Alain Damasio, an emblematic figure of French science fiction and critical thinker of our time, completed an artistic residency at Villa Albertine in San Francisco. This immersion at the heart of Silicon Valley allowed him to meet numerous tech actors and observe from within the mechanisms of this mythical valley. From this experience came “La vallée du silicium” (The Silicon Valley), a work where the author offers a sharp perspective through several chronicles on the contemporary technological world.

Beyond simple testimony, Damasio develops a fundamental critique that questions our relationship with technology and its consequences on our humanity. This analysis raises an essential question: does technology liberate us or enslave us? Between programmed dystopia and potential for emancipation, Damasio’s work invites me to profound reflection on the choices that will determine our future.

The fundamental critique: When tech diminishes us

One of the central elements of Damasio’s analysis rests on the idea that contemporary technology “limits” us as human beings. This limitation operates through several pernicious mechanisms that progressively transform our relationship with the world and ourselves.

The first of these mechanisms concerns the shift from power to force. Where we once knew how to do things ourselves, developing skills and real autonomy, technology now proposes that we “make things happen.” This apparently harmless transition actually represents a fundamental dispossession of our capacities for direct action on the world.

Paradoxically, tools meant to connect us actually create a new kind of isolation. Social networks perfectly illustrate this contradiction: they virtually assemble us while physically separating us. As Damasio points out:

“Social networks connect us, but they do not bind us. They assemble us, certainly, without ever achieving that we are together.”

This observation reveals the superficial nature of our digital bonds, which create the illusion of community without offering its true substance. Technology also tends to limit our mobility, both physical and intellectual, by confining us in algorithmic bubbles and controlled environments.

Reading Damasio’s analysis, a troubling impression emerges: humans seem to be progressively emptying themselves of their substance, their capacity to be, to act, to interact, to choose, to measure, to calculate. Technology, initially designed to allow us to do more and increase our productivity, actually produces the opposite effect. It weakens and enslaves us, making us dependent on systems we no longer master.

The pessimistic reading: Toward a dystopian future

Faced with this alarming observation, a first reading of Damasio’s book can lead us toward a particularly dark vision of our future. This pessimistic interpretation outlines the contours of a world where the progressive erasure of humanity becomes inevitable.

From this perspective, we are heading toward an unexciting future in which machines will progressively take power, relegating humanity to an increasingly marginal role. This vision immediately evokes the dystopian universes that have marked science fiction: a world like Terminator, where artificial intelligence ends up turning against its creators, or like Blade Runner, where the boundary between human and machine blurs until it questions the very nature of humanity.

This apocalyptic reading finds its legitimacy in observing current trends: increasing automation, growing dependence on algorithms, the progressive loss of our fundamental skills. Humans, in this view, become a simple cog in a technological system that surpasses them and ends up consuming them.

This interpretation, while understandable given the excesses observed in Silicon Valley, risks confining us to a posture of resignation or sterile rejection. It leads us to suffer technology rather than question and transform it.

An alternative reading: Emancipation through understanding

Yet, I see another reading of Damasio’s book, much more positive and constructive. This alternative approach recognizes that we are an integral part of the technological system, just like Damasio himself with his iPhone and Mac. Rather than denying this reality, it invites me to assume it in order to better transform it.

Making a blockage regarding technological innovation would be not only absurd but also contrary to our deep nature. As Damasio rightly reminds us, innovation is an integral part of our lives and our very essence:

“All technophobia is a farce, an anthropological impossibility. Humans are anthropologically creatures with slow development, laborious access to adulthood, principal neoteny and indisputable vulnerability, who therefore owe their survival in evolution to technique. Without it, no humanity subsists. Asserting that one is against technique therefore makes no sense except to add: right against.”

This fundamental quote sheds new light on our relationship with technology. Humans, by their very nature, are technical beings. Our survival and development have always depended on our ability to create and use tools, to develop techniques that compensate for our biological fragilities.

From this perspective, I consider that our salvation does not come through rejecting technology, but through our capacity to understand it and use it as a means of emancipation. The challenge then becomes developing cognitive capacities and appropriable knowledge that allow us to remain masters of our tools rather than becoming their slaves.

The challenge of our era: Choosing our relationship with technology

Faced with these two possible readings, I think the challenge of our era becomes clear: we must actively choose and construct our relationship with technology. This conscious and voluntary approach perhaps represents our last chance to avoid the drift toward enslavement that Damasio describes.

The first pillar of this approach consists of developing our cognitive capacities. Instead of letting algorithms think in our place, we must cultivate our critical spirit, our capacity for analysis and our intellectual autonomy. It involves understanding the mechanisms at work in the technologies we use, grasping their implications and limitations.

The second pillar rests on creating appropriable knowledge. Rather than passively suffering technological innovations, we must strive to understand them sufficiently to adapt them to our real needs. This implies moving from the position of simple consumer to becoming enlightened users, even active contributors.

Finally, the third pillar invites us to become actors rather than suffer. This means participating in debates about the technological orientation of our society, questioning the choices made in our name, and demanding that technology serve humans rather than the reverse.

This approach of conscious appropriation of technology requires constant effort in education and vigilance. It demands resisting the ease of total delegation while embracing the emancipatory potentialities of innovation.

Alain Damasio’s analysis in “La vallée du silicium” confronts me with a fundamental choice that will define the future of our humanity. Between the pessimistic reading of programmed enslavement and the optimistic vision of emancipation through understanding, it is our collective capacity to appropriate technology that will make the difference.

Damasio’s merit lies in his ability to alert us to current excesses while reminding us that we are not condemned to suffer them. His sharp critique of Silicon Valley does not constitute a call to reject technology, but rather an invitation to radically rethink our relationship with it.

I think the urgency of our era consists of emerging from passivity to become conscious actors of our technological destiny. This implies questioning, understanding, choosing and acting. Because as Damasio shows us, technology is neither good nor bad in itself: it is what we make of it.

This fascinating book deserves to be read and debated. It offers us the keys to essential reflection on the choices that will determine whether technology will liberate or chain us. I can only recommend that you read it, as much as I loved it.