Look at the info. Between technique, power and democracy, histories and futures of the media

History of the media, signals of smoke to social networks and afters, by Jacques Attali is published by Fayard.

franceinfo: What do you think of the decision of Twitter and Facebook to censor Donald Trump?

Jacques Attali: It was indicative of a crisis situation to see a private company deny the President of the United States his voice. Donald Trump had to be censored but it would have been necessary before social networks accepted to be considered as public services or at least obey rules. This is one of the challenges of tomorrow.

Trump is inseparable from lies, Fake News, and one of the challenges of your book is to show that they are integral to media history.

Yes, for 5 to 6000 years there are! Obviously when the media no longer reach 500 readers but 500 million people, it becomes much more important …

And there, we are at the heart of a fundamental notion of your book, power. The power of one who holds and disseminates information for his own purposes …

Having information, disseminating it, is the essence of power. Hence the fact that when information is disseminated, when it is no longer the sole act of the prince, the generals, the Pope, the monks … When the merchants decide to sell the information, they open a box of Pandora. Information no longer belongs only in secret to those who need it, it is becoming a tool that touches more and more people who want to have information and therefore ask for the freedom to be informed. Democracy took hold as a consequence of freedom of the press, and not the other way around.

I found the great reader of Marx in your book and also your desire to also make the history of the media a history of techniques …

Marx is for me one of the greatest thinkers of humanity. The world is indeed primarily dictated by technology. The wheel, the horse, the writing, the printing press, the telephone, the radio, the television, the rotary press were decisive. And then, from the 1980s, the Internet and soon social networks. And today, in submarines, new, even more powerful tools …

We have the feeling that the technique which yesterday freed information today locks up citizens …

Yes, social media is great, but when it’s not regulated, and the reader no longer has the means to distinguish what’s true from what’s wrong, then it’s rubbish. Hence the extreme importance of education.