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Comment préserver l'intérêt général quand partout, l'argent semble remplacer le vote ? Depuis 7 ans, Larry Lessig dénonce sans relâche l'emprise des intérêts privés sur la démocratie américaine. Défenseur de la culture libre, c'est un pilier de la Silicon Valley. Professeur de droit et d'éthique à Harvard, conseiller d'Obama en 2008, fin constitutionnaliste, il connaît tous les rouages de Washington.

Now for the first time ever, we have a global plan of action - the Contract for the Web - created by experts and citizens from across the world to make sure our online world is safe, empowering and genuinely for everyone. We invite governments, companies, civil society organizations and individuals to back the Contract and uphold its principles and clauses. The Contract for the Web will become a strong mechanism for each party to be held accountable for doing their part to build an open and free web.

"« Tous droits réservés », « marque déposée », « brevet », « copie ou reproduction réservée à un usage strictement privé »... Dès que nous parlons « culture », nous sommes ramenés à la notion de propriété, en l'occurrence intellectuelle. Or, pour le courant de la culture Libre, les idées appartiennent à tous, un peu comme l'air et l'eau, nos besoins fondamentaux."

pour Nestlé l'eau n'est pas une ressource libre qui appartient à tous...

"Le partage des connaissances a trouvé dans internet son média d'élection. Avec le web, ce sont toutes les classes sociales, toutes les nationalités, tous les âges qui peuvent avoir accès à une somme d'informations gratuites et infiniment étendues. La circulation des connaissances n'est plus contrôlée par un petit nombre d'érudits : elle est dynamisée par la masse des internautes, sans restriction."

"Trackers are hiding in nearly every corner of today's Internet, which is to say nearly every corner of modern life. The average web page shares data with dozens of third-parties. The average mobile app does the same, and many apps collect highly sensitive information like location and call records even when they're not in use. Tracking also reaches into the physical world. Shopping centers use automatic license-plate readers to track traffic through their parking lots, then share that data with law enforcement. Businesses, concert organizers, and political campaigns use Bluetooth and WiFi beacons to perform passive monitoring of people in their area. Retail stores use face recognition to identify customers, screen for theft, and deliver targeted ads."

Just as the development of a biosphere can imply new evolutionary paths for a planet, maybe the development of a planetary Noosphere has its own concrete evolutionary implications, says Adam Frank.

Bruce Sterling is back this year. He has a remarkable ability to both celebrate dreams of the future - but also to challenge us with the problems he sees. That makes us more deeply consider what we are doing, why we are doing it - and the potential consequences of those decisions.

Jacques Vallée, one of the co-creators of the Internet, explains how the acceleration of technology in an increasingly connected society is producing "impossible futures" that range from rapid collapse of major banks to the emergence of complex new forms of political power, with the Internet as both a tool and a victim. Quotes: [The KGB] arrested people at random, and brought them to their headquarters; they had one question for them: "who do you know? who do you talk to, and what do you talk about?" If somebody wanted to do that today, they would not need to arrest people, all they need to do is look at Facebook, Twitter, Google; we give this information everyday to the network and the superstructure above the web. [nb: slightly shortened and simplified] The connected world provides many examples of "Impossible" futures that create a dissonance between existing cultures or belief systems... and the sudden emergence of new facts. The impact cannot be ignored.