Rencontre improbable entre von Foerster et Snowden

TL;DR

This paper explores how von Foerster's conjecture and Snowden's revelations shed light on the influence of ICT on social dynamics, manipulation, and democratic principles in digital environments.

Contribution

It revisits von Foerster's conjecture in the context of modern recommendation systems and empirical evidence, linking it to societal impacts and governance issues.

Findings

Empirical evidence supports von Foerster's conjecture in online social influence.

Recommendation mechanisms increase inter-individual influence and susceptibility to manipulation.

ICT significantly impacts societal governance and democratic principles.

Abstract

Although ICT have created hope for a shared pluralistic world, democratic principles are far from being respected in the public digital environment, and require a detailed knowledge of the laws by which they are governed. Von Foerster's conjecture is one of the early theoretical results that could help to understand these laws. Although neglected since a long time, the advent of the overlying layer of recommendation and ranking mechanisms which is progressively occupying the Web has given empirical evidences of this conjecture, which predicts the consequences of increasing inter-individual influences on social dynamics and the susceptibility of these latter to manipulation. With both von Foerster's conjecture and the Snowden revelations in the background, we analyse the impact of ICT on human societies and their governance, in view of the fact that they have a massive impact on the way in which people influence each other in their tastes and actions.