Collective Quality. How to design collective standards of knowledge?

Submitted draft. Do not quote without permission.

La barre de platine-iridium utilisée comme prototype du mètre de 1889 à 1960

Knowledge is a common good. A tiny part of our knowledge of the world is generated by our own personal experience. Relying on others is one of the most fundamental ways to acquire knowledge, not only about the external world, but also about who we are, (for instance about when and where we were born). To use Mary Douglas striking metaphor: “Our colonisation of each others’ minds is the price we pay for thought”.[1]

The collective dimension of knowledge is acknowledged in almost every field of thought these days, from the optimistic forecasts on the power of collective intelligence made by James Surowiecki[2], to the debate on the social dimension of knowledge within recent sociology of science and social epistemology[3]. Everybody seems to accept the blatant truth that without the import of other people’s beliefs our cognitive life wouldn’t be much different than that of animals. Yet, what is surprising in this debate is that the collective dimension of knowledge has been put forward to argue in favor of very different conceptions of the objectivity and the standards of quality of knowledge. On the one hand, within the so-called Big-Science debate, the collective dimension of scientific work is considered the ingredient that guarantees the objectivity of that form of high-quality beliefs we name science. On the other hand, the same social dimension has been used to argue against the high-quality standards of scientific method, for a more realistic view of common knowledge[4] empowered by the wisdom of the many that can overthrown the authority of the experts.

Generations of scientists have been raised in the dogma of the impersonality and collectivity of the scientific work, against a classical view inherited from the Scientific Revolution of the scientist as an isolated genius. To mention one of the most influential defenses of the collective view of science, in his famous essay on Little Science, Big Science, which laid the foundations of the contemporary scientometrics, Derek de Solla Price writes that the social nature of collaborative work in the Big Science is the only guarantee of objectivity: scientists do not base their results on their personal qualities, like artists do: scientists are interchangeable because what they do is to apply a collectively shared method of investigation of nature that has nothing to do with their own personal identity. As the zoologist J. R. Baker put it: “If Mozart had not composed that immortal work of genius, the ouverture to Le nozze di Figaro, no one else would have done so; but if Kekulé had not lived, structural formulae and the benzene ring would not have remained forever hidden: someone else would eventually have dreamed the same dreams”.[5]

Thus, according to this view, science is objective because is collective, it is a collective game of peers who scrutinize each other impersonally by applying a shared scientific method that is the Norm of Quality of our knowledge.

But, as I said, this view contrasts with a more recent view of the collective construction of knowledge, in which the standards and norms of scientific method are replaced by the rules of aggregation of lay judgments[6].

Both approaches insist on the equation: collective = objective: to achieve an objective result, that is not too biased by personal points of views, we must be many, no matter if laymen or experts. Knowledge is objective insofar as it is impersonal, disembodied, unvarnished from any singularity and subjective wisdom.

Take for example what Clay Shirky says in his last book on the power of social networks: “We are so natively good at group effort that we often factor groups out of our thinking about the world. Many jobs that we regard as the province of a single mind actually require a crowd. Michelangelo had assistants paint part of the Sistine chapel ceiling. Thomas Edison, who had over a thousand patents in his name, managed a staff of two dozens. Even writing a book, a famously solitary pursuit, involves the work of editors, publishers, and designers. Even if we exclude groups that are just labels for shared characteristics (tall people, redheads), almost everyone belongs to multiple groups based on family, friends, work, religious affiliation, on and on. The centrality of group effort to human life means that anything that changes the way groups function will have profound ramifications for everything”[7].

Thus collectivity is everything today, and knowledge seems to be a product of collective effort. Yes, but if it is so, then where do the standards of our knowledge come from? When a group is able to work out a right answer or an accurate prediction, on the basis of what do we judge that the answer or the prediction is the right one? Either we knew already that it was the right one, or it is just a posteriori verification that can guarantee the truth and the objectivity of the conclusion. In the case of science, even if it is now a truism to acknowledge the collective aspect of the scientific enterprise, the objectivity of the results doesn’t come from the collective dimension, but from the reliability of the method. A hypothetic-deductive method for inferring the theorems from the axioms of a theory, an experimental, statistical method, are the fruit of a long filtering of ideas, collective or singular, that have distilled through centuries the “right” way measure reality and make predictive models of its future possible states. Science is collective because our trust in scientific method is shared almost universally: that is why the same experiment can be replicated at the antipodes of the world and the results compared. But method is not intrinsically collective.

When we come to the more debatable case of knowledge out of aggregation rules of lay judgments, the question of objectivity becomes even harder. How do we judge reliable and true a result that comes from a collective aggregation of individual opinions? How do we know that our Google search for a certain keyword will end up displaying the “best” information available on that keyword? We know it out of personal experience: after many trials with Google searches, we have come out with the conclusion that the information Google is able to provide at the top of its results for a certain search is good enough to be believed. But we do not have independent means of granting this knowledge on the fact that it has been collectively produced.

In his provocative article on the end of scientific method, Chris Anderson simply states that we can live in a groundless world of good matches of statistic data without caring too much about method: “Google's founding philosophy is that we don't know why this page is better than that one: If the statistics of incoming links say it is, that's good enough. No semantic or causal analysis is required. That's why Google can translate languages without actually "knowing" them (given equal corpus data, Google can translate Klingon into Farsi as easily as it can translate French into German). And why it can match ads to content without any knowledge or assumptions about the ads or the content. Speaking at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference this past March, Peter Norvig, Google's research director, offered an update to George Box's maxim: "All models are wrong, and increasingly you can succeed without them."”[8]

So, collectivity in this second sense, of simple aggregation of data or lay opinions is replacing the collective enterprise of science, based on the centrality and robustness of method. But the problem remains: where do the collective standards of quality come from? When I check the grammaticality of an expression by inserting it into Google, I trust the answer that has the largest number of results: for example, I have checked the English spelling for the word “acknowledgment” while I was hesitating between two spellings: acknowledgment and aknowledgment: given that the first for gave me 11 300 000 results while the second one only 34 300, I have opted for the first one. Of course, I was right this time, but why? Is it just a matter of “epistemic luck” or do I have any ground for believing this result? The only ground the people have is obviously previous experience: you have used Google many times, you know that it is reliable as a spelling checker because you have independent ways of controlling its reliability, like the spelling checker or your own word processor, or other written authoritative sources (like a dictionary). But is it enough to ground our knowledge? And when your independent control of the results you obtained on Google should stop? Is the “good enough” epistemic strategy good enough?

In the rest of this chapter, I would like to argue that in a collective world of knowledge the problem of the standards of quality remains and is even harder than within the classical image of science. What is the “right” quality standard for an item? What is quality, and how to filter a common standard of quality if we aggregate in a decentralized way the opinions, tastes and biases of very different people? That is a classical philosophical question that concerned philosophers such as David Hume, who writes in his famous essay Of the Standard of Taste:

“The great variety of Taste, as well as of opinion, which prevails in the world, is too obvious not to have fallen under every one’s observation. Men of the most confined knowledge are able to remark a difference of taste in the narrow circle of their acquaintance, even where the persons have been educated under the same government, and have early imbibed the same prejudices. But those, who can enlarge their view to contemplate distant nations and remote ages, are still more surprised at the great inconsistence and contrariety. We are apt to call barbarous whatever departs widely from our own taste and apprehension: But soon find the epithet of reproach retorted on us”.[9]

Standards of quality thus change, and each human being can cultivate his or her own idea of what is good and what is bad without harmonize it with the others. In his essay, Hume’s target was aesthetic taste and its subjective dimension and how common standards can rise and stabilize: his solution was to appeal to the experts, the connoisseurs, those whose expertise can be a guide for the others:
“ It is natural for us to seek a Standard of Taste, a rule by which the various sentiments of men may be reconciled; at least, a decision, afforded, confirming one sentiment, and condemning another.” In order to achieve this, human beings have to appeal to connoisseurs, men with special qualities:
“Strong sense, united to delicate sentiment, improved by practice, perfected by comparison, and cleared of all prejudice, can alone entitle critics to this valuable character; and the joint verdict of such, wherever they are to be found, is the true standard of taste and beauty” […] Though men of delicate taste be rare, they are easily to be distinguished in society, by the soundness of their understanding and the superiority of their faculties above the rest of mankind. The ascendant, which they acquire, gives a prevalence to that lively approbation, with which they receive any productions of genius, and renders it generally predominant. Many men, when left to themselves, have but a faint and dubious perception of beauty, who yet are capable of relishing any fine stroke, which is pointed out to them.”[10]

But the appeal to the authority of wise men outside the aesthetic domain doesn’t seem to fit the rhetoric of the Modern Age and the Scientific Revolution according to which the quest of knowledge has to be based on collectively controllable experimental method and not on the authority of the elder masters. Indeed, there are many domains outside of aesthetics in which standards of quality matter and we don’t want them to be produced by the discretionary power of an authority. Quality is not just a matter of taste when we look for standards of epistemic quality, that is, the quality of knowledge we may acquire, or food quality, that is, not only the good or bad taste of food that we ingest, but the quality of its standards of eatability. Also, industrial production quality control procedures cannot be the result of the appeal to an authority, as well as life parameters, like the minimum wage, should be based on collectively agreed standards.

The need of an objective notion of quality raises many questions that I will try to tackle in the rest of this chapter:

· Is it possible to get rid of a normative notion of quality and rely only on mechanisms of aggregation of lay judgments?

· How is a collective standard of quality constructed and maintained in a culture?

· Are there “better” and “worse” systems of quality assessment?

My point is that quality is an intrinsic normative notion that doesn’t make it less “objective”. It is a normative notion based on the historical records of an item, i.e. its reputation in a community. “Quality” as a term has always been employed with reference to a scale of value. In philosophy the “quality” of an item is an attribute of the item that makes it fit into a certain category. The activities of categorizing items and that of ranking are thus intrinsically dependent one on the other. Cultures produce rankings of quality standards, ratings of items because this is the way of making sense of the world outside us, of sorting things in order to make them fit into a certain category. I will claim that quality is a normative notion insofar as it is a standard that is constructed within a particular tradition. What is a tradition? Traditions are evaluated taxonomies and rankings that are selected and stabilized in a culture by many different “forces”:

· Institutions: public structures whose aim is to assure the coordination and maintenance of a collectivity.

· “Sacred values”: those values in a culture that are deeply related to its identity and are hard to question or change.

· Functionality: those aspects of traditions that are socially functional and help to accomplish socially coordinated tasks.

· Problem-solving: traditional cultural artifacts are ways of solving practical problems of information sharing and productivity.

· Biases: tendencies of a culture to reinforce in a particular direction a value or a position in a ranking. For example, a culture may give a special weight to literacy because of the intrinsic value that this represents in its development.

Thus, standards of quality come from the collectively evaluated corpus of knowledge and practices that we call tradition. We trust a tradition because it imposes on our way of seeing reality a ranking, a system of evaluation that orients us in our acquisition of information.

Let me introduce an example of a cultural artifact that is maintained and sustained as a fundamental part of our tradition by many of the various forces I have mentioned above: writing. Writing is a cultural technique that introduced at the end of the 4th millennium BCE in Mesopotamia as a device for external memory that makes possible the reorganization of intellectual life and the structuring of thoughts, neither of which are possible in oral cultures. With the introduction of writing, one part of our cognition “leaves” the brain to be distributed among external supports. The visual representation of a society’s knowledge makes it possible to both reorganize the knowledge in a more useful, more ‘logical’, way by using, for example, lists, tables, or genealogical trees, and to solidify it from one generation to the next. What’s more, the birth of “managerial” casts who oversee cultural memory, such as scribes, astrologists, and librarians, makes possible the organization of meta-memory, that is, the set of processes for accessing and recovering cultural memory. Printing, introduced to our culture at the end of the 15th century, redistributes cultural memory, changing the configuration of the “informational pyramid” in the diffusion of knowledge. Writing, among other functions, helps us to categorize our past history. But why in the modern era of printing and the contemporary era of computers and Internet hand-writing is still so reinforced in school programs? That is because it is stabilized by many forces: schools, “sacred values” against illiteracy, and functionality. Even if hand-writing is a very complex graphical technique that is no more “functional” to acquiring writing skills (typing is enough in many contexts) other forces such as “sacred values” maintain handwriting in our school programs. Our illiterate past is still too close to give up to the sacred value of writing, even if its functional role is reducing thanks to new technologies.

Here I would like to make a more general point about the role of past evaluations and preferences in filtering information. I’ll start with a parallel with some famous remarks Edmund Burke wrote about the importance of traditions. Burke was suspicious of revolutions because they risked to wipe out centuries of tradition, that is, of patiently collected and selected values, judgements and preferences refined throughout the ages. And this process of refinement is for Burke the essence of civilisation, of this thick cultural lore of judgements, values and opinions that penetrates into our minds through education and socialization and constitutes the necessary background of any form of wise thought. If we do not take into account the lore of traditions, we are condemned for Burke to reinvent the wheel at each generation. Our capacity of thinking the world and the institutions around us is much more limited without the contribution of the preferences already aggregated in the past by others. As he says:

« We are afraid to put men to live and trade each on his own private stock of reason; because we suspect that this stock in each man is small, and that the individuals would do better to avail themselves of the general bank and capital of nations, and of ages »[11]

Burke was politically wrong but, in some sense, epistemically right: there is something true in his reactionary remarks, even if their application to the analysis of the French Revolution is wrong for many reasons. One reason why his claims on revolutions are unacceptable today is that obviously not all traditions are worth preserving: the institutional biases and the social pressures that make a political tradition survive may be so wrong and oriented to defend the privileges of just one social class, that it is sometimes wiser to entrust a new generation to rethink the whole institutional design of a society from scratch. But, from an epistemic point of view, he captures the intuition that it is almost impossible to think from scratch, to know from scratch, without taking into account the lore of others’ preferences and values as it is filtered by a culture. This is an important epistemological point that evokes a similar, epistemological idea expressed by W.V.O. Quine in a famous article on his mentor, Rudolph Carnap: “The lore of our fathers is a fabric of sentences. In our hands it develops and changes, through more or less arbitrary and deliberate revisions and additions of our own […] It is a pale gray lore, black with fact and white with convention. But I have found no substantial reasons for concluding that there are any quite black threads in it, or any white ones.”[12] That is, the lore of a tradition, even of a scientific tradition, doesn’t transmit just a bunch of facts from a generation to another, but a sophisticated ensemble of judgements and conventions that shape the way facts will be extracted and classified in a given culture at a given time.

Preferences, conventions and values that others have expressed thus play a critical role in the making of collective wisdom: they shape the reputational landscape that we use to organize our own heuristics to extract information and provide a - sometimes reliable and sometimes too biased - shortcut to what is worth keeping, remembering and preserving as knowledge. The epistemological enquiry to collective wisdom I am advocating here implies that reputation and rating systems are an essential ingredient of collective processes of knowledge: their cognitive role in extracting information doesn’t depend on the intrusion of social factors than are external to the epistemological process, as many have argued. Reputation is a rational criterion of information extraction, a fundamental shortcut for cumulating knowledge in processes of collective wisdom and an ineludible filter to access facts. In my view, in an information-dense environment, where sources are in constant competition to get attention and the option of the direct verification of the information is simply not available at reasonable costs, evaluation and rankings are epistemic tools and cognitive practices that provide an inevitable shortcut to information. This is especially striking in contemporary informationally-overloaded societies, but I think it is a permanent feature of any extraction of information from a corpus of knowledge. There is no ideal knowledge that we can adjudicate without the access to previous evaluations and adjudications of others. No Robinson Crusoe’s minds that investigate and manipulate the world in a perfect solitude.

Thus, the standards of quality of collective knowledge are produced by a weighted incorporation in the production of our singular judgments of values filtered through time. That is what gives authority to a collectively produced piece of knowledge: we trust the wisdom not only of our contemporary crowd, but also of the past crowds who contributed to the crystallization of a tradition. This doesn’t mean that we are passive receivers of the authority of a tradition: traditions are indicators of value, they point to the proxies [13]that allow us to orient ourselves in a space of knowledge we do not yet master. When we enter a new domain of knowledge or a new cultural corpus we acquire the “taste” of the authorities in the domain in order to orient ourselves (the “you have to like this” effect). Who are the “good” and who are the “bad”? This is the way in which a canon is constructed. Then, the more we become autonomous thinkers, we challenge these traditions, participate to transform them and create new canons. It’s a salient feature of our contemporary knowledge world, so saturated of information, that different canons bloom, they rise and collapse in a much shorter period than it used to be before the advent of the decentralized society of information. That is, quality commons are structured in received traditions that are learned and amended from one generation to another.

Collective knowledge is presented today as a form of empowerment that frees us from the deference to experts and authorities. Nevertheless, as I have tried to argue here, experts and authorities have never been so present and influent in producing knowledge as a common achievement. Even is the impersonal game of science, as Steven Shapin has recently argued: “people and their virtues have always been pertinent to the making, maintenance, transmission and authority of knowledge”[14]. And even more in the aggregation of lay judgments, we must not forget that these lay judgments are based on received views and trust in authorities and traditions that do not come out of the blue. The power of collective knowledge is thus to articulate in a new way our trust in the transmitted authoritative views with the possibility of instantaneously sharing these values with others, thus amending these traditions and making them evolve more rapidly.

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[1] M. Douglas (1975) Implicit Meanings, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

[2] J. Surowiecki (2004) The Wisdom of Crowds, New York: Random House.

[3] S. Shapin (2008) The Scientific Life, Chicago : Chicago University Press; A. Goldman (1999) Knowledge in a Social World, New York : Oxford University Press.

[4] R. Hardin (2009) How Do You Know? Princeton: Princeton University Press.

[5] Cf. J. Baker (1943) The Scientific Life, New York: Mac Millan, pp. 36-37, quoted in Shapin (2008) cit. p. 9.

[6] See for example C. Anderson (2009) “The End of Methods” Wired.

[7] Cf. C. Shirky (2008) Here Comes Everybody, New York, Penguin, p. 16.

[8] Cf. C. Anderson, cit.

[9] Cf. D. Hume (1757) “Of the Standard of Taste”, originally published in his Four Dissertations.

[10] Cf. D. Hume, cit. § 6; 27.

[11] Cf. E. Burke (1790) Reflections on the Revolution in France, in E. Burke, Works, London, 1867.

[12] Cf. W. V. O. Quine (1954) « Carnap and Logical Truth » reprinted in W. V. O. Quine (1961) The Ways of Paradox and Other Essays, Harvard UP, Cambridge, MA.

[13] For the notions of indicator and proxies see K. Davis, B. Kingsbury, S. Engle Marry (2010) “Indicators as a Technology of Global Governance”, IILJ Working Paper 2010/2, New York University School of Law; G. Origgi (2008) “Un certain regard. Pour une épistémologie de la reputation”, Rome. Workshop on Reputation. April 19-22.

[14] Cf. S. Shapin (2008) The Scientific Life, Chicago University Press, p.4.

Reply to Jason Stanley's The Crisis of Philosophy

What surprises me of Jason Stanley's interesting article on Inside Higher Ed is that he starts with a long complaint about the fact that philosophers don’t matter anymore, they are marginalized, not invited at cocktail parties, ignored by artists, intellectuals and politicians and doesn’t give any solution about our possible re-integration in the civilized world outside there. He seems to conclude that, ok, that’s it, philosopher’s role is to talk about the meaning of fundamental concepts, it has always been difficult and hard to understand for the general public and it is going to be so in the future.

He then mentions the Vienna Circle as responsible of having introduced such a “dry” method of reasoning and inquiry about the grounds of our knowledge. That was sad but necessary. As a caveat, he adds that these were civilized people nonetheless, with sporadic contacts with the Bauhaus movement. But he forgets to mention that Logical Positivism was also a deeply political and ideological movement whose aim was to have an autonomous grip on truth that was not controlled by politics and institutional ideologies. In this perspective, the spirit of the Vienna Circle was not so different from that of Frankfurt School, another independent and privately funded institution whose aim, 15 years later, was to assure a critical stance towards society and power. Both were aware of the critical role of intellectuals towards power, both endorsed the moral responsibility of taking a different stance vis-à-vis the world they were living in and fight for better standards of knowledge and understanding.

I think that this stance is what any responsible thinker today, philosopher or not, has to take in front of our world: a vigilant stance that doesn’t accept the received view about how things are, but fights for better epistemic and moral standards of inquiry. What I find irresponsible today in philosophy is not the fact the people use abstruse arguments, but that they use them just for the happy or unhappy few crowd they use to meet at summer workshops in nice locations in which they spend their holidays without any thought, any insight about the possible impact of their words and ways of conceiving reality on the society of knowledge that dominates our lives today.

An epistemic vigilant attitude, a bias for hard work in getting things right, is what distinguishes us from other disciplines and what makes us proud of being intellectuals in this world. Without this attitude, without a capacity to evaluate the impact of a more fine-grained analysis of a concept on the overall conception of a scientific or social question that matters in this world, philosophy becomes an empty game, no more interesting than chess playing or tennis, but much less paid.

Freeman Dyson: Climate Change Predictions Are “Absurd” | Freeman Dyson | Big Think

Freeman Dyson: Climate Change Predictions Are “Absurd” | Freeman Dyson | Big Think

La loi d’Obama sur la reforme de l’assurance maladie : une promesse à sa mère

Stanley Ann (at the center) playing with some friends in Indonesia

« Aujourd’hui, je signe cette lois au nom de ma mère, qui a du se battre avec les compagnies d’assurance pendant les derniers jours de son combat contre le cancer ». C’est ainsi que Barack Obama a parlé le 23 mars 2010, lors de la signature du Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, une loi historique qui donne l’accès à l’assurance maladie aux Etats Unis à 32 millions de citoyens américains qui en étaient dépourvu.

Pendant sa campagne et après son élection, il n’y a pas eu un seul discours sur la reforme de l’assurance maladie qui ne mentionnait pas sa mère, Stanley Ann Dunham, anthropologue, idéaliste et militante du microcrédit, morte à 52 ans en 1995 d’un cancer aux ovaires. A’ l’époque du premier diagnostic, Stanley Ann était en train de changer de travail, et après des années de collaboration avec la Ford Foundation, elle allait rejoindre le Women World’s Banking qui finance des projets de microcrédit visant à sortir les femmes de la misère dans différents pays du monde. Un contrôle de routine à New York releva un problème aux ovaires. Après des années de travail à l’étranger, et dans un moment de transition d’un emploi à l’autre, Stanley Ann était dépourvue de couverture sociale aux Etats Unis. Elle repartit donc en Indonésie où elle pouvait se permettre de se faire soigner. Mais les médecins firent là-bas une erreur de diagnostic. Rentrée aux Hawaii, la où ses parents résidaient, déjà très malade, Stanley Ann mourut après un douloureux combat contre la maladie, mais aussi contre les compagnies d’assurance qui lui niaient l’accès aux soins dont elle avait besoin. Une blessure que Barack Obama, à l’époque avocat des droits civils et professeur de droit à Chicago, n’oubliera jamais.

C’est en 1995 que son premier livre, Les rêves de mon père (Paris, Presses de la Cité, 2008) sort aux Etats Unis, un drôle de titre pour une autobiographie en grande partie consacrée au souvenir de sa mère. Il écrit : « La plupart des personnages de ce livre font toujours partie de ma vie, mais il y a une exception : ma mère, que nous avons perdue brutalement, à la suite d’un cancer […] Elle voyageait à travers le monde, travaillant dans de lointains villages d’Asie et d’Afrique, aidant les femmes […] Je me dis parfois que si j’avais su qu’elle ne guérirait pas j’aurais peut-être écrit un autre livre, j’aurait rendu davantage hommage à celle qui était la seule constante de ma vie. Je ne sais pas essayer d’exprimer à quel point je pleure encore sa mort. Je sais qu’elle était l’être le plus noble, le plus généreux que j’aie jamais connu, et que c’est à elle que je dois ce que j’ai de meilleur en moi »

L’engagement d’Obama vis-à-vis de cette reforme a été crédible pour les gens car c’était un engagement non seulement au nom d’une vision politique, d’une idéologie, mais un engagement profondément personnel, une promesse faite à sa mère dans le désespoir de sa perte. La partie la plus vraie, sincère de ce brillant politique est enracinée dans son histoire, dans les valeurs de justice et de communauté que sa mère lui a inculquées tout au long de son enfance. Une femme libre, visionnaire, courageuse au point d’épouser un étudiant africain en 1960 et avoir un enfant avec lui, un choix qui était puni encore par la loi dans plus de la moitié des Etats Unis. Une vie d’études – sa thèse de doctorat en anthropologie vient d’être publiée (Surviving Against the Odds: Village Industry in Indonesia. Duke University Press, 2009), mais aussi d’engagement auprès des femmes pauvres, d’amitié et de solidarité avec les démunis, les malades, les enfants.

Les étapes de l’histoire sont écrites très souvent pour rendre des comptes à son histoire personnelle. La loi historique qu’Obama a fait passer au prix d’un dur combat politique s’inscrit dans l’histoire de sa vie, dans sa dette humaine et morale vis-à-vis de cette femme unique.

Disgrace

Draft. Do not quote. Submitted to IRIDE

Vergogna, il libro più filosofico di Coetzee, è l’illustrazione di un paradosso morale, di come qualsiasi posizione morale non possa che restare muta davanti alla violenza della terra, del sangue e della generazione. La traduzione italiana del titolo inglese Disgrace non rende pienamente giustizia dell’atmosfera di disgrazia che permea il racconto: la vergogna è un sentimento consapevole, un passo avanti della coscienza di sé che, secondo il filosofo Bernard Williams, ha un ruolo fondamentale nella formazione del senso di colpa occidentale (cf. B. Williams, Shame and Necessity, California Academic Press). La disgrazia è invece un concetto cristiano sottile: è la condanna dell’azione malvagia perché priva di grazia divina e terrena. E’ la traccia dell’anti-aura sull’anima e sul corpo del disgraziato, una specie di malformazione morale. Il disgraziato è già in parte discolpato perché il suo misfatto è causato dalla sua insufficienza morale, sgraziata e miserabile.

Il libro è una storia di disgraziati. Disgraziato è il protagonista, David Lurie, professore di letteratura di mezza età, che si trova coinvolto nello scandalo provocato da una relazione sessuale con una sua studentessa ed è costretto a dare le dimissioni. Disgraziata è la figlia di Lurie, Lucy, omosessuale solitaria e ideologica, che cerca conforto negli animali e nella coltivazione di un fazzoletto di terra ostile, circondata da una comunità locale che non può che vederla come una diversa, una colona bianca animata da sentimenti pacifisti fasulli nel mondo spietato della lotta razziale sudafricana. Disgraziati sono i malvagi del racconto: i tre uomini che compiono il misfatto, la violenza carnale su Lucy, l’aggressione efferata al padre e l’uccisione dei cani della fattoria: tre delinquenti poveracci, insufficienti moralmente perché vittime della loro sciagura umana. Disgraziate anche le bestie, quei cani abbandonati sacrificati nell’inceneratore della clinica veterinaria vicina alla fattoria dove David Lurie si rifugierà a lavorare, forse perché solo nelle bestie prive di tutto, di diritti, di rispetto e di pietà, può ormai riconoscersi. Disgraziata è Bev Shaw, la veterinaria grassa e ottusa che passa le sue giornate a iniettare l’ultimo veleno a quei poveri randagi, quietando le loro ansie mute con qualche gesto di conforto, con una pacata richiesta di fiducia che gli animali le concedono facilmente per consuetudine e vengono immediatamente traditi.

“Devi essere abituato a un altro tipo di vita” dice Bev Shaw a David Lurie, stupita della solerzia con la quale il professore l’aiuta nella macabra impresa della clinica.
“Un altro tipo di vita? Non sapevo che la vita si distinguesse in ‘tipi’” risponde sarcastico Lurie. Eppure a Salem, sulla strada tra Grahamstown e Kenton, dove si trova la fattoria di sua figlia, la vita sembra darsi in ‘tipi’, in specie differenti e inconfrontabili, ognuna circondata da una spessa cerchia di valori propri, sordi alle ragioni dell’altro.

Così il professor Lurie aveva difeso il suo diritto a essere un tipo differente nel suo processo improvvisato all’università per la sua vicenda carnale con Melanie Isaacs. Non era il tipo da chiedere il perdono pubblico, e aveva preferito la condanna all’umiliazione di rinnegare pubblicamente il suo desiderio per la giovane preda. Dunque sì, a volte la vita si dà in tipologie e bisogna sapere di che tipo si è.
Ma, una volta arrivato alla fattoria della figlia per scappare al tipo di vita che non voleva rinnegare pubblicamente, David Lurie non può capitolare per intero, non può cedere completamente a quel nomos della terra, dell’etnia, che governa il fragile equilibrio della campagna di Salem. Lurie è un intellettuale, uno specialista di Wordsworth e di Byron, un uomo di ragione, benché vittima, come spesso accade a quel tipo umano, del suo esasperato narcisismo maschile, che lo fa credere attraente agli occhi di una ragazza ventenne e nevrotica in cerca di conferme intellettuali e ancora inconsapevole dell’immenso potere del suo giovane corpo. La debolezza di Lurie rientra in un tipo di umanità ben repertoriato dalla morale pubblica, facilmente identificabile e condannabile.

E invece, nella sospensione dalla civiltà che la fattoria di Lucy rappresenta, David Lurie per la prima volta fa esperienza di un altro ordine di conflitto: l’attacco alla fattoria è una guerra combattuta tra forze ctonie, incontrollabili e irredimibili da qualsiasi valore morale, una guerra di sangue e terra, di morte, generazione e di conquista.
Tre uomini si avvicinano al territorio di Lucy: i cani abbaiano, la figlia cerca di tenerli lontani. Chiedono di fare una telefonata. Lucy li fa entrare incauta in casa, la porta sbatte, David Lurie si ritrova chiuso in uno sgabuzzino, le grida della figlia nell’altra stanza gli danno alla testa, uno degli uomini lo cosparge di benzina e gli dà fuoco: il tempo di dibattersi tra le fiamme e il misfatto è compiuto. Lo spregio dei conquistatori della nuova terra è sparare sui cani, guardiani inerti dello scempio razziale di quei tre disgraziati. La sequenza è rapida, cinematografica, Lurie si dimena tra le fiamme, cercando di spegnere il fuoco che divampa sul suo corpo immergendo la testa nella tazza del water. Non sa se si salverà, la vita non è mai stata così “qui e ora”, non sa nulla di quel che sta succedendo se non che nulla sarà mai più come prima.

La sua prima reazione, riavutosi dallo choc, è di proteggere Lucy: bisogna delimitare il territorio, costruire un recinto, mettere un allarme: Lucy non può vivere più sola in quel luogo: Petrus, il suo vicino aiutante, deve vegliare su di lei. Bisogna andare alla polizia, dare tutte le informazioni necessarie per rintracciare i colpevoli. Ma Lucy non reagisce. Inebetita dagli eventi, si piega al suo destino di dominata: lei, bianca, è in minoranza in quelle terre, non c’è morale né legge che tenga. Come un animale docile, come quei cani randagi che si piegano all’inevitabile fine che li aspetta, Lucy non parla, non accusa, si lascia andare alle leggi selvagge del mondo che ha scelto: come le piogge, le epidemie, i raccolti magri, anche il suo stupro è una disgrazia naturale.

David Lurie non riesce a capire, i suoi valori si confondono: nello stupro di Lucy riconosce la violenza del desiderio carnale che lo ha rovinato all’università. Proteggere sua figlia è anche riparare il suo danno su Melanie Isaacs. Quella vicenda apparentemente banale, se non per le conseguenze estreme sulla sua vita materiale, ora gli appare sotto una nuova luce. Ma il suo non è un pentimento: è il riconoscimento di un istinto così profondo e animale che la sua lettura della vita non aveva mai fatto emergere: l’istinto della copula, del mating: un mate, ossia un partner per l’accoppiamento, lo si riconosce dall’odore, dalla fisionomia che corrisponde alla nostra per i fini riproduttivi. Lurie non ha potuto evitare infatti, nei pochi secondi che precedono il misfatto, di notare la bellezza fisica di uno dei tre uomini che si accaniranno di lì a poco su sua figlia. Così, andando a teatro per cercare di rivedere Melanie Isaacs, si chiede sapendola a qualche fila di distanza da lui, se lei senta la sua presenza, se riconosca l’odore del suo partner che si è infilato nella sua pelle.

Nella confusione morale che segue lo stupro, Lurie decide di andare a trovare il padre di Melanie. Il signor Isaacs, padre di famiglia religioso, lo accoglie e lo perdona, sicuro del suo pentimento. Ma Lurie avrebbe voluto spiegare al signor Isaacs ben altro: avrebbe voluto fargli capire che quel che è successo era inevitabile: è stato il mutuo riconoscersi di due animali adatti ad accoppiarsi. Isaacs non lo capisce, lo perdona e lo incoraggia ad affidare tutta la vicenda nelle mani di Dio, a capire il messaggio che Dio ha voluto inviare attraverso questa disgrazia.
Nel dialogo tra i due uomini c’è anche una sottile complicità di ‘tipo’, di specie, come se il padre della ragazza, benché timorato di Dio, non potesse che identificarsi facilmente in quel desiderio maschile per un corpo giovane. Allo stesso modo, la complicità femminile fa scudo contro Lurie intorno allo stupro di Lucy. Sono le donne che consolano sua figlia. La violenza carnale, così come il sangue mestruale, la gravidanza, il parto, sono cose da donne, abituate da millenni a essere violate, soggiogate dai corpi massicci e pericolosi dei loro copulatori.

Le insistenze di Lurie perché Lucy si difenda e accusi i colpevoli, protetti in realtà da tutta la comunità locale, compreso il fedele aiutante Petrus, incrinano la convivenza tra padre e figlia. Il bisogno di giustizia legale di Lurie si scontra con l’accettazione passiva della legge di natura da parte di Lucy. A una festa organizzata da Petrus, Lurie riconosce uno dei tre criminali. Si infuria con Petrus, che risponde a mezze parole alle domande agitate del professore. Pollux, il giovane stupratore, è della famiglia di Petrus, è un protetto, non si tocca. L’ira di Lurie contro il ragazzo non serve a nulla. Ormai Lucy ha accettato il destino e la gravidanza che quella violenza ha portato con sé. Non era uno stupro dunque, ma un accoppiamento, un’estensione del territorio dei tre conquistatori fino alle viscere di sua figlia. Nascerà un bambino dal misfatto, e la terra si ricomporrà nel calore del sangue mescolato in quella nuova vita.

Lurie, a passeggio con la cagna fedele di Lucy, unica sopravvissuta alla strage, incontra il giovane Pollux, lo insulta, lo fa aggredire dalla cagna, gli urla “Suino!”, Swine in inglese, nome di ‘tipo’ appunto, di categoria, non di un animale preciso. Pollux non è un maiale: è della specie dei suini, perché in questa lotta ancestrale non ci sono identità, né responsabilità individuali, ma tipi, specie di azioni che ci fanno essere parte passivamente di un genere umano.

Come sempre è l’esperienza, non la morale, che ci dà occhi nuovi: la visione campestre della figlia piegata sul raccolto, con un cappello di paglia, un vestito largo e la pelle chiara e trasparente della sua specie, lo emoziona esteticamente come un quadro di Sargent o di Bonnard. Come se per la prima volta vedesse qualcosa di bellissimo che era sempre stato lì, sotto i suoi occhi. Così le poesie di Wordsworth lette in classe agli studenti, prendono un senso nuovo. Il sentimento del poeta davanti alla maestosità del Monte Bianco nel sesto libro di The Prelude, di colpo diventa evidente: anche Wordsworth è soggiogato dall’immensa forza muta della natura, dal potere della terra, eternamente pronta a eruttare e sconvolgere ogni nostra certezza morale.

Comment Internet modifie-t-il notre rapport au réel ?

omment l’internet transforme-t-il la façon dont vous pensez ?", telle était la grande question annuelle posée par la revue The Edge à quelque 170 experts, scientifiques, artistes et penseurs. Difficile d’en faire une synthèse, tant les contributions sont multiples et variées et souvent passionnantes. Que les répondants soient fans ou critiques de la révolution des technologies de l’information, en tout cas, il est clair qu’Internet ne laisse personne indifférent.

L’INTERNET CHANGE LA FAÇON DONT ON VIT L’EXPÉRIENCE

Pour les artistes Eric Fischl et April Gornik, l’Internet a changé la façon dont ils posent leur regard sur le monde. "Pour des artistes, la vue est essentielle à la pensée. Elle organise l’information et permet de développer des pensées et des sentiments. La vue c’est la manière dont on se connecte." Pour eux, le changement repose surtout sur les images et l’information visuelle ou plus précisément sur la perte de différenciation entre les matériaux et le processus : toutes les informations d’ordres visuelles, quelles qu’elles soient, se ressemblent. L’information visuelle se base désormais sur des images isolées qui créent une fausse illusion de la connaissance et de l’expérience.

"Comme le montrait John Berger, la nature de la photographie est un objet de mémoire qui nous permet d’oublier. Peut-être peut-on dire quelque chose de similaire à propos de l’internet. En ce qui concerne l’art, l’internet étend le réseau de reproduction qui remplace la façon dont on fait l’expérience de quelque chose. Il remplace l’expérience par le fac-similé."

Le jugement de Brian Eno, le producteur, est assez proche. "Je note que l’idée de l’expert a changé. Un expert a longtemps été quelqu’un qui avait accès à certaines informations. Désormais, depuis que tant d’information est disponible à tous, l’expert est devenu quelqu’un doté d’un meilleur sens d’interprétation. Le jugement a remplacé l’accès." Pour lui également, l’internet a transformé notre rapport à l’expérience authentique (l’expérience singulière dont on profite sans médiation). "Je remarque que plus d’attention est donnée par les créateurs aux aspects de leurs travaux qui ne peuvent pas être dupliqués. L’authentique a remplacé le reproductible."

Pour Linda Stone : "Plus je l’ai appréciée et connue, plus évident a été le contraste, plus intense a été la tension entre la vie physique et la vie virtuelle. L’internet m’a volé mon corps qui est devenu une forme inerte courbée devant un écran lumineux. Mes sens s’engourdissaient à mesure que mon esprit avide fusionnait avec le cerveau global". Un contraste qui a ramené Linda Stone à mieux apprécier les plaisirs du monde physique. "Je passe maintenant avec plus de détermination entre chacun de ces mondes, choisissant l’un, puis l’autre, ne cédant à aucun."

LE POUVOIR DE LA CONVERSATION

Pour la philosophe Gloria Origgi (blog), chercheuse à l’Institut Nicod à Paris : l’internet révèle le pouvoir de la conversation, à l’image de ces innombrables échanges par mails qui ont envahi nos existences. L’occasion pour la philosophe de rappeler combien le dialogue permet de penser et construire des connaissances. "Quelle est la différence entre l’état contemplatif que nous avons devant une page blanche et les échanges excités que nous avons par l’intermédiaire de Gmail ou Skype avec un collègue qui vit dans une autre partie du monde ?" Très peu, répond la chercheuse. Les articles et les livres que l’on publie sont des conversations au ralenti. "L’internet nous permet de penser et d’écrire d’une manière beaucoup plus naturelle que celle imposée par la tradition de la culture de l’écrit : la dimension dialogique de notre réflexion est maintenant renforcée par des échanges continus et liquides". Reste que nous avons souvent le sentiment, coupable, de gaspiller notre temps dans ces échanges, sauf à nous "engager dans des conversations intéressantes et bien articulées". C’est à nous de faire un usage responsable de nos compétences en conversation. "Je vois cela comme une amélioration de notre façon d’extérioriser notre façon de penser : une façon beaucoup plus naturelle d’être intelligent dans un monde social."

Pour Yochaï Benkler, professeur à Harvard et auteur de la Puissance des réseaux, le rôle de la conversation est essentiel. A priori, s’interroge le savant, l’internet n’a pas changé la manière dont notre cerveau accomplit certaines opérations. Mais en sommes-nous bien sûr ? Peut-être utilisons-nous moins des processus impliqués dans la mémoire à long terme ou ceux utilisés dans les routines quotidiennes, qui longtemps nous ont permis de mémoriser le savoir…

Mais n’étant pas un spécialiste du cerveau, Benkler préfère de beaucoup regarder "comment l’internet change la façon dont on pense le monde". Et là, force est de constater que l’internet, en nous connectant plus facilement à plus de personnes, permet d’accéder à de nouveaux niveaux de proximité ou d’éloignement selon des critères géographiques, sociaux, organisationnels ou institutionnels. Internet ajoute à cette transformation sociale un contexte "qui capte la transcription d’un très grand nombre de nos conversations", les rendant plus lisibles qu’elles ne l’étaient par le passé. Si nous interprétons la pensée comme un processus plus dialogique et dialectique que le cogito de Descartes, l’internet permet de nous parler en nous éloignant des cercles sociaux, géographiques et organisationnels qui pesaient sur nous et nous brancher sur de tout autres conversations que celles auxquelles on pouvait accéder jusqu’alors.

"Penser avec ces nouvelles capacités nécessite à la fois un nouveau type d’ouverture d’esprit, et une nouvelle forme de scepticisme", conclut-il. L’internet exige donc que nous prenions la posture du savant, celle du journaliste d’investigation et celle du critique des médias.

MONDIALISATION INTELLECTUELLE

Pour le neuroscientifique français, Stanislas Dehaene, auteur des Neurones de la lecture, l’internet est en train de révolutionner notre accès au savoir et plus encore notre notion du temps. Avec l’internet, les questions que pose le chercheur à ses collègues à l’autre bout du monde trouvent leurs réponses pendant la nuit, alors qu’il aurait fallu attendre plusieurs semaines auparavant. Ces projets qui ne dorment jamais ne sont pas rares, ils existent déjà : ils s’appellent Linux, Wikipédia, OLPC… Mais ce nouveau cycle temporel a sa contrepartie. C’est le turc mécanique d’Amazon, ces "tâches d’intelligences humaines", cet outsourcing qui n’apporte ni avantage, ni contrat, ni garantie à ceux qui y souscrivent. C’est le côté obscur de la mondialisation intellectuelle rendue possible par l’internet.

Pour Barry C. Smith, directeur de l’Institut de l’école de philosophie de l’université de Londres, internet est ambivalent. "Le privé est désormais public, le local global, l’information est devenue un divertissement, les consommateurs des producteurs, tout le monde est devenu expert"… Mais qu’ont apporté tous ces changements ? L’internet ne s’est pas développé hors le monde réel : il en consomme les ressources et en hérite des vices. On y trouve à la fois le bon, le fade, l’important, le trivial, le fascinant comme le repoussant. Face à l’accélération et l’explosion de l’information, notre désir de connaissance et notre soif à ne rien manquer nous poussent à grappiller "un petit peu de tout et à chercher des contenus prédigérés, concis, formatés provenant de sources fiables. Mes habitudes de lecture ont changé me rendant attentif à la forme de l’information. Il est devenu nécessaire de consommer des milliers de résumés de revues scientifiques, de faire sa propre recherche rapide pour scanner ce qui devrait être lu en détail. On se met à débattre au niveau des résumés. (…) Le vrai travail se faire ailleurs." Il y a un danger à penser que ce qui n’apporte pas de résultat à une requête sur l’internet n’existe pas, conclut le philosophe.

Hubert Guillaud

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Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl - Philospher's Song

A fundamental contribution to Philosophy of Wine.

EDGE ANNUAL QUESTION

HOW IS THE INTERNET CHANGING THE WAY YOU THINK?

Every year the NY literary agent John Brockman asks a question to a bunch of scientists and intellectuals around the world. Here is my reply to this year's question.

THE POWER OF CONVERSATION

I spend more than half of my working hours doing my email: I have 4407 messages in my Gmail Inbox today: stuff that I haven't read yet, that I have to reply to, or that I keep in the Inbox just to take advantage of the search facilities and be able to easily retrieve it when needed.

Each time I find myself in the end of the afternoon still writing messages to friends, colleagues, perfect strangers, students, etc. I have the guilty feeling of having wasted my day, as the weakness of my will had prevailed on any sense of duty and intellectual responsibility. Psychological reactions can be harsh to the point of inflicting myself various forms of punishment such as imprisonment in a dusty Parisian library without Internet connection or voluntary switching off of the modem at my place. That is because I have the precise idea that my work is NOT writing emails: rather it is a matter of writing papers and learned essays on philosophy and related issues.

But what is philosophy? What is academic work in general, at least in the humanities? One of my mentors once said to me: Being an academic just means being part of a conversation. That's it. Plato used the dialogue as a form of expression to render in a more vivid way the dialectic process of thinking and constructing knowledge from open verbal confrontation. One of the books that influenced me most during my undergraduate philosophical studies in Italy was Galileo's Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems. I read on the Edge site that Edge is a conversation. So, what is so bad about email conversations that are invading my life? What is the big difference between the contemplative state in front of the blank page of a new paper and the excited exchange through Gmail or skype with a colleague living in another part of the world?

My intellectual life started to get much better when I realized that the difference is not that much: that even papers and comments to the papers, reviews, replies, etc. are conversations at slow motion. I write a paper for an academic journal, the paper is evaluated by other philosophers who suggest improvements, it is then disseminated to the academic community in order to prompt new conversations on a topic or launch new topics for discussion. That is the rule of the game. And if I make an introspective effort and try to visualize my way of thinking, I realize that I am never alone in my mind: a number of more or less invited guests are sitting around somewhere in my brain, challenging me when I claim with overconfidence this and that or when I definitely affirm my resolution to act in a certain way.

Arguing is a basic ingredient of thinking: our way of structuring our thought would have been very different without the powerful tool of verbal exchange. So, let's acknowledge that the Internet allows us to think and write in a much more natural way than the one imposed by the written culture tradition: the dialogical dimension of our thinking is now enhanced by continuous, liquid exchanges with others.

The way out of the guilty feeling of wasting our time is to commit ourselves to interesting and well articulated conversations, as we accept invitations to dinners in which we hope to have a stimulating chat and not falling asleep after the second glass of wine. I run a Website that keeps track of high-level, learned conversations between academics. I find that each media produces its wastes: most books are just noise that disappears few months after the first release. I don't think we should concentrate of the wastes, rather, we should try to make a responsible use of our conversational skills and free ourselves from unreal commitments to accidental formats, such as the book or the academic paper, whose authoritative role depends on the immense role they played in our education.

If it happens that what we will leave to the next generation are threads of useful and learned conversations, then be it: I see this as an improvement in our way of externalizing our thinking, a much more natural way of being intelligent in a social world.

Vertige du numérique : Qui lit quoi ?

Au moment où le Kindle d’Amazon débarque dans cent pays et Google annonce à Francfort la création de Google Editions, Umberto Eco choisit comme thème d’un cycle des conférences au Louvre - et de son dernier ouvrage - la liste, le catalogue, comme forme fondamentale de représentation culturelle (cf. U. Eco, Vertige de la liste, Flammarion, 2009). Ce penseur éclectique, qui sait si bien articuler son érudition avec les obsessions du présent, n’aurait pas pu choisir meilleur sujet : l’angoisse qui accompagne le basculement au numérique de notre culture écrite est très étroitement liée à un sentiment de perte de contrôle sur l’ordre des choses, à une expropriation d’un droit inaliénable que chaque civilisation ressent comme justification même de sa propre existence, à savoir le droit d’imposer une hiérarchie, une catégorisation à ce qu’il faut savoir et ne pas savoir, aimer ou ne pas aimer, retenir dans la mémoire collective ou oublier.

Au delà des risques d’exploitation commerciale du patrimoine culturel, mis bien en évidence par l’article de Roger Chartier dans Le Monde du 26.10.09 (L’avenir numérique du livre), ce qu’on craint du catalogue de 360 000 titres d’Amazon et des millions de livres de Google books qui seront mis en vente par les nouvelles éditions Google, c’est qu’ils se présentent comme des listes globales, des collections universelles d’objets culturels dont la logique nous échappe pour plusieurs raisons. Prenons le cas de Kindle : sur quelle base Amazon a sélectionné - parmi les millions de livres dans sa bibliothèque - les 360 000 titres téléchargeables ? Une note du service commercial sur la page web de vente du Kindle est censée nous rassurer : « Nous avons de la chance car nous disposons de millions de clients Amazon, et, comme résultat, nous savons quels livres vous aimez lire et rendrons disponibles ceux-ci en priorité ». Voilà la logique du catalogue : grâce au système filtrage collaboratif mis à disposition par Amazon, celui qui produit les recommandations du type : « Les internautes qui ont acheté ce livre ont acheté aussi… », le catalogue s’élargit en prenant en compte les préférences de lecture des consommateurs. Mais pour les consommateurs à venir, pour nos enfants qui commenceront leur expérience de lecture directement sur Kindle, ce catalogue sera le seul canon culturel à leur disposition.

Voyons alors comment Google procède dans sa création des listes : eh bien, ici on est encore plus dans l’arbitraire : les livres qui sont tombés facilement dans la numérisation « sauvage » de Google books, se retrouvent ensemble car ils partagent les propriétés intéressantes de ne pas avoir de lecteur, d’être hors commerce ou d’appartenir à une maison d’édition qui a conclut un accord inconnu avec Google. Des critères qui ne relèvent pas exactement de la bibliothéconomie la plus sophistiquée…

Ce qu’on craint d’un monde de listes universelles, générées par les nouveaux algorithmes sociaux ou par le hasard des accords commerciaux, c’est de s’égarer, de perdre le sens même du pourquoi on lit. Certes, ces nouveaux créateurs de canons défendront la démocratisation de leurs sélections par rapport aux filtrages de la tradition imposés par le haut. Et n’oublions pas que les sélections d’information produites par chaque tradition culturelle sont elles-mêmes le fruit des choix parfois arbitraires, des caprices de l’histoire et des relations de pouvoir qu’on a pas toujours d’intérêt à maintenir. Mais, comme le dit bien un bloggeur sur slashdot.org : If everyone has a voice, no one really has a voice… c’est à dire, un monde sans autorité culturelle a l’air, tout simplement, d’un monde sans culture.

Mais laissons le temps à ces nouvelles listes et classifications du monde : c’est l’usage qui imposera des nouvelles stratégies de filtrage intelligible : peut être il faudra abandonner l’unité de mesure du livre, ou de l’article pour donner du sens à notre lecture : peut être le tri entre ce qui mérite d’être lu et ce qui est à oublier se fera de manière « liquide », dans le flux d’un seul texte universel qu’on peut parcourir et réassembler à l’infini grâce aux recherches ciblées. Il y a un espace de sens à construire, comme lecteurs responsables, entre les autorités culturelles traditionnelles et les catégorisations imposées par les robots de Google, un espace que chaque appropriation des textes, pour le plaisir, l’enseignement, la diffusion, contribue à créer si elle laisse une trace à l’intérieur et à l’extérieur du Web qui nous rappelle le pourquoi de ce choix.

Un livre dans cette culture liquéfiée ne sera alors ni plus ni moins qu’une unité minimale de sens qui vaut la peine d’être préservée, transmise, mis à jour et diffusée génération après génération : une place dans une liste qui gardera une certaine stabilité de sens et non pas de format, d’une génération à l’autre.

Le désintéressement. Review of Jon Elster

(Jon Elster has just published (in French) the first volume of a trilogy: Le désintéressement : Traité critique de l'homme économique Tome 1 (Paris, Le Seuil, 2009). I wrote a review in Italian for the peer-reviewed journal IRIDE, published by Il Mulino. Here is an English version translated by Dan Sperber for the Cognition and Culture blog.

In one of his perfect narratives, Heinrich Von Kleist tells the sad story of two secret lovers separated and condemned to death just before the earthquake that was to destroy
Santiago de Chile in 1647. Having miraculously survived, they enjoy for a few days the mercy of an enchanted social atmosphere. Their judges and executioners, transformed by the tragedy and the ensuing chaos, multiply gestures of altruism and generosity. The blissful mood persists for a short while, but soon the rules and norms of civil life are being reinstated and a Mass is celebrated during which the crime of the two poor lovers is denounced as the cause of all the evil. The lovers, unable to escape the fury of collective condemnation, are clubbed to death. The reciprocal altruism and the disinterested society that the cataclysm had spawned turns out to be ephemeral, unnatural, as if the ferocious end were a way to compensate for the uncanny sense of self that the people had experienced when acting in such a disinterested manner.

Jon Elster’s latest book (Le désintéressement, Paris, Seuil, 2009, 377 pp.), based on his Collège de France lectures in 2006-2007, discusses the very possibility of disinterested action. Is it possible for a human being to act in a truly disinterested manner? Do disinterested actions have a psychological unity or are they the mere product of circumstances? Is disinterestedness an individual or a collective phenomenon? From a strictly rational point of view, that of the kind of utilitarian economic rationality, to the critique of which Elster had devoted an important part of his work, disinterestedness looks irrational. It violates the rules of maximisation of utility. As if human action without the kind of rational and interested motivation that optimise the individual utility was bereft of justification, irrational or at least a-rational. Elster’s aim, in this first volume of a trilogy that will be dedicated to the critique of the classical theory of Homo Oeconomicus, is precisely to combine a critique of the motivational model of interest with a methodological individualistic approach, and not to go along with holistic explanation in terms of superstructure characteristic of other social science traditions such as Marxism and structuralism. Pierre Bourdieu for instance reduces the possibility of disinterested action to the social mechanics of distinction, assuming that it only occurs as a means of increasing one’s symbolic capital in an economy where not all exchanges are material. Elster, on the contrary, seeks individual motivations for disinterested acts, disinterested reasons to act that are moreover independent of the social superstructure.

There are two defining features of Homo Oeconomicus that disinterested actions may undermine: rationality and interested motivation. Elster's approach saves rationality at the expense of interested motivation. Actually, if classical economic theory insists on the univocity of interested motivation, it is first and foremost for reasons of simplicity and elegance. Leaving out interest, the theory gets lost in thousand directions since, writes Elster paraphrasing Tolstoy, "if all interested agents are interested in the same manner, disinterested agents are so each in its own way." Still, rational choice theory is so equipped that, while it could not do without the presupposition of rationality, it could do without interested motivation.

So Elster, equally familiar with French XVIIth century moralists and with current experimental research in behavioural economics, gives up on a univocal explanation and sketches a taxonomy of disinterested motivations that are, all the same, rational. Altruistic and disinterested action is typically suspected of, in fact, having other motivation: self-pride, desire for the approval of others, awareness of the benefits of a good reputation. To these essentially ‘allocentric' social motivations that could be reduced to a form of indirect egoism, Elster adds motivations that are not egoistic but that may be ‘egocentric', for instance, 1) disinterested consideration for others' welfare (altruism, egalitarianism, everyday Kantianism), and 2) internal approval of disinterestedness, that is, the desire we have to appear in our own eyes, rather than in the eyes of others, as motivated by disinterested consideration of the interest of others. For Elster, these motivations are independent of the mechanisms of social recognition and intrinsically disinterested.
A series of case studies complements conceptual analysis: the mechanisms of disinterest are being brought to light in behavioural economics experiments on cooperation and reciprocity and people are shown not to maximize their own utility in exchanges, in intergenerational donations, in reparation among countries, in decision processes in assemblies, and in the motivation of kamikaze terrorists, all cases that Elster had analysed in previous work.

The width of the array of phenomena analysed and of explanations is typical of Elster's style, who, to reductionist social sciences that aim at being "exact", opposes a model of vectorial explanation that proceeds by articulating a variety of causal mechanisms. There remains a doubt regarding the unity of the phenomenon: if so many forms of disinterestedness are possible, and so many different motivations may underlie it, are we still talking about one and the same thing? Is there then a unitary theory, a mechanism that explains in an integrated way this "ivresse du désintéressement," and that provides the phenomenology of this ecstatic freedom from our egoistic drives, that Kleist illustrated so clearly with a few strokes?

On the Epistemic Value of Reputation. The place of ratings and reputational tools in knowledge organization

Submission for the Eleventh International ISKO Conference 2010
Paradigms and conceptual systems in KO
February 23, 2010 – February 26, 2010

by Gloria Origgi and Judith Simon


Abstract: In this paper we want to explore the epistemological relevance and value of reputation understood as evaluative social information. Using reputation to classify and assess an agent or an item can be epistemologically useful in the absence or - as is especially relevant today - overabundance of information. However, in order to be and remain epistemically useful and ethically just it has to be open to constant scrutiny and revision. We will introduce a model of rational consensus as an example for the rational use of reputation for epistemic purpose before analyzing different reputational tools on the web. We will conclude our paper with a critical comment on the potential danger of using social information to evaluate information and knowledge claims, resp. to warn from epistemic injustices on the web and elsewhere.

1: Introduction

What is that scarlet piece of tissue in the shape of an A sewn on Hester Prynne's gown in Nathaniel Hawthorne's masterpiece The Scarlet Letter? Is it a symbol of her sin, a "badge of shame", an indelible sign of her community's contempt? Is it a cruel reminder of her past, a succinct history of her misdeeds? Imagine that in the same colonial New England village, you do not have just a badge for the poor Hester, but each member of the community wears a letter that represents some past records of its owner. We can also imagine sets of identical badges worn by members of the community who have similar records: sinners, heroes, drunkards....Imagine that the elders of the community have the right to attach these labels to the villagers. Their judgments, based on their purported wisdom, become an easy way for the villagers to dispose of a basic classification of social types within the community that will allow them to manage their relations with others, to make inferences and predictions about their behavior, that is, construct a basic "social map" that will help them orient in their society. Morally this may be questionable, but epistemologically it can be useful.
We want to explore in this paper, the epistemic value of this type of social information, that is, reputation, while being aware of the ethical and political problems that might come with using it for epistemic purpose. Using the judgment on past records to classify an agent or an item can be epistemologically useful in the absence or - as is especially relevant today - overabundance of information. But it has to be and remain open to constant scrutiny and revision to be epistemically useful and ethically just.

2: Reputation as Evaluative Social Information

Reputation is a special kind of social information: it is social information about the value of people, systems and processes that release information. We want to explore here the relationship between this special form of social information - that implies an evaluative stance - and the processes of knowledge organization and evaluation. More precisely, we want to argue not only that (1) we make use of other people's reputations to evaluate information, but also (2) within systems, like the Web, that make possible the easy and dynamic organization and re-organization of knowledge, our own rankings may determine new content and generate new categories.

Reputation is the informational track of our past actions, it is the credibility that an agent or an item earn through repeated interactions. We would like to defend an epistemological perspective according to which relying on reputational cues is an efficient way of shaping the too rich informational landscape around us by creating new relevant categories. Experts and authorities not only bloom where information is scanty, but also, and most crucially, in an information-dense world in which filtering out relevant information is our prominent cognitive activity. The epistemological enquiry we are advocating here implies that reputation and rating systems are an essential ingredient of collective processes of knowledge and play a cognitive role in extracting information. In an information-dense environment, where sources are in constant competition to get attention and the option of the direct verification of the information is often simply not available at reasonable costs, evaluation and rankings are epistemic tools and cognitive practices that provide an inevitable shortcut to information. We assume that there is no ideal knowledge that we can adjudicate without the access to previous evaluations and adjudications of others. No Robinson Crusoe’s minds that investigate and manipulate the world in a perfect solitude. Our modest epistemological prediction is that the higher is the uncertainty on the content of information, the stronger is the weight of the opinions of others in order to establish the quality of this content.
Of course, this opens the epistemological question of the epistemic value of these rankings and reputation mechanism, that it, to what extent their production and use by a community changes the ratio between truths and falsities produced by that community and, individually, how an awareness of rankings should affect a person’s beliefs. After all, rankings introduce a bias in judgment and the epistemic superiority of a biased judgment is in need of justification.

3: Rational Model for the Epistemic Use of Social Information

To illustrate how reputation understood as social information that comes with an evaluative stance can rationally be used for epistemic purpose, we introduce a formal model of rational consensus. In “Rational Consensus in Science and Society” Keith Lehrer and Carl Wagner develop their formal theory of consensus that rests upon the employment of consensual probabilities, utilities and weights and is meant to provide a model for rational decision making processes in science and society more generally ((Lehrer and Wagner 1981))). To our mind, this model is actually a model of how to quantify and use reputation for epistemic purpose.
Lehrer & Wagner argue that for decision making processes to be rational, it is central that all relevant information for the topic of concern has to be used ((Lehrer and Wagner 1981)). However, this spectrum of available information - for instance concerning disputes on scientific theories - is not limited to experimental information, but should also include the opinions of experts on other experts in the field. Lehrer calls this second type of information social information ((Lehrer 1990)) – and we call it reputation, i.e. social information that comes with an evaluative stance.
To illustrate how this social information might be used for epistemic purposes, Lehrer uses the so-called “expert dilemma” as a scenario. The expert dilemma describes the frequently encountered situation in which a decision has to be made despite the fact that evidence for answering a question is inconsistent and different experts recommend different options. An example would be whether or not to release a new medication or vaccine before all clinical trials are completed when facing the threat of an epidemic. The basic question of Lehrer & Wagner ((Lehrer and Wagner 1981)) is the following: If scientific dissent is prevailing, but suspension of judgment is not an option, how should the conflicting information be used to reach a consensual conclusion? “Consent on the reputation of the experts in order to decide on the issue” could be the motto of their approach. Social information is used here as a crucial factor to decide on content information.
Using reputation as a decisive factor for factual matter rests upon the assumption that each expert in a certain community might be more or less reliable or competent with respect to the specific question at stake. If that is the case, it would most rational to include each expert’s answer weighted by his competence regarding the issue. And the best way to assess the competence of each expert would be to use the aggregated reputation judgment of all other experts because they are most likely in the best position to judge the competence of their peers.
Lehrer & Wagner develop a quite complex mathematical model that describes an iterative and collective process to reach quantitative values for the reputation of each scientist ((Lehrer and Wagner 1981)). The basic idea however, is quite simple. The first step in this model consists in each expert giving a weight to all other experts summarizing all his information about the other’s expertise and reliability concerning the issue at stake, in other words: he gives a quantitative indicator of what he considers to be the reputation of the scientist with respect to topic at hand. In a second step, the average reputation values for each scientist are calculated with a specific algorithm and then laid open. Then in the second round, each expert has to reassess the reputation value he has given to all other members of the community, i.e. she has the chance to revise his or her judgment taking into account the average weights which the other members of the community have given to their fellows. Similarly to Delphi-studies in the social sciences, this process is then ideally repeated until finally a consensual weight for each member of a community is achieved ((Linestone and Turoff 2002)).
The idea is that, if you are less secure about the reputation of a certain researcher, you might tend more towards the group average in your second vote. If you are very sure about the reputation of someone, however, you will not let yourself be influenced by this average. If everyone acts this way, that is considered to be most rational, then the consensus that is finally achieved is considered to be the most rational consensus. Crucially, once these consensual weights are achieved, they can be applied to answering the question of concern by weighting each member’s vote on the issue with their consensual personal weight of reputation.
So, what should be obvious is that reputational cues, i.e. social information about other people that is evaluative, are being used – and that they are useful. Clearly, not all epistemic usage of reputation cues has to follow such a formal method. Quite on the contrary, ratings and other reputational tools might be used in a variety of different ways on the Web and our everyday life more generally. Nonetheless, Lehrer & Wagner’s model delivers a clear example of the potential that reputation understood as social information from an evaluative stance, can have for epistemic tasks ((Lehrer and Wagner 1981)).

4: Reputational Tools on the Web

What the Web makes possible today is an algorithmic treatment of methods of gathering social information to extract knowledge. Ratings and rankings on the Web are the result of collective human registered activities with artificial devices. However, the control of the heuristics and techniques that underlie this dynamics of information may be out of sight or incomprehensible for the users who find themselves in the very vulnerable position of relying on external sources of information through a dynamic, machine-based channel of communication whose heuristics and biases are not under their control. Thus, the reputational tools that are proliferating on the Web should be scrutinized by epistemically responsible users who do not want to accept too naïvely the outcome of a process they do not control.
The role of these reputational tools to filter information is getting more and more central in our Web-based epistemic practices ((Origgi 2009), (Origgi 2007)). And even more explicitly, we state that those systems that embody an access to others’ judgments and rankings are rapidly outperforming, in terms of reliability, the random aggregation of multiple judgments and preferences on which many systems were based, as it is shown by the growing impact of the Web 2.0 on our epistemic practices. A growing number of examples of architectures on the Web show how these rankings work to produce new arrangements of information.
The Web 2.0 has provided the underlying networking structure to share ranked preferences. If you take the Web of the early years of 2000, one of the main feature that attracted much attention and criticism was the possibility to "customize" information for each user in order to fit each one's special needs and purposes of navigation. The endless potential of re-organization of the new, dynamic, information architectures based on the aggregation of chunks of contents according to specific rules (in contrast with the rigid tree-structures of the first-generation of web pages) opened the opportunity to create and organize "content on demand". News websites, online stores, search-engines, etc thus started to provide "My-" features to the users, that is, easily arranged customized pages with targeted news and other information for the users, personalized lists of products, personalized recommendations etc. This gave rise to a series of positive expectations and negative warnings, such as the risk of neglecting other people's points of views and perspectives by concentrating only on personally relevant information (cf. (Sunstein 2002)). Now, thanks to the social Web, these systems are evolving into systems of shared preferences, in which people can rely on someone else's preferences and ranking to construct their own categorization of information. Examples of this preferences-sharing are website such as Del.icio.us in which you can share your bookmarks with other people, or Flickr, in which, for each uploaded photo, not only you can see who uploaded it, but also who are the profiles that added it among their favorite pictures. Combining information about who comments on an image, who adds it as favorite, who tags it and how, Flickr now provides a new feature for browsing images: interestingness, http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/ which is an example of preference-based tools of categorization. As a Flickr user, I can decide to generate new categories of contents on the basis of an interestingness scale. A new category of the most interesting images on Flickr today is thus generated by sorting others' preferences. The success of this "fluid" way of constructing concepts and categories may depend also on the fact that it matches our cognitive capacities: it has been shown by cognitive psychologists (cf. (Barsalou 1995)) that concepts and mental categories are flexibly constructed in context.
In this perspective, the EC project LiquidPublication, (http://project.liquidpub.org/) in which both authors are involved, aims at developing "liquid" architectures for producing, accessing and gathering scholarly information on the Web. Take for example the very concept of an academic journal: it is a selection of content based on a series of criteria of categorization: ISBN number, date of issue, etc. What we are working at in this project is a model of "Liquid Journal" which easily allows people to create selections of papers, articles, blog entries as a "My-journal" and then share them on the Web. One can imagine that, with the diffusion of such a model, the very category of "academic journal", or "journal issue" will be re-created by this particular form of information sharing, in which a user X can "conceptualize" a journal issue as for example: "all the content that the user Y is selecting in her journal". Here again, preferences of a user can be used by other people to re-organize information in a creative way. Virological examples of information diffusion based on a Twitter-logic of followers and leaders may be another example worth mentioning of reputational tools that create new categories of information.
Although the information-dense environment provided by the Web is the obvious locus in which examples bloom, we do not think that our analysis should be restricted to the case of the Web: in many other domains where information about the items at stake is very costly or difficult to obtain, reputational cues become an unavoidable way of organizing knowledge. Different cultural domains such as wine labeling systems and academic citation systems are based on rating devices that classify the underlying information by evaluating it (see (Origgi 2007), (Origgi 2009)).
5: Epistemic Injustices: On the Dangers of Using Social Information for Epistemic Purposes
The model of rational consensus as well as the Web applications that we have introduced are clearly examples of how reputation can be used to decide on content information, resp. on how social and content information might be productively merged to achieve better epistemic results. However, where there is use, there also is potential misuse. And in the case of reputational cues, these dangers might be inherent in the very concept of reputation as the “recognition by other people of some characteristic or ability” ((Merriam-Webster-Online-Dictionary 2009)).
More precisely there are two threats. First of all, the use of reputation to assess content can be epistemically beneficial while being morally questionable. This problem already becomes obvious in the first example we chose to open this article: Hawthorne’s A-shaped scarlet piece of tissue. Although classifying someone as a sinner, hero or drunkard – or as an expert, layperson or lobbyist - based on some cues might prove epistemically useful in certain situations, we would have to decide whether we are willing to pay the moral price of possible discrimination that comes with such stereotypical evaluation. More generally, once social information is taken into account to rate the quality of content, the door is open for social biases, prejudices and discrimination, which are as prevalent on the Web as in the societies that have developed and maintained it. These problems are not new and have long been identified for science and other epistemic fields by feminist epistemologists. In addition to raising awareness about these problems, various scholars have also developed tools and strategies to counter these epistemic injustices ((Fricker 2007), (Scheman 2001), (Alcoff 2001)). Miranda Fricker for instance distinguishes between testimonial and hermeneutic injustices as two instances in which someone is wronged in his capacity as a knower based on his social position. According to her “testimonial injustice occurs when prejudice causes a hearer to give a deflated level of credibility to a speaker’s word, whereas hermeneutic injustice “[...] occurs at a prior stage, when a gap in collective interpretative resources puts someone at an unfair disadvantage when it comes to making sense of their social experience” ((Fricker 2007) 1). Clearly, both forms of injustice are easily conceivable when reputational cues and their epistemic usage are not critically reflected upon and kept open for constant scrutiny and revision.
The second problem concerns the limits of the epistemic usefulness of this type of information itself. The first question is how you calculate the reputation of someone else in the first place, resp. which proxies you use. Do you use the person’s academic development, his institutional background, some form of communal evaluation, such as ratings or recommendations that he has received from other people as a cue to assess someone’s reputation? Do you rely on your own experience with her? On some indicator of the quality of his former research? On her track record of different academic achievements? Her H-index or impact factor? Which of these proxies are valid and which are not? The second crucial questions concerns the stability of reputation, resp. the way you deal with evidence that supports or contradicts your view on the reputation of others. When, under which conditions and up to which point of counter-evidence or you warranted in keeping your reputation value for someone or something? Clearly, these issues as crucial as they are cannot be answered given the brevity of this paper. However, if we want to explore the utility of reputation for epistemic purposes, we have to analyze the potentials and possible dangers very carefully. That reputation is used to assess information and epistemic claims goes without saying – and it comes with benefits as much as with problems. So the question should be less how to avoid using reputation as epistemic tools, but rather how to use them wisely.
6: Conclusion
Our preliminary analyses indicate that ratings and reputational tools in knowledge organization have epistemological, cognitive, practical as well as ethical implications. From an epistemological point of view, a priority of rating tools and reputational scales over classification leads to a re-conceptualization of the “facts/values” dichotomy. Another epistemologically pressing question concerns the validity of reputation mechanism as epistemological tools. How epistemically warranted is the use of these tools? Is it just based on blind and imperfect heuristics that have a serendipitous effect on our search of information, or is it possible to conceive second order epistemic criteria that allow us to pry apart “good” and “bad” practices of trust and reliance on these reputational metrics?
For cognition, this implies to take into account a pragmatically oriented way of creating concepts and categories (i.e. the most “valued”, items preferred by “x”), as it has already been argued in some works in cognitive psychology (cf. (Barsalou 1995)). From a practical point of view, this perspective may help to rethink the bottom up/top down distinction in designing categories by suggesting ways in which rating systems can serve as middle-ground categorizations that are neither imposed from above, not completely generated from spontaneous tagging. Rather they are user-driven meta-categorizations that inform the users.
The ethical and political aspects become obvious when taking feminist critique concerning the danger of epistemic injustices into account. Miranda Fricker’s emphasis of the danger of testimonial and hermeneutic injustices are particularly pressing when reputational cues are used uncritically. It is especially when reputation mechanisms become automatized in algorithms, there is a clear danger that epistemic injustices are inscribed in and reinforced by technology. Such an entanglement between ethics and epistemology in information design has been shown for trust-aware recommender systems((Simon 2008; Simon 2009)). Different trust metrics not only yield to different search results, but that they also correspond to different views concerning the organization as well as even more fundamentally the very concept of knowledge. Moreover, different trust metrics value different people differently and depending on the algorithm, some users are automatically silenced and “sorted out” ((Bowker and Star 1999)), while others “count”. Thus, when developing reputational tools, the possibility of injustices has to be accounted for.
This example suggest that a purely epistemological or cognitive analysis of using reputation for epistemic purposes will not suffice for knowledge organization: the goals and standards for knowledge organization and epistemic practices have to be discussed and decided upon taking political and ethical considerations into account. Reputational tools open up new possibilities for knowledge organization, but they also bring with them their own problems. Raising awareness for the values as well as the dangers of using reputational cues for epistemic assessment will be the major goal of our talk.

References

Alcoff, L. M. (2001). On Judging Epistemic Credibility: Is Social Identity Relevant? Engendering Rationalities. N. Tuana and S. Morgen. Albany, SUNY Press: 53-80.
Barsalou, L. (1995). Flexibility, structure and linguistic vagary in concepts. Theories of Memory. A. F. Collins, S. E. Gathercole, M. A. Conway and P. E. Morris, Psychology Press, Taylor and Francis.
Bowker, G. C. and S. L. Star (1999). Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences. Cambridge, MIT Press.
Fricker, M. (2007). Epistemic Injustice. Power and the Ethics of Knowing. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Lehrer, K. (1990). Metamind. Oxford, Claredon Press.
Lehrer, K. and C. Wagner (1981). Rational Consensus in Science and Society. Dordrecht, Reidel.
Linestone, H. A. and M. Turoff (2002). The Delphi Method: Techniques and Applications, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company.
Merriam-Webster-Online-Dictionary (2009). Reputation. Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary.
Origgi, G. (2007). Wine epistemology: The role of reputational and rating systems in the world of wine. Questions of Taste. B. Smith. Oxford, Oxford University Press: 183-197.
Origgi, G. (2009). Designing wisdom through the web. The passion of ranking. Collective Wisdom. J. Elster and H. Landermore. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Scheman, N. (2001). Epistemology Resuscitated: Objectivity as Trustworthiness. Engendering Rationalities. N. Tuana and S. Morgen. Albany, SUNY Press: 23-52.
Simon, J. (2008). Knowledge and Trust in Epistemology and Social Software/ Knowledge Technologies. Culture and identity in knowledge organization: Proceedings of the Tenth International ISKO Conference. C. Arsenault and J. T. Tennis. Montréal, Canada, Würzburg: Ergon: 216-221.
Simon, J. (2009). MyChoice & Traffic Lights of Trustworthiness: Where Epistemology Meets Ethics in Developing Tools for Empowerment and Reflexivity. Proceedings of the 8th International Conference of Computer Ethics, Corfu, Nomiki Bibliothiki.

Robinson 2009 - Perché è davvero difficile scomparire

Tutti i diritti riservati. Scritto per il supplemento Robinson 2009 - Il Sole 24 Ore


Fuggire, godersi la calma del non essere per qualche tempo, come fare, cosa c’è di veramente difficile nel lasciarsi dimenticare ? Chiedete a qualsiasi pensionato, a qualsiasi puerpera incarcerata in casa dal lattante, a qualsiasi malato costretto al letto per mesi, di come in realtà sia facile cadere nell’oblio, essere piano piano dimenticati non solo dagli altri esseri umani, ma anche dalle macchine.

Mi riconnetto dopo mesi sul mio blog e scopro che la procedura di connessione è cambiata. Vado sul sito della banca, e, a causa della mia lunga assenza, la password non è più valida : devo chiederne un’altra per lettera e aspettare la risposta cartacea. Apro la posta elettronica e scopro che l’operatore del mio cellulare è stato acquisito da un altro. Ora devo cambiare i codici, altrimenti il mio abbonamento non varrà più. Esausta, cerco di connettermi al mio sito preferito di social networking per riprendere i contatti con gli amici. Ma il sito non c’è più : si è trasformato in un servizio di vendita online, i miei contatti sono stati inglobati nel database insieme agli altri, anonima lista a cui inviare promozioni…

Insomma, la nostra presenza forzata al mondo è caduca : le nostre tracce virtuali incerte, abbozzate ed eliminabili molto più facilmente di quanto crediamo. Se non ci pensiamo noi a farlo, ci pensa comunque la mano invisibile del ciberspazio e le spietate leggi del mercato.

Cosa c’è di così complicato allora nello scomparire ? In un romanzo di Pascal Quignard, Villa Amalia, da cui il regista Benoît Jacquot ha tratto l’anno scorso un bel film omonimo con Isabelle Huppert e Maya Sansa, la protagonista, Ann Hidden, decide di far perdere le sue tracce. Pianista e compositrice di successo, con una vita apparentemente riuscita a Parigi, Ann organizza con molta determinazione la sua fuga: mette rapidamente in vendita la sua casa, annulla i concerti, chiude i conti in banca, apre una casella postale a nome di un vecchio amico di scuola, ritrovato per caso proprio la sera della sua risoluzione a scomparire. Parte in treno, getta via il telefonino, studia un percorso tortuoso, attraverso diversi paesi d’Europa. Sbarca così a Ischia, dopo molto girovagare, già assuefatta a quella nuova vita, al silenzio opaco di quel mondo estraneo che non la riconosce più, affitta una casa isolata, con una meravigliosa vista sul mare, ricomincia pian piano ad essere, a tessere una tela intorno a sé nuova, diversa, ma anche più umana e sincera, come se quella rottura di sé, quel desiderio di fuga repentino e inspiegabile, sia stato un modo di riscoprirsi, di scendere a patti infine con un’autenticità di sé stessa che nella sua vita parigina ormai regolata dalle aspettative degli altri le era irraggiungibile. Ann Hidden, nascondendosi si ritrova e si apre a sé stessa. Il suo coraggio, il coraggio di qualsiasi Robinson, è trovare la forza di rompere lo specchio in cui gli altri ci riflettono, disattendere le aspettative routinarie, le lente e rassicuranti induzioni che il mondo intorno a noi ci getta addosso sottoforma di richieste di fiducia.

Tradire la fiducia di essere domani la stessa persona di oggi agli occhi degli altri è il vero passo difficile per ogni Robinson, come lo fu per quel signor Stevenson, fatto di sogni, che dalla sua fredda Scozia ritrovò il tesoro di sé stesso a Samoa.