and about the effects such ownership may have on the nature of Western democracy. Dissemination of information is power, as the old yellow-journalism newspaper proprietors knew so well. What is withheld can be as potent as what is disclosed, and who can lie publicly and get away with it is determined by gatekeepers: thus, in the Internet age, code-owners have the keys to the kingdom.

Marshall McLuhan was among the first to probe the effects of different kinds of media on our collective consciousness with The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962) and Understanding Media (1964). Even then, before interactive technologies, he pointed out that “the global village” could be an unpleasant and claustrophobic place. As far back as 1835, Toqueville’s Democracy in America predicted the tyranny of public opinion, a tyranny that can be amplified immeasurably via the Internet.

[...]

Publication on social media is in part a performance, as is everything “social” that human beings do; but what happens when that brightly lit arena expands so much that there is no green room in which the mascara can be removed, no cluttered, imperfect back stage where we can be ‘“ourselves”? What happens to us if we must be “on” all the time? Then we’re in the twenty-four-hour glare of the supervised prison. To live entirely in public is a form of solitary confinement.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/jun/19/what-would-thoreau-do/?insrc=toc

Bon, on essaie de ne pas trop mélanger. En espérant que les lecteurs suivront, les lecteurs américains surtout.

Et on en profite pour proposer une rencontre conviviale, en zone internationale européenne, à nos amis américains. Surtout les écrivains et les penseurs. Mais toutes les autres personnes intéressées par le sujet pourront par-ti-ci-per. De quoi pourrions-nous parler? L'âne propose la protection de la jeunesse face à l'électronique et face auX médias anglo-saXons pour commencer. Qui fait quoi? Qui est responsable de quoi? Responsibility to Protect and Duty of Care. Because Justice means something.