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02 April 2024

RESURRECTING THE OFF BUTTON

Published by Diego HIDALGO | N° 212 - Agritech & Digital, law, regulation and democracy

Up until about fifteen years ago, most of the devices that populated our daily lives were equipped with a little button that, without us realizing it, granted us a certain amount of power over them. This wastheOffbutton. If it still exists in theory,its use has at least fallen into disuse, reflecting a hyper-connected civilization, and perhaps a certain loss of control over our own relationship with digital technology. Many of the challenges that digital and algorithmic technology poses to humanity today are the consequence of this deterioration in our ability to maintain an ascendancy over it.


THE THREE AGES OF DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY Looking back over the past half-century - the period that corresponds to our progressive access to what we call "digital" technology - we can distinguish three successive stages that evoke the three states of matter: solid, liquid and gaseous. First, "solid" technology, marked by the personal computer. Like a solid, it's easy for humans to manipulate and move towards or away from at will: most of the time, we'd turn on our computer with a specific intention,...
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Diego HIDALGO
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