#digital

#Virginia_Eubanks : « La dégradation de la #protection_sociale produit des expériences traumatiques »
▻https://lvsl.fr/virginia-eubanks-la-degradation-de-la-protection-sociale-produit-des-experience

Après Automating Inequality. How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police and Punish the Poor (2018), consacré à la façon dont, sous couvert d’objectivité, les technologies déployées dans l’État social américain excluent et surveillent les pauvres, la journaliste et universitaire Virginia Eubanks interroge aujourd’hui de manière plus intime l’organisation sociale du #soin. Entre recueil d’histoires orales de personnes […]

#Mirages_numériques #Société #Validisme

Psychological “effects” of #digital technology: a meta-analysis
▻https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1560516/full

— Permalink

#mentalhealth #anxiety #depression #stress #burnout #loneliness #isolation #insomnia #wellbeing #artificialintelligence #remotework #smartphone #socialmedia

Gender, technology, and resistance : An interview with #Caroline_Bassett

Professor Caroline Bassett MAE reflects on the promises and perils of digital technologies, and why critical feminist perspectives remain vital in shaping our technological futures.

What motivated you and your co-authors to write Furious: Technological Feminism and Digital Futures and what core issues does the book address regarding gender and digital culture?

“The cheap response to why we wrote Furious is that we were – separately and together – furious! What we were furious about was the way computational technology was being hailed as the future, and as a better future for all, when in fact many developments created problems for many, did little to improve lives, and often exacerbated inequalities. The claims made for technology endlessly revert to the universal; tech, we are told, is ‘for good’ – but the urgent question is always: good for whom, in what way, and where? These questions need to be continually revived in response to new waves of technological innovation, both in relation to industry hype and boosterish academic discourse.

We all recognise that computational technology is powerful, and that it brings genuinely new developments. But we don’t believe it resets the world or pushes old issues – such as centuries of gendered discrimination, intersecting with other inequalities – to the sidelines. The core issue of the book, then, concerns what we might term, following Berlant, the cruel optimism of promises made about digital developments, particularly as these promises pertain to gender and sexuality.

We are also furious about waste – the waste of work and opportunity. We’re not anti-computing in a global sense; we are against the waste, the misdirection, and the failure to weigh the costs and possibilities of computational technology against real measures: costs to specific groups, to particular regions, to the environment. We explored this especially in relation to future forms of life, visions of the future, and developments in biotech and health.

All of this could have produced a very dark book. But we also wanted, through writing, to suggest forms of disruption, possibility, engagement, and solidarity.”

In Furious, you highlight concerns about the problematic nature of much of the existing discourse on digital culture. Could you elaborate on what makes this writing problematic, and how it influences our understanding of the digital world?

“One real issue – already clear from the above perhaps – is the fake universalism that pervades much existing discourse on digital culture. Even when the dial shifts from ‘this stuff is good’ to ‘this stuff is evil,’ the assumption is still that it applies equally to everyone. Of course, that’s not the case: what is good for one group often exacerbates suffering and discrimination for another.

A second issue is the failure on digital culture to historicise. Somebody once said that every generation believes its own technology is exceptional – that it breaks through old barriers and rules, even disrupting earlier possibilities for resistance. In short, that it changes the order of things and determines the future. If you believe this, then history, context, previous injustices and inequalities all become irrelevant in the face of the so-called new. The only thing that matters is the present moment and the possibilities it generates for the future. This kind of short-termism produces a demand to develop technologies to safeguard “future people,” while overlooking the threats, possibilities, and discriminations of contemporary computational culture as a mode of informational capitalism. And because it refuses to recognise the past, it ends up entirely trapped in the present.”

How do digital technologies, particularly artificial intelligence, both reinforce and challenge existing gender biases? Are there examples where AI has either perpetuated stereotypes or been utilised to promote gender equity?

“Of course, there are many – and often notorious – examples of how big data has perpetuated existing gender and racial biases; AI bots that became Nazis, or image systems that consistently made doctors male and nurses female. The rise of large language models (today’s AI, if we accept the term) has amplified some of these issues, producing new problems and at larger scales.

It’s obvious why and how language models are gender biased: they learn from us. Moreover, they have no bodies to ground their assumptions – they are pure discourse. This is partly why they are also highly normative. Homogenisation, the tendency of LLMs to narrow discourse and reproduce the canonical, means dominant ideas are likely to become more powerful and ubiquitous, and oppositional ones less so. I don’t think this is inevitable, but the direction of funding is certainly pushing us that way.

On the other hand, there are many ways to use AI tools, and artists, teachers, activists, and students are already doing so. Still, the environmental cost of these technologies is urgent and must be addressed.”

Your career transitioned from technology journalism to academia. How has this journey shaped your approach to studying digital cultures and gender?

“My time as a tech journalist had a big influence on how I understand and study digital cultures, and questions of gender and intersectional discrimination. When I first started, I worked on a tech business magazine and saw how far vapourware and industry hype – what we might call “industrial imaginaries” – often diverged from the reality of what was actually made or what tech could do. I was also acutely aware of how male this world was, and watched digital technologies being “gendered masculine,” (to quote Judy Wajcman) – from how they were designed to how they were marketed.

So, from the beginning of my academic life, I was sceptical about promises that technology would deliver universal benefits. Later, working for magazines focusing on Apple technologies, I became very aware of Silicon Valley myth-making. Beautiful design that looked – and in some ways was – radical could also be socially as conservative as ever: designed for the West, with Western culture in mind, and with the ideal user imagined as a white, Western male.

At the same time, I also had a blast – and met many brilliant women who were hackers, designers, digital media artists, writers, journalists, and campaigners. Some identified as cyber-feminists, and I learned a lot alongside them. Being immersed in industrial tech culture also showed me what could be done with computational technology. Another – better, more equal, freer – world is possible. The fact that technologies that could support building that world are instead so often made for profit takes me back to Furious…”

How has the intersection of gender studies and digital humanities evolved since you began your career, and what changes do you anticipate in the coming years?

“I didn’t begin my career in Digital Humanities, at least not in the emerging discipline that later took that name. I was in digital media studies. But I would argue that digital media studies, software studies, and feminist technoscience are all key tributaries of what now constitutes DH. One positive development in DH is that this is increasingly recognised by more people who align themselves, in whole or in part, with the field.

DH has also begun to move beyond the highly gendered and crudely binary distinction between “hacking” and “yacking” – where one term signalled valued work and the other dismissed as “just talking,” often a cover for the accusation of “uselessly theorizing.” These days, the argument that practice without critical thinking makes no sense has more traction. Feminists – and particularly intersectional feminists – within DH have been central to this shift, and that work needs recognition.

For me, DH is a cultural study, or it is nothing. It is easier to argue that now than it used to be, and that places DH, amidst all the chaos and violence around us, in a good position to advocate for critical, intersectional feminist perspectives on emerging computational cultures and technologies – and the worlds they don’t determine, but can be used both to secure and to disrupt. I guess in the end, I am hopeful.”

▻https://aecardiffknowledgehub.wales/2025/09/30/gender-technology-and-resistance-an-interview-with-caroline
#genre #technologie #résistance #inégalités #discriminations #environnement #universalisme #faux_universalisme #historicisation #futur #biais #IA #AI #intelligence_artificielle #big_data #LLMs #normativité #homogénéisation #intersectionnalité #gendered_masculine #digital_humanities #féminisme

#IA : un rapport alerte sur le #risque de #conflit_d’usage de l’#électricité

Les projets de #centres_de_données numériques sont si nombreux et si énormes que leur consommation d’électricité pourrait être multipliée par quatre d’ici dix ans en France, selon un #rapport du Shift Project (▻https://theshiftproject.org/app/uploads/2025/09/RF-PIA-1.pdf). Au risque de menacer la #décarbonation des transports et de l’industrie.

Faudra-t-il bientôt instaurer en France un #moratoire sur les demandes de centres de données, ces bâtiments regroupant des installations informatiques chargées de stocker des données ? La question ne figure pas en toutes lettres dans le rapport que le #Shift_Project, une association d’expertise sur la #transition_énergétique, a publié mercredi 1er octobre sur les #infrastructures du numérique. Mais à sa lecture, elle semble inévitable. Car les estimations chiffrées de cette étude donnent le tournis.

Le problème est simple : les estimations de consommation en électricité des centres de données ne cessent de croître. Elle pourrait être multipliée par quatre en France d’ici dix ans, et atteindre 7,5 % de la demande totale de courant électrique, soit plus du double de la part des transports aujourd’hui – contre 2 % actuellement.

Or ce qui se passe à l’international invite à la plus grande vigilance. En #Irlande, un moratoire sur les nouvelles demandes d’implantation a été décidé en 2021 pour la région de Dublin, où se concentrent la plupart des centres de données. Ils avalent déjà 20 % de l’électricité disponible et pourraient monter à 30 % en 2028. Aux #Pays-Bas, le gouvernement a gelé les autorisations jusqu’en 2035 autour d’Amsterdam, afin d’éviter l’engorgement du système.

Dérive climatique

Aux États-Unis, le #Texas a voté une loi pour couper l’approvisionnement des centres de données en cas d’urgence et éviter un black-out. Et le gestionnaire de l’immense réseau desservant les #Grandes_Plaines (#Kansas, #Oklahoma, etc.) demande le même type de mesures. Quant à l’administration Trump, ouvertement climatosceptique, elle vient de publier un plan de relance du charbon pour renforcer la production d’électricité : « Nous voulons que des centres de données s’installent chez nous », a résumé le secrétaire à l’énergie, Chris Wright.

La part de l’intelligence artificielle (IA) générative dans l’explosion de la demande en électricité du numérique est « considérable » selon le Shift Project : son utilisation « à grande échelle et façon indifférenciée » joue « un rôle central » dans la détérioration du #bilan_carbone du #numérique, et donc dans la dérive climatique.

Or, les projets d’investissements affluent en #France, chaudement encouragés par l’Élysée. En février, lors du #Sommet_pour_l’action_sur_l’intelligence_artificielle, 109 milliards d’euros d’investissements dans les centres de données et l’IA ont été annoncés.

Emmanuel Macron s’en est délecté, avec un slogan choc : « Plug, baby, plug » (« Branche-toi, chéri, branche-toi »), en miroir du fameux « Drill, baby, drill » (« Fore, chéri, fore ») de Donald Trump. Quelques mois plus tard, à l’occasion du sommet #Choose_France, 26 milliards d’investissements ont été confirmés par des géants du secteur : #Brookfield, #Digital_Realty et le fonds émirati #MGX.

Abondance sans garantie

Certaines de ces infrastructures atteignent une dimension inédite et réellement monstrueuse, dépassant même le seuil d’un gigawatt (GW) – mille mégawatts, une puissance qui s’approche de celle d’un réacteur nucléaire historique en France.

Ainsi, le petit village de #Fouju (Seine-et-Marne), avec ses 631 habitant·es, pourrait se retrouver doté d’un centre de données de 1,4 GW – une concertation préalable s’ouvre le 13 octobre. À #Cambrai (Nord), une énorme installation de 1 GW est promise par #Data4, une filiale du fonds canadien #Brookfield. #Fluidstack, une plateforme cloud d’IA, a annoncé en février la signature d’un protocole d’accord avec le gouvernement français pour la construction d’un gigantesque supercalculateur pouvant fournir jusqu’à 1 GW de puissance de calcul.

Pour Emmanuel Macron, « l’électricité est disponible, vous pouvez vous brancher, elle est prête ! ». Sa petite phrase au sommet de l’IA, début 2025, avait fait rire l’assistance. De fait, en 2024, la production d’électricité en France a atteint son plus haut niveau depuis cinq ans, avec 536,5 térawattheures (TWh), bien au-dessus de sa consommation. Ce qui lui a permis d’en exporter 89 TWh, un record historique et un apport substantiel à la balance commerciale nationale. De quoi disposer de larges réserves à vendre sans restriction aux opérateurs des centres de données ? C’est le discours confiant affiché par l’exécutif.

La réalité est plus inquiétante, et c’est tout l’intérêt du rapport du Shift Project que de la documenter. D’abord, « les centres de données dont le raccordement se valide aujourd’hui verront leurs pics de consommation en 2035 », explique Pauline Denis, ingénieure de recherche numérique au sein de l’association. Autrement dit, l’abondance en énergie aujourd’hui ne garantit pas qu’il y aura suffisamment de courant pour les alimenter dans dix ans.

Ensuite, la demande en électricité des centres de données va inévitablement entrer en concurrence avec d’autres besoins, au vu des volumes nécessaires : de 15 % à 23 % de l’électricité supplémentaire prévue par RTE, le gestionnaire de réseaux, en 2035. C’est vraiment beaucoup. Or, la décarbonation de certains secteurs industriels aussi émetteurs de CO2 que les transports, la production d’acier ou de carburants passe nécessairement par l’#électrification.

« En France il existe un grand risque de conflit d’usage avec les #transports ou le #chauffage, prévient Pauline Denis, conserver la dynamique actuelle de centres de données rendrait caducs les objectifs de décarbonation de ces secteurs pour 2030 et 2050. »

Les autrices et auteurs du rapport en concluent que « cette concurrence doit être accompagnée et arbitrée, afin de ne pas laisser le déploiement massif des centres de données mettre en péril d’autres transformations sans s’en rendre compte ». Car au niveau local, les centres de données les plus gourmands en électricité, et en particulier les monstres de plus de 1 GW, risquent à terme d’empêcher l’implantation de sites industriels, et donc leurs emplois.

Quels emplois et pour qui ?

À #Marseille, un des principaux hubs du pays, autorités et industriels se sont mis autour d’une table pour trouver une zone favorable au raccordement des de centres de données « qui n’entre pas en concurrence avec d’autres projets locaux, comme l’alimentation électrique des navires à quai dans le port, ou l’aménagement du quartier #Euroméditerranée », précise RTE. C’est notamment le cas au nord de la ville, dans la zone de #Plan_de_Campagne, où le foncier semblait plus facilement disponible.

Maxime Efoui-Hess, coordinateur du programme numérique du Shift Project, met les pieds dans le plat : « Si on préempte la majorité de l’électricité pour l’usage des centres de données, elle va manquer à la décarbonation. » Les contrats d’approvisionnement actuellement signés avec les centres de données dans les Hauts-de-France « ne serviront pas à décarboner la sidérurgie de Dunkerque ». C’est donc autant un enjeu social qu’une alerte climatique : quelles activités énergivores, pour quel type d’emplois, les territoires choisissent-ils ?

Et « quelle peut-être la réaction citoyenne à la préemption de telles capacités de production électrique pour les centres de données ? », interroge le rapport. Qui se demande aussi « quelle crédibilité auraient des politiques d’encouragement à la sobriété dans le logement si l’électricité dégagée est utilisée pour des centres de données ? »

Sollicité par Mediapart, le gestionnaire du réseau français, #RTE, se montre moins inquiet : « L’offre d’électricité bas carbone est aujourd’hui abondante en France, le système électrique français possède des marges et est prêt à accueillir les nouveaux usages. » Concernant les besoins des infrastructures du numérique, « nous sommes en train de réactualiser nos trajectoires en tenant compte des annonces sur l’IA mais aussi en tenant compte du fait que la montée en puissance des centres de données est souvent assez lente ».

En attendant, à Marseille comme à #Wissous en Essonne, où #Amazon construit un autre gros centre de données, des collectifs d’habitant·es se forment et dénoncent « l’accaparement » de leur territoire par les infrastructures numériques.

▻https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/ecologie/011025/ia-un-rapport-alerte-sur-le-risque-de-conflit-d-usage-de-l-electricite
#data_centers #intelligence_artificielle #AI

#EDRIX: The European #digital #resilience #index 2025 - A New Barometer for #sovereignty in an Era of Economic Crisis and Geopolitical Instability.
▻https://edrix.eu/en

— Permalink

#europe

96 - Digital Cities and Democracy
▻https://urbanpolitical.podigee.io/96-digital-cities-and-democracy

In this episode Ross Beveridge, co-founder of our Podcast, and guests discuss the topic of digital cities and democracy. Digitalisation is transforming cities, urbanization and urban life – but how is it changing urban politics? What issues of justice and democracy are at stake in the advance of digital technologies? What are the power implications of the unending rise of corporate digital platforms, like Amazon? How are social media platforms reconfiguring the ways we live in cities and the ways we conduct politics? And what does the future hold? Ross discusses these questions with 4 scholars who have recently published important books in this field: Myria Georgiou, who is a Professor of Media and Communications and Head of the Department of Media and Communications at LSE. (...)

#Digital,Democracy,DigitalCities,Data,SocialMedia
▻https://audio.podigee-cdn.net/2115706-m-51e424749d49d5de42506e5c7ef8b630.m4a?source=feed

(1) Open Letter to Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft on the Future of GitHub, Trust, and Digital Sovereignty | LinkedIn
▻https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/open-letter-satya-nadella-ceo-microsoft-future-github-dion-wiggins-f2yic

Dion Wiggins
Dion Wiggins
CTO at Omniscien Technologies | Board Member | Strategic Advisor | Consultant | Author
16 août 2025

16 August 2025

Dear Mr. Nadella (Satya Nadella) ,

As a developer of more than 40 years, across 33+ programming languages and even more platforms, I have seen the rise and fall of countless technologies, communities, and ecosystems. While I cannot speak for the global developer community as a whole, it is clear that a very large number of us feel the same deep sense of betrayal and alarm over Microsoft’s actions regarding GitHub. This letter is written not only from decades of professional experience and personal investment, but in solidarity with the thousands of developers, project maintainers, community leaders, and digital sovereignty advocates who have raised these same alarms. The issues are systemic, not individual.

Satya Nadella (2018): “We recognize the responsibility we take on with this agreement. We are committed to being stewards of the GitHub community, which will always remain open to all developers.”

In the above Microsoft Blog post, you promised that “GitHub will operate independently and remain an open platform for all developers,” and committed to “keeping GitHub independent and developer-first.” GitHub leadership assured the world that “GitHub will operate independently… That means GitHub retains its developer-first values, distinctive spirit, and open extensibility.”

Public promises on the Github website at the same time made simpler promises that have now been broken.

Nat Friedman (2018): “GitHub will operate independently… That means GitHub retains its developer-first values, distinctive spirit, and open extensibility.”

While Microsoft continues to highlight its open source credentials and assure developers that “nothing has changed” for users, the core issue is not superficial continuity, but the structural and strategic shift of GitHub from a genuinely independent, community platform to a fully integrated corporate asset. This is not about branding, but about irreversible changes to control, incentives, and accountability.

Microsoft Press Release (2025): “This transition enables us to accelerate GitHub’s contributions to Microsoft’s AI ecosystem.”

Today, those commitments are in question. As TechRadar reports: “Rather than appoint a new GitHub CEO, Microsoft will integrate GitHub more directly into CoreAI, led by Jay Parikh… GitHub will now report directly into its CoreAI division.” (TechRadar)

This reporting is echoed by The Verge, which noted that “Microsoft isn’t replacing Dohmke’s CEO position, and GitHub will be fully part of Microsoft instead of being run as a separate entity.” (The Verge)

These moves directly contradict the 2018 promise of independence and stewardship. They are not continuity but consolidation. For many in the community, this is not simply a broken promise but an outright lie. Your words from the past: “We recognize the responsibility we take on with this agreement. We are committed to being stewards of the GitHub community, which will retain its developer-first ethos, operate independently and remain an open platform”, now stand exposed as empty assurances at best, or an intentional lie at worst.

I repeat these phrases because you have not lived up to them and they seem unimportant to you today. Just a tool of the past, discarded once the acquisition goals were complete.

Microsoft’s decision to absorb GitHub into its CoreAI division, eliminate its independent leadership, and embed it deeply within the company’s AI and cloud business directly contradicts these promises. The official press release states this is to “accelerate GitHub’s contributions to Microsoft’s AI ecosystem.” Microsoft executives openly describe how “GitHub’s vast code corpus is foundational for the next era of Copilot and AI model development.”

This is not just a broken promise. It is an assault on open source itself. A collapse of credibility with the global developer community, and a direct threat to technological self-determination for every contributor, organization, and nation that depends on independent infrastructure.

Here is just a small sample of the many negative reactions to this announcement. These articles show a clear consensus across reputable tech publications: GitHub’s absorption into CoreAI is widely seen as a major structural shift, and for many, a direct betrayal of its once independent and developer-first identity:

The Verge – “GitHub just got less independent at Microsoft after CEO resignation”

Discusses how GitHub’s autonomy ends as leadership shifts under Microsoft’s CoreAI structure, posing a clear signal of deeper absorption. (The Verge)

TechRadar – “GitHub CEO resigns – is this the latest sign of its Microsoft absorption?”

Highlights the absence of a successor and emphasizes the strategic assimilation into Microsoft’s AI ecosystem. (TechRadar)

IT Pro – “What Thomas Dohmke’s departure means for GitHub”

Analyzes how the CEO’s exit signals major governance changes and closer alignment with Microsoft’s AI strategy. (IT Pro)

Windows Central – “GitHub Just Got Assimilated—CEO Out, Copilot In, Microsoft All Over It”

Signposts the end of GitHub’s independence and elevated priority of AI within Microsoft’s internal structure. (Windows Central)

Tom’s Hardware – “GitHub folds into Microsoft following CEO resignation—once independent programming site now part of ‘CoreAI’ team”

Explicitly frames the move as ending GitHub’s independence and compares it to other Microsoft acquisitions that lost identity over time. (Tom’s Hardware)

The Collapse of Trust: Big Tech’s Greed, Digital Sovereignty, and Its Consequences

Trust is the foundation of every open source project, community, and movement. Open source cannot function without the assumption that platforms and stewards act in good faith, respect contributors, and put the long-term health of the ecosystem ahead of short-term profit.

The breakdown of trust caused by the actions of Microsoft and other Big Tech firms is more than a single betrayal. It signals to the entire world that the social contract underpinning open source and digital agency can be bought, sold, and quietly rewritten by whoever controls the infrastructure.

It is disingenuous to claim that developers are “free to leave” when practical migration is obstructed by technical and network effects, and when so much of the world’s open source and digital sovereignty ecosystem is already tied into GitHub’s infrastructure. Genuine freedom requires open exit, true interoperability, and transparent guarantees. None of these can exist in an environment of creeping lock-in and vertical integration.

When companies that present themselves as stewards of community assets choose instead to exploit those assets for proprietary gain, they undermine not just their own credibility, but the very possibility of global cooperation in technology. Each time a platform is captured, centralized, or redirected to serve corporate interests, it pushes developers and innovators away from openness and into silos of mistrust and fragmentation.

No security, compliance, or anti-abuse argument can justify stripping developers, organizations, and nations of their digital sovereignty, or transferring unilateral control over critical digital assets to a single commercial actor. Security and compliance can and must be implemented in ways that preserve agency, transparency, and open governance.

Digital sovereignty is not a slogan. It is a core policy objective of governments, regulatory agencies, and open source communities worldwide, with documented legal frameworks and active enforcement across the EU, China, India, and many others. The concerns raised here are not hypothetical or parochial. They are echoed by policymakers, technologists, and civil society leaders globally.

This is not an isolated incident. The industry has seen similar betrayals before: Oracle’s handling of Java, Google’s abrupt shutdown of Google Code, and previous pivots by Microsoft itself. Each time, the developer community paid the price: wasted effort, lost code, broken commitments, and a new wave of skepticism toward platform promises.

The long-term impact is already visible:

Developers are increasingly hesitant to share their best work on public platforms for fear it will be extracted, repackaged, and monetized by corporate actors without consent or fair return.
Communities fracture, as trust erodes and contributors seek alternative venues or attempt to rebuild trusted enclaves outside Big Tech’s reach.
Innovation slows, as the collaborative advantage of open source is replaced by guarded, siloed development and legal maneuvering to prevent exploitation.
Governments and institutions start to question whether global digital infrastructure can be trusted at all, leading to regulatory walls, data localization, and a new era of digital sovereignty where nations must assert control over their technology dependencies to protect their agency and interests.

This is not just about code or business models. It is about the collective investment of millions of developers worldwide—years of unpaid, voluntary, and mission-driven work that made GitHub the backbone of modern software. That trust, once lost, cannot be restored by marketing or legal boilerplate. It is about digital agency and the fundamental right to control one’s own digital assets, collaborations, and infrastructure choices without the threat of unilateral interference, commercial extraction, or external lock-in.

Big Tech’s willingness to break trust for short-term advantage is sowing the seeds for a world where the promise of open, global collaboration and shared digital sovereignty is replaced by suspicion, legal battles, and technical walls. The more platforms like GitHub are captured and redirected for private enrichment, the less likely it is that the next generation of developers, communities, or nations will believe in or participate in open source at all.

Without trust, open source collapses. Without sovereignty, collaboration corrodes. And once credibility is gone, it is almost impossible to rebuild.

The world is watching, not your assurances, but your actions.

These concerns are not academic or hypothetical. They reflect the real and growing alarm expressed by thousands of developers, project leaders, digital sovereignty advocates, and policymakers worldwide. Digital sovereignty is not a slogan, but a legal and strategic reality, shaping government, enterprise, and technical policy from the European Union to Asia and the Global South. No reassurances, PR statements, or cherry-picked open source releases can substitute for the specific, transparent, and enforceable commitments demanded here. The complexity and length of this letter are necessary because the stakes—for global innovation, autonomy, and trust—could not be higher.

The following questions must be answered directly, with transparency, not PR spin. This is about the survival of open source as a trusted, collaborative foundation for global innovation, and about the preservation of digital sovereignty and agency for everyone who relies on these platforms.

1. Do you acknowledge that folding GitHub into Microsoft’s CoreAI division and revoking its independence directly contradicts your explicit public commitments to keep GitHub open and independent? If not, what specific facts justify your claim that these moves are not a corporate takeover and betrayal?

Microsoft pledged that GitHub would remain independent, open, and developer-first. Integrating GitHub into CoreAI, eliminating operational independence, and repurposing it as a pipeline for Microsoft’s AI ambitions is the very definition of a corporate takeover.

2. What concrete, legally binding measures will you implement, beyond policy statements, to guarantee that GitHub will never be used as a captive data source for Microsoft’s proprietary AI models or to lock developers and organizations into your ecosystem, undermining their digital sovereignty and agency?

The world sees this as a strip and extract operation: first mining community content, then enclosing it, and finally locking developers, communities, and entire organizations into Microsoft’s ecosystem, which is the opposite of open source and sovereign control.

3. What immediate, auditable steps will Microsoft take to repair the breach of trust with developers and platform stakeholders—including independent oversight and enforceable guarantees—to prove that GitHub will not be exploited for Microsoft’s commercial gain or to undermine the digital sovereignty of its users?

Repeated public promises were made that GitHub would retain its developer-first values and open extensibility. The loss of trust is not just about business decisions—it is about whether open source contributors, organizations, and governments can ever again believe in the commitments of those who control their code, collaboration, and infrastructure.

4. Will Microsoft commit, by enforceable policy and public documentation, that no public GitHub repositories will be used for training proprietary AI models or commercial products without explicit opt-in consent from project owners, thus protecting the digital agency and autonomy of all contributors?

Developers globally are concerned that their open source contributions are being silently harvested for commercial AI without consent, attribution, or compensation.

5. Will Microsoft provide developers and organizations with granular, real-time tools to track and control every instance where their code or metadata is accessed, processed, or used for AI or commercial purposes, along with a public log of such activity—empowering all users to exercise digital agency over their work and assets?

Developers have a right to track and control use of their code in AI and data pipelines. Sovereign organizations and communities have an equal right to transparent control over their assets and digital infrastructure.

6. Will Microsoft legally guarantee that all GitHub users retain unrestricted rights and technical means to export or migrate their code, data, and issue history at any time, without penalty or delay, and that no feature or license changes will restrict this freedom or diminish their digital sovereignty?

The health of the open source ecosystem depends on freedom of movement, agency, and interoperability—not closed integration with any vendor’s stack or barriers that undermine organizational or national self-determination.

7. Will Microsoft commit, by contract and technology, to never implement, enable, or cooperate in any form of kill switch, access denial, or politically motivated censorship affecting GitHub projects, regardless of pressure from governments or commercial interests—thus respecting the digital sovereignty and agency of all users worldwide?

Centralization amplifies the risk of politically or commercially motivated interference in developer access, especially during periods of geopolitical tension. Digital sovereignty means ensuring no single entity can unilaterally block, censor, or deny access to critical digital assets.

8. Will Microsoft agree to continuous, binding, independent audits of GitHub’s operations, with real enforcement power and board representation for open source foundations such as the Linux Foundation, FSF, or OSI, to safeguard the sovereignty and agency of the broader community?

A platform of GitHub’s global importance cannot be accountable only to its corporate owner. Recognized foundations must be invited to participate in this oversight. No internal Microsoft committee or advisory board can substitute for independent, enforceable, foundation-driven oversight with real transparency, developer representation, and binding authority. Only governance with teeth can rebuild trust and protect digital agency.

9. Will Microsoft publish a full, advance public record of all technical, legal, and policy changes that affect GitHub’s integration with Microsoft’s AI and cloud infrastructure, including any changes to data access, contributor rights, or project governance—providing all stakeholders with the information they need to protect their digital sovereignty and agency?

Developers, organizations, and governments need to understand the real scope of integration, dependencies, and any hidden impacts on autonomy, sovereignty, or compliance.

10. Will Microsoft publicly accept binding legal and financial liability, including retroactive remedies, if any use of GitHub code, data, or metadata for AI or commercial purposes is found to violate open source licenses, contributor agreements, relevant law, or the digital rights and sovereignty of its users?

The risk of legal and ethical breach is not theoretical—it is a live issue globally. This letter calls for binding, publicly auditable commitments, not ambiguous legalese, policy footnotes, or unenforceable pledges. The stakes demand real-world, transparent, and contractually enforceable action.

Specific Remedies the Community Expects

To ensure that trust is restored and preserved, and to provide the minimum foundation for moving forward in a world where digital sovereignty and agency matter, the following concrete remedies should be enacted:

Restore an independent GitHub CEO and governance board, separate from Microsoft’s AI, cloud, and product divisions, with real authority and transparency to protect community interests and platform autonomy.
Publish and enforce a clear, public data use and extraction policy for AI and all other Microsoft product development, including explicit opt-in or opt-out for project owners regarding code, metadata, and issue data, respecting the digital sovereignty of every contributor and community.
Submit to regular, external audits by recognized organizations such as the Linux Foundation, Free Software Foundation, or Open Source Initiative, with findings published in full to ensure accountability and agency for all stakeholders.
Contractually guarantee migration and export rights for all repositories and developer data, ensuring there are no technical, legal, or policy barriers to leaving the platform, thus safeguarding the freedom and digital sovereignty of every user.
Publish quarterly transparency reports detailing code access, AI extraction activity, and all data-sharing between GitHub and Microsoft’s internal systems, giving all users the visibility needed to maintain their own agency and control.

Pointing to isolated positive actions or PR initiatives does not address the irreversible structural shift underway, nor does it remedy the breach of trust caused by consolidating platform power without transparent, community-backed guarantees.

What happens next matters. If these concerns are not addressed openly and concretely, many developers, projects, organizations, and even governments will have to reconsider their continued trust in GitHub’s stewardship and Microsoft’s commitments to open source and digital sovereignty. Major voices in the community are already calling for alternatives and greater scrutiny of platform governance. I encourage other developers, open source advocates, digital sovereignty experts, and independent observers to follow this issue closely and demand real accountability for the future of digital collaboration and autonomous control.

I invite Microsoft, and you personally, to respond to these questions in a public forum or published statement so the entire developer and digital sovereignty community can judge for themselves whether these concerns will be taken seriously and addressed with binding commitments. Setting a clear, reasonable timeline for such a response—for example, within 30 days—would show respect for the global community that helped make GitHub what it is.

If no substantive answers are provided, many will conclude that Microsoft is unwilling to rebuild trust or respect the values that made open source and digital sovereignty possible in the first place. If silence or spin is all that follows, developers, communities, and national stakeholders will begin organizing alternatives, engaging with independent foundations for oversight, and calling for regulatory scrutiny of platform stewardship on an industry-wide scale.

What Microsoft does next will set a precedent for all of Big Tech. This moment is about more than one company or one platform. It is about whether open source, digital sovereignty, and the collective trust, investment, and creativity of millions can survive in an era of corporate consolidation and broken promises.

While I am only one voice among many, thousands of developers, project leaders, and digital-sovereignty advocates echo these concerns. The false assurances made in 2018, documented above, are the root cause of this collapse of credibility. We have no interest in PR spin, empty reassurances, or legal jargon. Only real, specific action and binding commitments will be accepted by the community. Thank you for your attention. The world is watching what you do next.

Sincerely,

Dion Wiggins

A concerned developer of 40+ years, writing in solidarity with the global open source and digital sovereignty community

#OpenLetter #Microsoft #GitHub #OpenSource #DigitalSovereignty #CoreAI #Developers #Betrayal #Trust #AI

#Intelligence_artificielle #Emmerdification #GitHub #Microsoft #Logiciel_libre #Economie_numérique

He’s Saving 20,000 Tapes of Underground Music and Making it Free to All

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In a suburban backyard outside of #Sacramento, I open the door to a giant shed, step inside and get smacked in the face by floor-to-ceiling shelves of music history.

#VHS tapes. Cassette tapes. Reel-to-reels. DATs. Other formats I don’t recognize, and can’t pronounce. Nearly 20,000 of them, all filled with live shows, demo recordings and concert footage.

Down a narrow path through this obsolete physical media, I turn a corner to find Shayne Stacy, 57, sitting at a desk with three monitors and occasionally fiddling with a nearby U-matic machine, an out-of-date piece of video hardware used by TV stations. On the screen, viewed for the first time in 40 years, is a 1980s new wave band performing on a long-lost cable access show from the Central Valley.

On any given day, this is where you’ll find Stacy, the founder of the nonprofit Sacramento Music Archive. Just a half-hour’s drive from Sutter’s Mill and its famous California discovery, Stacy tends methodically to his own goldmine: a mass of underground music from Sacramento, the Bay Area and beyond that he’s gradually digitizing and sharing with the world, including rare early footage of Nirvana, Metallica and Green Day.

“You’d think it’s like this big rock and roll party in here. It’s like this. It’s very quiet, with me working at a keyboard,” Stacy says with a laugh.

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I first became aware of Stacy’s work during the pandemic, when I noticed people posting video footage of punk shows held 30 years ago that I’d attended, or, even more irresistible, that I’d heard about but been too young to see. I soon found that for those of a certain age and musical bent, scrolling the Sacramento Music Archive was like watching one’s life flash before their eyes: a young Rancid finding their footing at Berkeley Square, Mr. Bungle covering Top 40 radio hits from 1989 in Guerneville, or Maximum Rocknroll founder Tim Yohannon throwing pies at Screeching Weasel at 924 Gilman.

As for shows that had been uploaded before, like Operation Ivy’s final show? Stacy consistently seemed to have the best sources, and sometimes from multiple camera angles, too. What’s more, he had over 5,000 shows from all over Northern California from the past 50 years, by punk, metal, modern rock, funk, thrash and indie bands — famous names and obscure footnotes alike. And, remarkably, it was evident he still went out to shows, and filmed new bands.

Who was this one-man Library of Congress for West Coast Gen Xers? I had to find out.
Preserving punk history

Born in Auburn in 1967, Stacy had a typical 1970s childhood of watching Scooby Doo and collecting sports cards. When he was 15, he went by himself to see Iron Maiden and the Scorpions at the Sacramento Memorial Stadium, in 1982, and he still remembers its impact. “As soon as I felt that sound pressure hitting my chest, I’m like, ‘This is the best thing I’ve ever seen,’” he says.

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The Bay Area was a cradle of thrash metal at the time, with bands like Exodus, Possessed and Metallica just starting out. Soon, Stacy was bringing cheap tape recorders to shows, and sharing the results with other fans who traded tapes through the classifieds in the backs of fan magazines. In 1987, after witnessing the El Sobrante punk band Isocracy, who routinely threw heaps of garbage all over the crowd, Stacy had an epiphany.

“There’s paper all over the floor, and it’s just a chaotic environment, and I said to myself, ‘I have to buy a video camera to document this stuff,’” Stacy remembers. “I stopped all of my excess expenditures, making five bucks an hour, and saved for four months to buy my own video camera.”

Between 1988 and 1992, Stacy estimates, he filmed 240 shows, driving to venues in Sacramento or the Bay Area every weekend. Trading with others through the mail, he amassed even more tapes. But there was a downside: he began seeing his own footage, of shows by Primus and Nirvana playing at the Cattle Club in Sacramento, bootlegged and sold by others for profit.

“It was like, no fun anymore,” Stacy says. “This was supposed to be a hobby I enjoyed, and it turned into this point of frustration. And so I quit. I quit for 10 years.”

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YouTube brought him back. Stacy says it “liberated” everything: the fans didn’t have to pay $30 for a grainy VHS tape anymore, the copyright holders got paid — not enough, but something — and he got to enjoy his hobby again. He rushed out and bought the best cassette decks and VCRs he could find, and got to work.

One person who noticed the quality of Stacy’s work early on is Wayne Vanderkuil. “I work at Stanford in visual preservation, reformatting, and he had similar equipment to what we have here,” Vanderkuil says. “I was incredibly impressed.”

During the tape-trading days, Vanderkuil amassed his own collection of metal bands playing at Ruthie’s Inn, Wolfgang’s or the On Broadway. They sat in storage for 25 years, untouched, he says. “I thought, ‘No one’s ever gonna hear these. I’ll drop dead tomorrow, and there goes history.’”

Instead, he donated his tapes to Stacy. Vanderkuil is now president of the board of the Sacramento Music Archive, newly incorporated as a nonprofit, which will allow Stacy — who worked at Intel for 27 years and recently accepted an “incredibly generous” buyout offer — to take donations and apply for grants. Most importantly, it’ll set up his life’s work to continue into the future. As it stands, only about 5% of the tapes in the archive have been preserved digitally so far.

“This is clearly becoming a bigger project than I’ve got time left,” says Stacy.

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‘He really is the go-to’

Publicity and word-of-mouth creates another problem: the piles are growing. Everyone, it seems, has old tapes they want to donate. Waiting to be digitized in the archive are 500 cassettes of free jazz, reel-to-reels of D.R.I. rehearsals at The Vats and hundreds of videos and soundboard recordings from 924 Gilman. Stacy now has over 25 different collections from DJs, sound engineers, record store owners, zine editors, promoters, cable access hosts and fans.

One of them is Arica Pelino, who recently traveled from three states away to Stacy’s archive with a suitcase full of tapes. Pelino toured with Green Day in 1991, and filmed many of their early shows, along with dozens of other bands from the East Bay like Econochrist and Lungbutter. Her tapes sat in storage for more than 20 years, unseen.

“If I didn’t meet Shayne, it would still be sitting in boxes,” she says.

She and Stacy spent two days going through her collection, including 22 early Green Day shows that no one had ever seen before, she says, along with backstage footage and early demos.

“Shayne really is the owner and the keeper for all of us,” Pelino says. “There’s no one I’d rather do it with. He does a great job, he’s extremely detail-oriented and he puts his all into cleaning up the audio and video. He really is the go-to archive for Northern California, and has captured a significant part of the music scene.”

Another donor, Rick Sylvain, who in his 12 years working at Berkeley radio station KALX helped start the long-running KALX Live! show, with bands playing in the cramped studio.

“It was kind of stinky sometimes — they spilled a lot of beer in there — but it was fun, and I taped everything,” he says. “Some of these little bands, it was their one big moment in the sun, and I wanted them to feel like they were stars.”

One little band that fulfilled that promise of stardom was AFI, who would go on to headline arenas. Thanks to the Sacramento Music Archive, Sylvain’s cassette of AFI’s 1994 visit to KALX is now the band’s earliest live recording on YouTube.

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Large companies and record labels have taken notice, and Stacy’s provided them with material for a Nirvana box set, a Pavement film, and various documentaries. He talks just as enthusiastically, however, about forgotten bands like The Donner Party or the Slambodians. He’s especially excited about a recent estate sale find of reel-to-reels from a member of Red Asphalt, the early punk band, who lived in Sacramento.

And that brings him back to the original purpose of the archive, one it’s clearly outgrown: to legitimize and honor Sacramento as its own distinct music scene. He accepts that “Sacramento Music Archive” is a bit of a misnomer for a massive collection covering the the Bay Area and Northern California.

But he likes the name.

“I’ve always felt like Sacramento has always been the red-headed stepchild of California,” he says. “The Lakers make fun of the Kings, Southern California makes fun of Sacramento. It’s a cow town, right? So having something that’s culturally enriching, that has the Sacramento label on it, I’m fine with it.”

▻https://www.kqed.org/arts/13979518/sacramento-music-archive-shayne-stacy-punk-metal-cassettes-vhs-demos-concerts
#archive #musique #underground #musique_underground #cassettes #archive #Shayne_Stacy #digitalisation

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#Sacramento_Music_Archive

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Anthropic destroyed millions of print books to build its AI models

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Company hired Google’s book-scanning chief to cut up and digitize “all the books in the world.”

On Monday, court documents revealed that AI company #Anthropic spent millions of dollars physically scanning print books to build #Claude, an AI assistant similar to ChatGPT. In the process, the company cut millions of print books from their bindings, scanned them into digital files, and threw away the originals solely for the purpose of training AI—details buried in a copyright ruling on fair use whose broader fair use implications we reported yesterday.

The 32-page legal decision tells the story of how, in February 2024, the company hired Tom Turvey, the former head of partnerships for the Google Books book-scanning project, and tasked him with obtaining “all the books in the world.” The strategic hire appears to have been designed to replicate Google’s legally successful book digitization approach—the same scanning operation that survived copyright challenges and established key fair use precedents.

While destructive scanning is a common practice among smaller-scale operations, Anthropic’s approach was somewhat unusual due to its massive scale. For Anthropic, the faster speed and lower cost of the destructive process appear to have trumped any need for preserving the physical books themselves.

Ultimately, Judge William Alsup ruled that this destructive scanning operation qualified as fair use—but only because Anthropic had legally purchased the books first, destroyed each print copy after scanning, and kept the digital files internally rather than distributing them. The judge compared the process to “conserv[ing] space” through format conversion and found it transformative. Had Anthropic stuck to this approach from the beginning, it might have achieved the first legally sanctioned case of AI fair use. Instead, the company’s earlier piracy undermined its position.

But if you’re not intimately familiar with the AI industry and copyright, you might wonder: Why would a company spend millions of dollars on books to destroy them? Behind these odd legal maneuvers lies a more fundamental driver: the AI industry’s insatiable hunger for high-quality text.

The race for high-quality training data

To understand why Anthropic would want to scan millions of books, it’s important to know that AI researchers build large language models (LLMs) like those that power #ChatGPT and Claude by feeding billions of words into a neural network. During training, the AI system processes the text repeatedly, building statistical relationships between words and concepts in the process.

The quality of training data fed into the neural network directly impacts the resulting AI model’s capabilities. Models trained on well-edited books and articles tend to produce more coherent, accurate responses than those trained on lower-quality text like random YouTube comments.

Publishers legally control content that AI companies desperately want, but AI companies don’t always want to negotiate a license. The first-sale doctrine offered a workaround: Once you buy a physical book, you can do what you want with that copy—including destroy it. That meant buying physical books offered a legal workaround.

And yet buying things is expensive, even if it is legal. So like many AI companies before it, Anthropic initially chose the quick and easy path. In the quest for high-quality training data, the court filing states, Anthropic first chose to amass digitized versions of pirated books to avoid what CEO Dario Amodei called “legal/practice/business slog”—the complex licensing negotiations with publishers. But by 2024, Anthropic had become “not so gung ho about” using pirated ebooks “for legal reasons” and needed a safer source.

Buying used physical books sidestepped licensing entirely while providing the high-quality, professionally edited text that AI models need, and destructive scanning was simply the fastest way to digitize millions of volumes. The company spent “many millions of dollars” on this buying and scanning operation, often purchasing used books in bulk. Next, they stripped books from bindings, cut pages to workable dimensions, scanned them as stacks of pages into PDFs with machine-readable text including covers, then discarded all the paper originals.

The court documents don’t indicate that any rare books were destroyed in this process—Anthropic purchased its books in bulk from major retailers—but archivists long ago established other ways to extract information from paper. For example, The Internet Archive pioneered non-destructive book scanning methods that preserve physical volumes while creating digital copies. And earlier this month, OpenAI and Microsoft announced they’re working with Harvard’s libraries to train AI models on nearly 1 million public domain books dating back to the 15th century—fully digitized but preserved to live another day.

While Harvard carefully preserves 600-year-old manuscripts for AI training, somewhere on Earth sits the discarded remains of millions of books that taught Claude how to juice up your résumé. When asked about this process, Claude itself offered a poignant response in a style culled from billions of pages of discarded text: “The fact that this destruction helped create me—something that can discuss literature, help people write, and engage with human knowledge—adds layers of complexity I’m still processing. It’s like being built from a library’s ashes.”

▻https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/06/anthropic-destroyed-millions-of-print-books-to-build-its-ai-models
#destruction #livres #AI #IA #intelligence_artificielle #digitalisation #it_has_begun

The NO FAKES Act Has Changed – and It’s So Much Worse

via ▻https://diasp.eu/p/17708006

►https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/06/no-fakes-act-has-changed-and-its-so-much-worse

#creativityinnovation #fairuse #electronicfrontierfoundation #eff #digitalrights #digitalprivacy

Digitaler Euro: Wie schlimm wird es? (Programmierbares Geld und Fürstengeld) | Prof. Rieck

via ▻https://diasp.eu/p/17681122

Die #EZB-Präsidentin verrät in einer Talkshow, dass es mit dem #digitalen #Euro schneller weitergeht als von Vielen erwartet. Was ist von dem digitalen #Geld zu halten? Drei Eigenschaften sind angekündigt: 1. Emission über die Geschäftsbanken, 2. keine #Anonymität, 3. #Programmierbarkeit ist unbekannt. Einschätzung: 1 ist gut, 2 ist schlecht, 3 wäre eine Katastrophe.

Das erwähnte Buch #Fürstengeld, #Fiatgeld, #Bitcoin – Wie Geld entsteht, einen Wert bekommt und wieder untergeht:

▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMd3-2-RqHs

20 min, 2025-05-31

Stretch Break Linux App Reminds You to Stop Pixel-Gawping
▻https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2025/06/stretch-break-eye-strain-reminder-app-linux-flathub

Stretch Break is a simple reminder app for Linux that prompts you to take a break, helping prevent eye strain and promote healthy screen habits. You’re reading Stretch Break Linux App Reminds You to Stop Pixel-Gawping, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.

#News #Apps #Digital_Wellbeing

Identification of heavy work #investment antecedents: a research on #digital #leadership
▻https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1588412/full

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#burnout #stress #motivation #performance #management #time #commitment #HWI

La « merdification », ce processus inexorable de dégradation de la qualité des services sur les plateformes numériques
▻https://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2025/04/23/la-merdification-ce-processus-inexorable-de-degradation-de-la-qualite-des-se

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DÉBATS
VIE PRIVÉE
La « merdification », ce processus inexorable de dégradation de la qualité des services sur les plateformes numériques
Bien sûr, le pourrissement des services existe au-delà des plateformes du Web. Mais il est si systémique dans ce secteur que le mot inventé par le journaliste canadien Cory Doctorow a tout de suite fait mouche sur les réseaux sociaux.
Par Marion Dupont
Publié aujourd’hui à 08h00
Temps de Lecture 3 min.

Histoire d’une notion. A une époque qui semble désormais lointaine, aucun résultat « sponsorisé » n’apparaissait en tête de liste lors d’une recherche sur Google. Il était possible de trouver rapidement un utilisateur ou un contenu précis sur Instagram, grâce à un astucieux système de hashtags. Les vidéos mises en ligne sur YouTube n’étaient précédées ou interrompues par aucune publicité. N’importe quel abonné Netflix pouvait donner le mot de passe de son compte à ses proches, et visionner un film en même temps qu’eux. Mieux : un internaute utilisant un comparateur de vols comme Skyscanner pouvait réserver un trajet en avion sans voir le prix augmenter de façon aléatoire à chaque étape de la réservation.
Lire aussi | Des mouchards cachés dans vos applications pour smartphones

Si cette dégradation de la qualité des services fournis par les plateformes numériques est longtemps restée sous les radars médiatiques, tout utilisateur en a fait l’expérience. Il ne manquait qu’un mot pour désigner ce processus apparemment inexorable de « pourrissement » des plateformes.
Lors de vacances en famille, alors qu’il bataille contre des publicités et des trackers (ces petits logiciels incorporés dans des applications mobiles) pour trouver l’adresse d’un restaurant sur le site TripAdvisor, l’activiste et journaliste canadien Cory Doctorow a l’idée d’un néologisme : « enshittification » en anglais, souvent traduit en français par « merdification » ou « emmerdification ». Partagée dans un post sur Twitter en 2022, la notion rencontre un succès immédiat auprès des utilisateurs anglophones, qui voient dans sa formulation un brin grossière matière à exprimer leur propre frustration.
« J’ai passé la plus grande partie de ma vie professionnelle à élaborer des mots, des blagues, des analogies et des stratégies pour attirer l’attention du grand public sur les effets des politiques du numérique », explique Cory Doctorow, ravi de voir ses efforts enfin récompensés. Sous ses airs frustes, le terme permet de saisir intuitivement les effets d’un phénomène à la fois nouveau et complexe.

Coût économique et démocratique
Car si la dégradation de la qualité d’un service n’est pas l’apanage des plateformes du numérique, « le caractère systémique de ce phénomène dans le secteur des plateformes et l’aisance avec laquelle elles peuvent s’y livrer rendent le terme “merdification” intéressant et pertinent », note Mathilde Abel, postdoctorante au Centre de recherche en économie et statistique de l’Ecole nationale de la statistique et de l’administration économique.

Les plateformes numériques sont en effet des entreprises particulières. D’abord, parce qu’elles sont spécialistes du matching, c’est-à-dire de la mise en relation entre des offres et des demandes à (plus ou moins) grande échelle : par exemple, entre un chauffeur de VTC et une personne ayant besoin d’une course ; entre un vidéaste et un spectateur ; entre un acheteur et un vendeur. « Ce sont des professionnels des effets de réseau – c’est-à-dire de la capacité à attirer des publics très différents et de les rendre interdépendants », précise l’économiste.

Ces plateformes présentent aussi la spécificité d’avoir à disposition, notamment grâce aux données de leurs utilisateurs, de nombreux outils permettant de mesurer les conséquences de la dégradation de leur service sur leurs marges. Résultat, « ces entreprises exercent leur monopole de façon très spécifique, parce qu’elles sont capables de jouer sur des niveaux de prix avec leurs concurrents, mais aussi sur des niveaux de prix croisés entre leurs différents marchés, explique Mathilde Abel. La capacité des plateformes à faire de la discrimination par les prix et à dégrader leur service a toujours fait partie intégrante de leur modèle économique ».
D’où une trajectoire similaire, que Cory Doctorow résume en trois étapes dans un livre à paraître en juillet, Enshittification (Macmillan Publishers). A leur naissance, les jeunes plateformes ont besoin d’attirer des utilisateurs et cherchent donc à se rendre particulièrement utiles à leurs yeux, quitte à proposer un service à perte. Puis, elles cherchent à attirer des entreprises clientes (vendeurs, publicitaires ou médias) et orientent donc le fonctionnement de la plateforme en leur faveur, aux dépens des utilisateurs. Enfin, une fois la dépendance des uns et des autres à la plateforme acquise, divers mécanismes sont utilisés pour permettre de rediriger la valeur produite non plus vers les utilisateurs ou les entreprises clientes, mais vers la plateforme elle-même et ses actionnaires.

Un constat nuancé par Mathilde Abel, qui rappelle que si la « merdification » est indéniablement un mouvement inhérent aux plateformes, la dégradation des services n’est pas exercée de manière uniforme partout. « Ces différences ne sont pas seulement liées à des questions de rationalité économique : elles résultent de choix de gouvernance à l’échelle de l’entreprise, portant sur la façon dont la plateforme exerce son pouvoir de marché », explique l’économiste.

Reste que, selon Cory Doctorow, la position dominante des grands acteurs du numérique a un coût économique et démocratique considérable. « Lorsque des entreprises détiennent de tels monopoles, argumente l’activiste, elles deviennent remarquablement insensibles à tout mécanisme de responsabilisation : les consommateurs ne peuvent pas protester contre leurs pratiques en achetant les produits des concurrents, et les gouvernements se retrouvent démunis pour protéger leurs citoyens contre cette extorsion. » Avec la « merdification », la critique du capitalisme de plateforme aurait-elle enfin trouvé un levier de mobilisation ?

Marion Dupont

#Cory_Doctorow #Emmerdification

A weird phrase is plaguing scientific papers – and we traced it back to a glitch in AI training data
▻https://theconversation.com/a-weird-phrase-is-plaguing-scientific-papers-and-we-traced-it-back-

vegetative electron microscopy

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#LLMs #research #litterature #digitalfossils

Editorial: Affective, cognitive and social neuroscience: lifelong knowledge and challenges in the post-pandemic world and virtual dimension, volume II
▻https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1596292/full

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#cognition #affects #sociology #behavior #pandemic #digital #technology #mentalhealth

Influencer 22 : danah boyd | LinkedIn
▻https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7312866046800003072

Les mots d’Alan Robertson pour décrire le travail de danah boyd sont très très justes.

Alan RobertsonAlan Robertson • 2e • 2e UK Ambassador @ Global Council for Responsible AI | AI Ethics & GRC Strategist | Cybersecurity Leader | Delivering Comprehensive Risk Solutions | Almost AuthorUK Ambassador @ Global Council for Responsible AI | AI Ethics & GRC Strategist | Cybersecurity Leader | Delivering Comprehensive Risk Solutions | Almost Author 1 j •
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Influencer 22: danah boyd

I used to believe more data meant more democracy. More voices online meant more power. Then I read Danah Boyd.

She didn’t just challenge how I thought about technology—she dismantled my assumptions about what it meant to be empowered in a digital world. Through her work, I came to see that access doesn’t equal agency, and that data doesn’t simply describe the world—it reconstructs it, often through the lens of those already in control.

Boyd isn’t just a researcher of systems. She’s an ethnographer of power—watching how it moves through teens on social media, how it mutates through platforms, and how trust fractures when surveillance becomes routine. Her essays, testimony, and her founding of Data & Society laid the foundation for so much of what we now call “AI ethics”—before it had a name.

What I admire about her is her refusal to reduce complexity. She doesn’t flatten harm into metrics. She lingers in the ambiguity, in the tension between the hopeful rhetoric of tech and the lived experience of those it often marginalises. She doesn’t shout. She documents. And in doing so, she shows how harm hides in design decisions, platform incentives, and policies built for scale—not safety.

That’s reshaped how I think about AI governance. Too often, we obsess over accuracy, performance, model interpretability. boyd makes me ask something deeper:

– What happens when those systems operate exactly as intended—and still reinforce inequality?

Her work reminds me that ethics can’t be retrofitted. And that people who can’t afford to opt out should be at the centre—not the margins—of our design choices.

But here’s what I’ve been thinking about.

Boyd surfaces systemic harms with care and clarity. But in a world optimised for extraction, can that clarity compete with convenience? How do we defend the vulnerable in systems built to scale? And what would it mean to build AI with fragility—not efficiency—as a core design principle?

So, what’s the real lesson?

Danah reminds me that the people most affected by algorithmic systems are almost never the ones building them.

She doesn’t just ask how data moves—she asks: who gets to decide what’s worth measuring in the first place?

And maybe the first ethical question we need to ask in AI isn’t can we do it—
But should anyone be allowed to?

Next up: Ruha Benjamin
As always, open to pushback—this isn’t about saying this is how it is, but refining my thinking through discussion.

hashtag#AIethics hashtag#danahboyd hashtag#DigitalTrust hashtag#SurveillanceCulture hashtag#DataAndSociety

#danah_boyd #données_démocratie

Code of #ethics
▻https://www.acm.org/code-of-ethics

— Permalink

#digital #computerscience #acm

Employees’ attitudes and #work-related #stress in the digital workplace: an empirical investigation
▻https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1546832/full

— Permalink

#digitalization #wellbeing #productivity #remoteworking #virtualmeeting #videoconferencing #worklifebalance #mentalhealth

L’accélération de l’#IA pose déjà des questions de #pénuries d’#eau et d’#énergie

Le Royaume-Uni comme les États-Unis viennent de présenter de nouveaux plans pour soutenir la mise en place d’#infrastructures pour l’IA dans leurs territoires. Mais actuellement, aux États-Unis, de nouvelles #centrales au gaz sont ouvertes pour répondre aux demandes d’énergie de l’IA. Au Royaume-Uni, l’implantation par le gouvernement de sa « première zone de croissance de l’IA » près d’un nouveau réservoir pose la question des priorités d’#accès_à_l'eau.

Ce mardi 14 janvier et six jours avant la passation de pouvoir à Donal Trump, Joe Biden a publié un décret pour l’investissement des États-Unis dans des infrastructures. « Je signe aujourd’hui un décret historique visant à accélérer la vitesse à laquelle nous construisons la prochaine génération d’infrastructures d’IA ici aux États-Unis, de manière à renforcer la compétitivité économique, la sécurité nationale, la sécurité de l’IA et l’énergie propre », affirme-t-il.

Selon certaines estimations, la consommation énergétique de l’IA devrait être multipliée par 4 à 9 d’ici 2050 et la consommation d’énergie des #data_centers aux États-Unis est déjà très carbonée.

Le #gaz comme source d’énergie future aux États-Unis

Mais, malgré les différentes annonces d’investissements dans le nucléaire par les géants du numérique, les États-Unis seraient plutôt à l’aube d’un boom de la construction de #centrales_électriques au gaz naturel, selon le Financial Times. Le journal économique américain explique que « les grandes entreprises technologiques se tournent vers les #combustibles_fossiles pour répondre aux énormes besoins en #électricité de la révolution de l’intelligence artificielle, ce qui met en péril les objectifs en matière de climat ».

Le journal cite le cabinet de conseil en énergie #Enverus qui prévoit qu’au moins 80 centrales électriques au gaz seront construites aux États-Unis d’ici à 2030. Le Financial Times estime la capacité supplémentaire de ces centrales à 46 gigawatts, « soit la taille du réseau électrique norvégien et près de 20 % de plus que ce qui a été ajouté au cours des cinq dernières années ». Et selon Corianna Mah, analyste pour Enverus interrogée par le journal, « le gaz croît en fait plus rapidement aujourd’hui, et à moyen terme, que jamais auparavant ». Aucun des projets qu’Enverus a listés ne prévoit d’être équipé d’un système de capture de dioxyde de carbone.

Approvisionnement de l’eau dans un lac de barrage prévu pour la population britannique

De son côté, le gouvernement du Royaume-Uni vient d’annoncer une stratégie nationale pour faire de son pays un leader en matière d’intelligence artificielle. Dedans, il prévoit entre autres des « Zones de croissance de l’IA » (#IA_growth_zones), « des zones bénéficiant d’un meilleur accès à l’électricité et d’un soutien pour les autorisations de planification, afin d’accélérer la mise en place d’une infrastructure d’IA sur le sol britannique », comme l’explique le communiqué du Secrétariat d’État à la science, à l’innovation et à la technologie.

Mais des questions se posent sur l’emplacement prévu de la première « #zone_de_croissance ». Situé à Culham, au siège de l’Autorité britannique de l’énergie atomique (UKAEA), cet endroit est aussi celui du premier nouveau lac de barrage construit depuis 30 ans aux Royaume-Uni, « qui était censé fournir de l’eau aux habitants du sud-est de l’Angleterre, qui souffre d’un grave problème d’approvisionnement en eau », explique le Guardian.

Le journal britannique souligne que cette région est celle qui, selon l’agence environnementale nationale, est la plus sensible du pays aux manques d’eau. Entre les réserves d’eau disponibles et la demande attendue sans compter les data centers, le sud-est du pays sera confronté à un déficit potentiel de plus de 2,5 milliards de litres par jour d’ici 2050.

Du côté énergétique, le gouvernement britannique a mis en place un Conseil de l’énergie de l’IA qui doit travailler avec les entreprises du secteur pour « pour comprendre les demandes et les défis énergétiques » liés à l’intelligence artificielle. Il parie encore sur la possibilité de mettre en place des #SMR (#réacteurs_nucléaires_modulaires).

« L’expansion de l’IA a été un sujet de préoccupation pour #National_Grid [entreprise de distribution de l’électricité et du gaz notamment au Royaume-Uni], mais la vitesse à laquelle la demande de calcul de l’IA augmente a pris tout le monde par surprise et, à moins que nous n’équilibrions correctement les compromis ci-dessus, avec des politiques appropriées, toute l’énergie verte et bon marché dont nous disposons sera utilisée par les grandes entreprises technologiques, ce qui privera les familles qui souffrent déjà de la pauvreté énergétique », explique Gopal Ramchurn, chercheur de l’université de Southampton, interrogé par le Guardian.

La #France s’appuie sur son #nucléaire, mais des tensions sont présentes

Quant à la France, l’instabilité politique ne permet pas d’y voir très clair dans la politique du pays concernant l’IA. Lors de son discours de politique générale, le premier Ministre François Bayrou a évoqué l’IA lorsqu’il a annoncé la création d’un fonds spécial « entièrement [consacré] à la réforme de l’État ». Ce fonds sera financé par des actifs « en particulier immobiliers, qui appartiennent à la puissance publique, de façon à pouvoir investir, par exemple, dans le déploiement de l’intelligence artificielle dans nos services publics ».

Lors de ses vœux, le Président de la Région Normandie Hervé Morin a évoqué la volonté de sa région d’être référente en matière d’intelligence artificielle et d’accueillir des data centers sur trois ou quatre points du territoire. Il a mis en avant « son potentiel énergétique décarboné », faisant référence aux centrales nucléaires de Flamanville, Paluel et Penly et à l’EPR situé lui aussi à Flamanville.

Mais RTE tirait récemment un signal d’alarme sur le foisonnement de projets de data centers prévus pour l’IA. Si l’entreprise affirmait en novembre à l’Usine Nouvelle avoir « assez d’électricité pour répondre à la croissance des besoins », elle pointait aussi du doigt une « course à la capacité » et un manque de planification :« plusieurs projets ont été abandonnés en raison de tensions sur la distribution de l’énergie », ajoutait-il.

▻https://next.ink/165467/lacceleration-de-lia-pose-deja-des-questions-de-penuries-deau-et-denergie

#intelligence_artificielle #AI #énergie_nucléaire

Le #service_public empêché

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/31N5ws8hqwL._SY445_SX342_.jpg

Fragilisé mais loin d’avoir disparu, le service public est aujourd’hui « empêché ». Plusieurs mécanismes l’entravent, le gênent, font obstacle à sa conduite et produisent confusion et insatisfaction chez les usagers, #perte_du_sens de leur mission et #souffrance_au_travail pour les agents, sentiment d’abandon et fatalisme chez les citoyens.

D’une entreprise ou d’une administration à l’autre (au sein de La Poste, de la SNCF, d’EDF, d’hôpitaux et d’autres services publics), les mêmes processus sont à l’œuvre : la #libéralisation européenne favorise la concurrence, la #marchandisation et la #financiarisation fixent des objectifs de #rentabilité, les #privatisations bouleversent le statut des organisations qui produisent l’#intérêt_général. Cet ouvrage se penche sur les effets de ces processus sur les usagers comme sur les travailleurs. Mais même si le principal effet de ces politiques est d’entraîner une #désingularisation du service public, il n’empêche qu’il continue, malgré tout, de fonctionner.

Un ouvrage qui fait dialoguer plusieurs disciplines : sociologie, histoire et droit, par une spécialiste reconnue de la sociologie de l’action publique et du travail.

▻https://www.puf.com/le-service-public-empeche
#travail
#livre

The cost of inaction: Quantifying the impact of climate change on #health
▻https://redasadki.me/2024/12/17/the-cost-of-inaction-quantifying-the-impact-of-climate-change-on-health

This #World_Bank report ‘The Cost of Inaction: Quantifying the Impact of Climate Change on Health in Low- and Middle-Income Countries’ presents new analysis of climate change impacts on health systems and outcomes in the regions that are bearing the brunt of these impacts. Key analytical insights to quantify climate change impacts on health The report makes three contributions to our understanding of climate-health interactions: First, it quantifies the massive scale of climate change impacts on health, projecting 4.1-5.2 billion climate-related disease cases and 14.5-15.6 million deaths in #LMICs by 2050. This represents a significant advancement over previous estimates, which the report demonstrates were substantial underestimates. Second, it illuminates the profound economic (...)

#Global_health #digital_learning #global_health #Juan_Pablo_Uribe #networked_learning #peer_learning #Tamer_Rabie #The_cost_of_inaction:_Quantifying_the_impact_of_climate_change_on_health #The_Geneva_Learning_Foundation

À #Marseille, les data centers consomment du terrain et beaucoup d’#énergie

L’entreprise américaine #Digital_Realty veut construire son cinquième #centre_de_données en plein cœur de la ville. Un collectif d’habitants s’y oppose et dénonce un impact fiscal, urbain et environnemental néfaste.

(#paywall)
▻https://www.alternatives-economiques.fr/a-marseille-data-centers-consomment-terrain-beaucoup-denergie/00112632
#data_center #résistance

Berlin: BVG-App frisst Tickets – und macht zahlende Kunden zu Schwarzfahrern
▻https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/mensch-metropole/berlin-bvg-app-frisst-tickets-und-macht-zahlende-kunden-zu-schwarzf

Fahrt Taxi !

24.9.2024 von Ida Luise Krenzlin - Tickets verschwinden aus der App, die Bezahlfunktion geht nicht und die Servicehotline ist eine Farce. Man hat es wirklich nicht leicht mit der BVG. Ein Erfahrungsbericht.

Auf einer Zugreise im Sommer ist es mir das erste Mal passiert: Der Fahrschein war aus meiner BVG-App verschwunden. Zwischen Rostock und Rendsburg hatte sich mein Deutschlandticket in Luft aufgelöst. Einfach so. Bei der Fahrkartenkontrolle flog alles auf. Die Schaffnerin war nett und geduldig, aber es führte kein Weg dran vorbei: Ich musste ein „erhöhtes Beförderungsentgelt“ zahlen und konnte die Strafe in Höhe von 60 Euro nur abwenden, indem ich auf nervenaufreibende Weise dafür sorgte, dass mein Deutschlandticket wieder in der BVG-App auftauchte und ich dieses bei der Bahn einreichte.

Ich blieb nicht nur auf sieben Euro sitzen, die ich der Deutschen Bahn als „Bearbeitungsgebühr“ zahlen musste, wohlgemerkt, die BVG hatte was versemmelt, nicht ich. Auch die Urlaubsstimmung war etwas im Keller, weil sich meine Reisebegleitung tagelang über die Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe, mein Handy und die Ticket-App aufregte. „Warum kaufst du denn auch bei der BVG dein Deutschlandticket? Die App war doch schon immer Mist.“ Danke schön, liebe BVG.

Ich hab die sieben Euro gezahlt, das Ticket wieder in die App bekommen und alles verdrängt, bis ich vergangene Woche erneut in eine Kontrolle am Bahnhof Friedrichstraße kam. Ich hatte mein Rad dabei, den Bürorucksack und volle Einkaufstüten. Als ich mein Handy zückte, um dem Kontrolleur meine Monatskarte AB für mein Rad zu zeigen, war es weg. Das Deutschlandticket war da, das Radticket nicht. Kein Erbarmen. Ich musste aussteigen.

Ich zeigte dem Kontrolleur die Auftragsbestätigung, die ich per Mail am 10. September bekommen hatte. Da stand, dass ich im Besitz einer bezahlten Monatskarte fürs Fahrrad war. Es tat ihm schrecklich leid – „passiert häufiger“. Ich musste mir ziemlich laut sagen, dass er nichts dafür kann. Hätte ich nicht so viel Kram dabei gehabt, hätte ich mich aus dem Staub gemacht. Das Trauma der verschwundenen Fahrscheine ploppte wieder auf. Diesmal kriegte ich die Wut, die meine Reisebegleitung bereits im Sommer hatte.

Die Servicehotline der BVG: „Leider verstehe ich dich nicht“

Seit einer Woche versuche ich, den Fahrschein wieder in die BVG-App zu kriegen – bislang ohne Erfolg. In der Servicehotline der BVG begrüßt einen eine freundliche Stimme, sie gendert tipptopp. Ich weiß nun, dass es fürs Deutschlandticket keine Ermäßigungen für Rentner:innen gibt. Die Stimme macht eine minikleine Pause zwischen Wortstamm und Endung. Im Menü wähle ich die Ziffer eins, weil es da um Tickets geht. Dort soll ich mein Anliegen schildern. Ich verlasse das Büro, damit mir niemand zuhören kann. Ich finde es erniedrigend, mit automatischen Telefonsystemen zu sprechen.

https://berliner-zeitung.imgix.net/2024/09/24/66e53538-ec10-46f3-9385-80212a263ad8.jpeg?auto=format&fit=max&w=1080&auto=compress&rect=30,0,415,415

Tja, Pech gehabt. Hoffentlich hatte der App-Nutzer Bargeld dabei, um das Ticket zu zahlen. Aber halt! Die BVG schafft ja gerade die Barzahlung ab. Screenshot privat

„Mein Ticket ist aus der App verschwunden.“ Die Stimme duzt mich: „Es tut mir leid. Leider scheine ich dich nicht zu verstehen.“ Ich schaue, ob die Tür auch wirklich geschlossen ist: „Ticket. App. Weg.“ – „Kannst du dein Anliegen anders formulieren?“ Ich merke, wie ich wütend werde, da ich ahne, dass dies alles nicht zielführend ist. „Kann ich mit jemandem persönlich sprechen?“ – „Leider verstehe ich dich nicht.“ Ich überlege mir einen Kniff und sage: „Deutschlandticket. Abo.“ Wenn es um einen Vertragsabschluss und nicht um ein Problem geht, kommt man vielleicht schneller zum Zug. Es funktioniert.
Große Probleme mit der BVG-App

Der echte und lebendige Mitarbeiter lässt sich meine Kundennummer geben und sieht in meinem Konto, dass ich eine gültige Monatskarte für ein Fahrrad habe. Er kann es aber nicht in die App schieben. Ich frage entgeistert, wer das denn kann. Er sagt, ich soll eine Mail an den App-Support schreiben. Das habe ich aber bereits vor einer Woche getan. Ich kenne diese E-Mail-Adresse noch von der Sommereise. Damals hatte es geklappt. Auch diesmal habe ich sofort an den App-Support der BVG geschrieben. Mehrmals. Passiert ist nichts.

Wie bitte? „Kommen Sie einfach zur Jannowitzbrücke“

Daraufhin sagt der Mitarbeiter einen fatalen Satz: „Kommen Sie einfach zur Jannowitzbrücke ins Servicecenter.“ Ich entgegne, dass ich voll berufstätig bin und zwei Kinder habe und ich garantiert nicht ins Servicecenter der BVG gehe, um mich stundenlang anzustellen. „Außerdem haben Sie doch einen Fehler gemacht.“ Der Mitarbeiter versteht mich, ist aber auch ratlos, wie man das Problem vom Schreibtisch aus lösen kann. Er rät mir, noch einmal die Servicehotline anrufen und die Ziffer vier zu wählen, „die können mehr als ich“. Die Hoffnung stirbt zuletzt.

Tatsächlich habe ich relativ schnell einen echten Menschen am Telefon. Ich schildere mein Anliegen. „Da hab ick doch nüscht mit zu tun.“ Berliner Schnauze trifft auf Servicewüste. Mir platzt der Kragen, dem BVG-Mann auch: „Bei mir müssen Sie sich nicht beschweren!“ Aber wo denn sonst?
Viele Probleme mit der BVG-App: „Transaktion abgelehnt“

Ich bin nicht die Einzige, die Probleme mit der BVG-App hat. Aus dem Bekannten- und Kollegenkreis kommen Ergänzungen. Seit die neue App installiert ist, klappt nichts mehr: Tickets können nicht gekauft werden, da die Bezahlfunktion nicht geht. Verbindungen werden falsch angezeigt, da aktuelle Streckenausdünnungen nicht angezeigt werden. Hat man keinen Empfang, lädt sowieso nichts. Und für die Bereitstellung von Tickets ist man selbst verantwortlich. Die ultimative Geheimwaffe für die BVG-App: Immer einen Screenshot vom Ticket machen.

Ein Kollege fragt, ob ich wüsste, dass man wegen Schwarzfahren auch in Plötzensee landen kann. Ich weiß, ein Problem, das viele Obdachlose betrifft. Wer innerhalb von zwei Jahren mindestens dreimal ohne Ticket erwischt wird, bekommt von der BVG eine Strafanzeige. Wegen „Erschleichen von Leistungen“, so der seit 1935 geltende Straftatbestand im Strafgesetzbuch, wurden im vergangenen Jahr 2943 Schwarzfahrer angezeigt.

Kommt es zu einer Verurteilung, erhalten die Betroffenen meist eine Geldstrafe. Wird diese nicht gezahlt, droht eine sogenannte Ersatzfreiheitsstrafe. Im Jahr 2023 kamen laut Senatsjustizverwaltung rund 540 Menschen letztlich in Haft, weil sie Bus oder Bahn ohne Ticket genutzt hatten. Ich bin auf dem besten Weg, Plötzensee mal von innen zu sehen. Dazu kommt, dass die BVG gerade die Barzahlung in Bussen abschafft. Man soll also auch die BVG-App mehr benutzen – für Ticketkäufe. Was aber, wenn diese nur unzuverlässig funktioniert? Es scheint, dass die BVG ihre Fehler auf dem Rücken der Fahrgäste austrägt.

Ich habe die BVG um eine Stellungnahme gebeten. Diese antwortet, dass die Kontrolleure keine andere Handhabe hätten: „Daher empfehlen wir, die App vor Fahrtantritt zu öffnen und das Ticket zu überprüfen. Sollte sich im Nachhinein herausstellen, dass ein gültiges Ticket vorhanden war, kann das Entgelt auf 7 Euro ermäßigt werden. Selbstverständlich erstatten wir kulant die Kosten, wenn nachweislich ein Problem mit der App zum Zeitpunkt der Kontrolle bestand.“ Das klingt wenig praktikabel. Sinn und Zweck der App und einer Monatskarte ist es ja gerade, dass man einfach einsteigt. „Weil wir Dich lieben“ fühlt sich anders an.

#Berlin #ÖPNV #BVG #Digitalisierung

Taking the pulse: why and how we change everything in response to learner signals
▻https://redasadki.me/2024/07/18/taking-the-pulse-why-and-how-we-change-everything-in-response-to-learner-s

The ability to analyze and respond to learner behavior as it happens is crucial for educators. In complex learning that takes place in digital spaces, task separation between the design of instruction and its delivery does not make sense. Here is the practical approach we use in The Geneva Learning Foundation’s learning-to-action model to implement responsive learning environments by listening to learner signals and adapting design, activities, and feedback accordingly. Listening for and interpreting learner signals Educators must pay close attention to various signals that learners emit throughout their learning journey. These signals appear in several key ways: Making sense of learner signals Once these signals are identified, a nuanced approach to analysis is necessary: Adapting (...)

#Learning_design #Theory #digital_learning #facilitation #learning_design