Des abeilles et des

hommes
Mieux vivre ensemble sur
une planète limitée

Novembre 2010
Thanh Nghiem – Institut Angenius
6 Rue des Haudriettes 75003 Paris
Angenius
•
Incubator of projects: free and sustainable
•
Applied research: territorial ecology, collaborative Internet, collective
intelligence, human sciences
•
Pilots "in vivo"
•
Active networks: hackers, researchers, social VCs , corporate
innovation teams, amateurs professionnels
Sites : http://angenius.net, http://thanh-nghiem.fr
Living together (better) on One Planet
Can we solve the crisis ith pollination of ideas?


The imperative of change

Emerging solutions

Gateways for a free and sustainable world

… so what ?
1. The imperative of change

Planetary crisis on all fronts : ecological, economic, social, cultural,
values... Help!

What should I do?
 VISION
Footprinting our lifestyles

Energy Shared Shared

Food Transport Waste
& Water services infrastructure

Source : BioRegional - Adapté du rapport « Empreinte écologique du Sud Est de l’Angleterre », 2003, SEI
The footprint of distance
20% of world population = 80% of human footprint
Average meal = 3 000 km (Christmas 210 000 km)
Oil, "fossil slaves" hundreds million years old
Entropy of globalisation
Ageless myths
Unlimited growth
L'homme augmenté (enhanced human), Faust and
Prométhée in the lab?
The end of the world?


Theory of Collapse

Human resilience at smaller scale

What collapses: pyramids and power systems
There is no doom

"Tragedy of common goods"

Elinor Ostrom, Economy Nobel prize 2009 : sustainable management
of common goods (Common Pool ressources) does exist, based on
free, responsible and cooperative governance systems
2. Emerging solutions
Collective intelligence
Ethology: ants, bees, birds...

Principles : "the whole is more than the sum

of parties"
Analogy of jazz band or soccer team
Scaling up from 10 to 1000and more
CI principles: emergence, collaborative
model, holoptism, connecting object, learning
organisation
Connecting object: "miam-miam" object,
witch object, art object
Intelligence and individual emancipation

• From IQ to multiple intelligences

• Turing and the "thinking machine"
• 1 billion neurons, 100 000 synapses
• Jacotot, le maître ignorant (1818)
– Inter legere
– Nothing else but willingness to connect
– Key : intellectual emancipation

All intelligences are equal

Internet new territories

• Le choc des Titans

– #1 Google, #2 Facebook, #4 YouTube, #6 Wikipedia
– Google or Apple ?
• SAAS and cloud computing
• Web 2.0, "the machine is us"
• Free and DIY business model
A flagship, Wikipedia


6th web site worldwide

15 millions pages in 250 languages in 5 years

Organisational principles: knowledge ecosystem -
only 7 employees in 2008

Collective intelligence, doxa, verifiability

Not a big book on Internet, but a process

Learning to learn, e.g. teacher at Paris VIII
Google

• 90% market share in 8 years

• Value 160 mrd $
• Hegemony and monopolistic profits, le choc des
titans
• Cloud computing and SAAS
• From the oracle to Androïd
• Tomorrow "master of the world"? Enhanced
human, singularity
Ideas contagion
What is a cultural fact?

Laws of imitation (Taine, 1876), memes by Dawkins (1976)

Ideas contagion (Sperber, 1996) and cognitive sciences

Jung and Morin : collective fears, simple ideas or 50% understood

Storytelling and personal legends

Internet boom : social networks, theory of "small worlds"
Anthropology of Web 2.0
• Web 2.0, the machine is us/ing us
• An anthropological introduction to
YouTube
• Anti-teaching

• 200 000 vlogs of 3 minutes a day, 385 TV

channels
• 88% neew and original
• What is contagion? Fun, day-to-day
experiments, "this is me!"
• The rise of DIY and collaborative
consumption
 SOLUTION INNOVANTES
Stem cells of change
BedZED :a living lab of sustainable lifestyles
• A pioneering site 20 mn from London
• - 50% footprint, -90% energy, -15% household budget
• "Reduced metabolism" of site and inhabitants
Z² & OPL

Image courtesy Pelicano

 VISION
Optimising our territorial metabolism
Key: learning networks

Projet Z2 : Architecte Foster

Stem cell: Loos en Gohelle
A city repeatedly disastered: cope by ourselves or sink
The Caron Saga across more than a century
A long haul way anchored in real-life experiences, inheritage,
proximity and solidarity
From local to global, a regional and national pilot
The ”learning city" venture
Art object : Loos, the interpretation city
An oustanding strength of character
Départ à 7h, eau à 19°, beaucoup de monde
dans le canal. On est 330 au départ.
Sortie de l'eau en 1 H 06 pour les 3,8kms.
Vélo nickel, 29,2 de moyenne pour 180 KM
avec 1 600 m de dénivelé. 42,6 km, un
marathon en 4 h 29 et je termine sous les
12h (11 H 58), en 140ème position, Sur la
route était écrit à plusieurs reprises par
des "sages" NO PAIN, NO GAIN". 9 mois
d'entraînement, mais cela valait la peine !
(IRONMAN Cambrai, septembre 2009)
Les passeurs (gate opener)
• Hackers
• Proam
• Researchers-inventors of future
• New activists

perseverance, pleasure, sobriety

3. Gateways
How can we change?
#1. Rethink happiness and needs

• Happiness and state of flow

• Money doesn't buy happiness: e.g. loto
• Relative deprivation, status and hyperconsumption
• Taste and identity: Bourdieu, network sociology
• Diversity and culture : languages, cooking, biodiversity
Need to change our lifestyles
Dépenses des ménages
Source : INSEE, 2004 Taux d'équipement des ménages
%
Alimentation et boissons sans alcool 11 Source : INSEE, 2004
Alcool + tabac 2,5
Habits et chaussures 4 %
Logement + flux associés
Équipement du logement
19
4,5
TV 95
Transport 11 Frigo 99
Communications 2 Lave linge 92
Loisirs et culture 7
Hôtel restaurant 5 Téléphone fixe 87
Autres biens et services 8 Voiture 81
Santé 3
Autres biens non marchands Téléphone portable 70
Santé 10 PC 49
Education 7

• Teenagers spend 4 hours a day with a screen

• "Malbouffe" (badbooze) : obesity 30%, overweight
65% in rich countries, emerging countries catching
up (China, Latin America)
New citizen sensitivities

• Cultural creatives, lohas : 15, 25 ou 40% ?

• Thrift économy, edible city, eating for free
• Frugalistas, artisans du peu (craftsmen of few), slow movements
• 15-35 years old, individualistic citizen
– Equl rights, respect, solidarity
– Trust only in NGOs (85%)

Enlightened individualism, in connection with planetary

challenges, searching for equilibrium "à la carte"
An ageless search...

• Ancient wisdoms and philosophies, bouddhists, greeks... an

innovative appraoch combining neuro, psycho, philo, "hard" and
"soft", CCT, religions...
• Are we predetermined ? H =Bio+Context+Activities
• The elephant and the cornac, principle of improvement and
satisfaction
• Adversity and principle of adaptation
• Basic features, adaptation characteristics, personal story and
coherence

Source : l'hypothèse du bonheur, Jonathan Haidt

The rise of collaborative consumption

• Marketplaces: eBay, Craiglist

• Carsharing (Autolib), covoiturage, hiring P2P
• Alternative moneys: SOL, TAOA

• Collaborative lifestyles: people get together to share goods, time, spaces,

skilles, moneys, e.g. shared auctions on Internet, Coworking or Canteens
• Exchanging houses, gardens, nights at home, vacuum-cleaners, couches,
clothes... from the "age of access" to the "age of P2P consumption"?
• Motivation? Crisis, test the product, stop hyperconsumption, create
bounds, instant pleasure and stress reduction (Twitter and ocytocine)
• "The web brings us back to a business model centered on human factors.
This new economy will be entirely based on reputation. It's a cultural
revolution."

Source : Rachel Botsman et Roo Rogers, What’s mine is yours, the rise of collaborative
consumption et http://www.lemonde.fr/technologies/article/2010/09/24/la-montee-de-la-
consommation-collaborative_1415781_651865_1.html
#2 Explore autority
• Wesch
– The machine is us/ing us
– Anti-teaching, a simulation of the world
• Wikipedia, comeback of the doxa
• The wisdom of crowds: form Galton's cow to the
lost submarine, 3 keys
• Greenwashing
– 1100 abusive ads in 2008
– Who should we trust? 22% buy green products,
91% labels, 50% undistinct
• Real sense in day-to-day life
#3 Intelligent territories and learning
communities
From sustainable territories...
– Transition towns
– Cuba "sustainable agriculture was an obligation"
– AMAP, teleworking, dematerialisation
… to intelligent territories
– Tiers espaces, interstices (slits), entre-deux
– Human interfaces, calques (tracing paper),
géomatique
– Brownfield sites, creative welfare

Territory art-object of collective intelligence

What planet are we living on?

The world seen from China

 Territories and cultural representations

Maps and
imaginary
world 1595
 Territories and cultural representations

UFOs and
collective
unconscious
Dreaming territories

Jukurrpa (Dreaming) : 14 ancestors trails, 47 sacred sites, thousands
nales/sites. Clanic / totemic identity

Associative principle of memory, contextualisation,narrative rite, collective
performance. Space-time fusion, between virtual and reality. From 2.0 to web
3.0 ?
Dreaming trails

Voir http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFZq7AduGrc et http://www.decryptimages.net/index.php?

option=com_content&view=article&id=185:oz&catid=37:8-12ans&Itemid=78
#4 Society and gift

• MAUSS
• 75% of GDP
• Principles of abundance, reputation, reciprocity
• The artist and the businessman, the jam maker and
the death instinct
• Complementary moneys, time banks, e.g. UK, Japan,
Brazil

Gift founds the trading economy

The double face of gift

• Internal and external gift

• The myth of the creative genius: no need to be
Einstein to become a pro-am !

The creative process is open to everyone: gift as

an alternative to the principles of selfishness
and trading utilitarism
And now... so what ?

• Utopia ? "L'intelligence collective, ça n'existe pas"

• Multiple deadlocks: political, economical and financial, earn a living,
unemployment, strikes, etc...
• In fine: this is not for me
Des abeilles et des hommes
• Utopia?
About utopia
• Utopia across centuries
… discovery of new territories
… les Lumières, the liberal utopia - Kant, Bentham ?
… the railroad utopia, networks opening the territories
… NBIC and enhanced human
…Internet, learning communities, knowledge for all?
• After Berlin, are utopis dead ?TINA and Marx's comeback
Utopia is what keeps us on the move, even we never reach it
An absolute deterritorialisation (Deleuze)
A handful of crazy people... (Margaret Mead, Mark Twain)
Des abeilles et des hommes : leçons
Libé Le Figaro
• Ne s'appesantit pas sur • Comment des passeurs
les problèmes, invite à inventent une société Will to believe?
la collaboration différente en rapprochant • Key : innovation,
• La machine c'est nous savoirs et expériences :
• Libre accès à la
social bottom-up
Silicon Valley, Slow food,
connaissance, Nord et Sud processes
émancipation, partage, • Pollinisation des idées par le • Weak signals
IC Web, TICA, IC, société emergence,
• L'IC pour contrer la durable contagion
bêtise collective...Ca • Hacker Ethic, au-delà des
fait des millénaires
• Myth of
TIC : Socrate, Voltaire,
qu'on essaie, non ? Pas Rousseau, Galilée, tous ceux reconversion
grave, petit goût de qui osent quitter la routine
pensée magique plutôt • Innovation par la base, dans
agréable TIC, sport, surf
• Dans le DD, une • Audace, ex partner de McK,
discrète qui compte prof HEC, dirigeante Suez
Innovation, technologie, society ?

• From Antic ages to nowadays

• Mauss and la Sorbonne versus the Silicon Valley ?
• Short story of Bic, 2 CV and PC
Innovation and early adopters

Everett Rogers, Diffusion of innovations, 1962

Conclusion

Nothing's done, but if we do not move, nothing will change! Believe to
act or start acting to believe?

Key resides in the world of ideas – web 2.0, learning communities,
ideas contagion

Innovation is instantaneous and non predictible – social bottom-up
processes, passeurs, idea contagion

Need of an ecology of ideas AND stuff : free and sustainable