On April 23, during the first round of the French presidential elections,
nearly one in three did not go to vote.
This is not an isolated case: in the legislative elections that followed,
it’s more than one out of two young people who did not participate.
There are many factors to explain that
and I will focus on only one of them.
My generation, she grew up with Internet, Wikipedia, social networks,
a mobile phone that makes GPS,
camera, agenda, taxi service on demand
or marriage agency.
She also grew up with the idea that we will probably have
in the near future, robots that will work in our place,
autonomous cars,
or drones that can deliver pizzas,
before we even think of ordering them.
And at the same time as all that, this generation, she also grew up
with a political system that has not changed so much in the last century.
A slow and rigid political system on its functioning,
subject to many forms of conflict of interest
and primary power games that skew decisions.
A system that spends an incredible amount of energy and money
in elections that often look more like a bad reality show
than a real debate of ideas.
And which absolutely does not encourage the different candidates
to tell the truth, or to acknowledge their mistakes.
At a time when we all vote, every day on the Internet,
through our clicks, our likes, our shares, our retweets,
our comments, our petitions …
I do not know you, but I think it’s crazy
that our main lever on politics,
what governs our life in common,
it is to slip a piece of paper in a box
once every five years!
Technology, social research and some examples around the world
allow us to consider other ways of working.
For example, the project democracy.earth aims to
to put in place technological tools
necessary for the establishment of a liquid democracy.
Liquid democracy is a system
in which one can give one’s opinion directly,
on topics that interest us,
but also delegate our voices to friends,
intellectuals, people we trust,
if for example we do not have time to learn about a subject
or that we do not feel we have the necessary expertise.
We can also rely on more concrete things
and who have already proven themselves.
Like Switzerland, where for more than a century now,
the system in place at the national level is a democracy
that can be described as semi-direct.
The people can, through petitions,
request the organization of an optional referendum
which makes it possible to repeal a law that has just been passed by the parliament
and to which a majority would be opposed.
But it also allows citizens to propose new laws
that they write themselves, through the referendum of popular initiative.
We could say that this kind of systems, it leads straight to chaos.
That everyone will vote according to their personal interests,
and that after a while we end up with a government
which allows its citizens to pay their taxes in hugs and kisses!
Or where an employee can dismiss his boss!
It may not be such bad ideas as that …
But that’s another debate !
The fact is that the Swiss, in recent years,
refused two weeks of additional paid leave,
and a basic income that would have guaranteed them a comfortable salary for life,
without the need to work.
Sounds crazy, no?
Some studies in Europe seem to go in this direction,
showing that the places where we offer the most opportunities
to get involved in political life
know better informed citizens,
and who make more thoughtful decisions.
Finally, we can rely on citizen initiatives,
such as the website “Parliament and Citizens”,
which offers MPs a platform to organize citizen consultations
and thus allow us all to participate in writing,
and the discussion of the law.
I am among those who think that if we want today
see emerge bold ideas,
more able to respond to the great challenges of the 21st century,
we will have to think seriously
to change the framework in which they evolve.
And if we find the time today to make selfie mirrors,
and connected forks, forks … connected …
I have no doubt that we can find some time
to update our institutions.
But one of the biggest challenges for all of us on this issue,
it is that of information.
In a democracy, where the people are sovereign,
information has a major impact on public opinion,
and therefore an influence on the power itself.
Today our information, it mainly has two channels.
The first is the traditional media:
the print media, whether digital or paper,
television or radio.
These traditional journalists, they are often criticized
a certain lack of independence and thus of neutrality.
We could talk about the fact
only in countries like France or the United States,
the majority of the major media is owned
by a handful of multimillionaires and large groups.
But we’re actually learning a lot more
when we are interested in the economic context
in which these companies operate.
Advertising drives for example a lot of these media
not to compete for subscribers,
but to get attention time.
Or as the former CEO of TF1 would say: “available brain time”.
The “free” online press does not measure the value of an article
how much he helped to enlighten us, to inform us,
but its number of clicks and shares.
In this context, why talk
a citizen group that would try to renovate politics,
when to talk about the latest scandal in the privacy of a famous politician
gives us a lot more attention time?
Why talk about things that are going well?
Associations that have been advancing causes for years,
when the best way to secure income
remains to play on fear, sensationalism,
or even leaving the latest rumors exclusively,
not to check well if they are well founded,
or what impact their revelation might have.
Recently, you may have seen passing in the press
a whole series of articles warning us
against the dangerous decline of the French intelligence quotient.
Some of the press had fun
to explain to us why we were all more and more stupid.
Except that when we read the four little pages
of the study on which all these articles are based
to justify a drop of 4 points in the French IQ,
it is quickly realized that it was conducted on a tiny sample
only 79 people, aged between 30 and 63,
which do not represent at all a representative panel of the French population.
The study itself warns,
stating that these data need to be cross-checked and re-analyzed
before you can draw that kind of conclusion.
The core of the information, the data,
always has a broadcast context and a way to be presented
to which we must pay attention.
If the traditional media are not necessarily neutral,
Basically, it is not very serious.
It’s not a big deal because it’s not what they’re asked to do.
What they are asked to do is to be critical and picky.
If the goal of the media is to enlighten us
and to advance the opinions and the debates in the sense of the common good,
so it is important that they can take a stand.
It is up to us to verify that this position is argued and sourced.
Healthy media should always mention potential conflicts of interest
to which he exposes himself by publishing an article,
and how he conducts his investigations
should always be as transparent as possible.
Our second channel of information is citizen journalism.
Blogs, online video platforms,
but also our posts to all on social networks.
This citizen journalism, it is often criticized
to be a generator of fake news – in French, haunting,
in which we have all fallen.
If the parodic press shows us the funny and offbeat side,
while playing an educational role,
false information,
and more generally the little journalistic rigor,
can have very negative consequences for public debate.
For example, it is extremely difficult
to have a constructive debate on the Internet
about important topics like vaccines,
without that a whole series of articles,
based on information many times denied, do not reappear.
This citizen journalism, it is also criticized as often
to feed what are called information bubbles.
A social network like Facebook, whose commercial purpose
is to keep us as long as possible on their pages,
has every interest in showing us content that is in the interest of our interests,
but also our opinions.
And that, it closes us little by little to the different opinions of ours.
So we have traditional media on one side
who sometimes struggle to leave their political and economic frameworks,
on the other citizen journalists
which produce abundant but often poorly verified information.
And in the middle of all this, there are all of us,
who consume information on a daily basis.
We and our attention time, always shorter.
We and our many biases including the confirmation bias,
this mechanism by which one can show 99 factual articles
attesting to global warming to someone who does not believe in it,
he will always retain only the one and only article
who is going in his direction.
Why do you want to hear the truth, when you can hear you’re right?
We know that information must be verified.
But apart from the journalists whose job it is,
we do not all have time to cross our sources,
and check every number for every topic you read.
And yet …
Earlier, I told you that my generation, she grew up with Wikipedia.
The strength of Wikipedia is to have managed to create a collaborative platform
on which is the multiplicity and diversity of contributions
that create some form of neutrality.
And the majority of studies on the subject agree to say:
Wikipedia, at least on the main topics,
is at least as reliable as any other encyclopedia,
especially because it systematically asks for sources.
And if we tried to apply the same principles,
but with our daily information?
Almost a year ago, I started working on a project,
CaptainFact, whose goal is to create and experiment with digital tools
that could help us consume better,
and better digest information.
The first of these tools, it allows us for example,
when watching a video on the Internet,
to have information that is superimposed to confirm, invalidate,
in any case to source what we are seeing.
Another tool, still in development,
would do the same thing but with articles,
having the opportunity to see directly
the points to pay attention to,
with links to potentially conflicting sources.
Finally, the idea is to gather all this information, provided by the community,
on a platform that allows us to debate in a much more precise way
than today’s different comment systems allow
by working step by step, argument by argument.
And no longer by treating all the contents of a single block.
We can agree with some points and disagree with others.
All with game mechanics, such as reputation or medals,
in order to more easily make up quality content.
A sourced commentary reports for example on CaptainFact
always more points than just a comment of opinion.
If all this can help us, a tool rarely solves all problems.
Wikipedia, despite its many qualities, is still suffering from publishing wars.
There is for example “astroturf”:
large companies, for example in the pharmaceutical field,
put in place important financial means, to influence pages,
for example to erase negative aspects of their products.
If we want tomorrow to build more participative societies,
there is a job that nothing and no one will be able to do for us.
That of developing and hardening our critical minds.
And for that, there are a few things
which we can pay attention to everyday.
Accept that there is often not in our political opinions of absolute truth,
since these are based on our personal interpretations
what should be freedom, equality,
and more generally living together.
Let’s follow the media, and debate with people,
to the different opinions of ours, in order to pierce the bubble.
When we debate, always attack ideas, not people.
Criticize the game, not the players.
Let’s be skeptical of everything, do not believe without proof.
Of course, I’m not talking about religion here.
Let us beware of the political hooligan that lies dormant in each of us.
You know, it’s the one that pushes us to click on “Share”,
while we have not read the article yet.
We did it all.
Finally, let’s consider having to pay
to ensure the independence of the media that is worth it.
Or in any case always keep in mind
that free information is never really free.
Someone else paid for us.
Thank you.
(Applause)
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