The Next Renaissance

European Crew

• Éditeur: Odile Jacob
• Année: 2022
• Imprimer l'ISBN: 9782415001995
• ISBN de l'eBook: 9782415002008
• Sujet: Sciences sociales
• Sujet: Sociologie

We are a European crew made of artists, academics, entrepreneurs! More than 60 European contributors, from all generations and from 15 countries, came together to give reasons for action and build a common place for culture, creativity, and innovation in Europe. In these times of multiplicities of changes—despite or because—a novel type of change is taking shape. It is a transition that empowers a real movement, leaving behind hustling from one state to another: thinking more slowly, more deeply, more from a 360° perspective, and more caring beyond quick fixes. It is a compelling story mixing art, tech, and innovation. Together it is all transformative. This book presents makers and thinkers from the Cultural Creative Sectors and Industries driving this novel shift towards better systems in technologies and organizations, in cities and businesses and the public realm: that is what we call "The Next Renaissance." 

Space Odyssey

“Ground Control to Major Tom

Ground Control to Major Tom

Take your protein pills and put your helmet on

Ground Control to Major Tom (ten, nine, eight, seven, six)

Commencing countdown, engines on (five, four, three)

Check ignition and may God’s love be with you (two, one, liftoff)”

David Bowie, singer, songwriter, composer, Space Oddity on album Space Oddity, 1969-1972

© Creatives Garage

Creatives Garage is a trust based in Nairobi Kenya. We conceptualize, create, and distribute content fed by African narrative. We film scripts written by undiscovered talent, publish books by revolutionary women, host art exhibitions, record and distribute podcasts and music. We also develop tools that embrace emerging and existing tech to build the Kenya Creative community.

Creatives Garage focuses mainly on being a creative agency that will focus on creating strategic engagement in culture collateral and processes with creative brand audiences. We will strive to be the only art society in Kenya that promotes the use of art to showcase the interconnection of various aspects in human activity to relay emotions, struggles and inspire the society to cope and overcome the society’s challenges.

The Metaverse and its discontents

From contributing to the design of the information space to creative platform.

Alexandre Menais

In 2011, we first discovered Black Mirror on the BBC which sent delicious shivers of fright running down our spines. The dystopian vision of how technology would ultimately rule (and ultimately perhaps ruin) our lives entertained us while making us nervous: it seemed possible in the ‘not so distant’ future. Well, we are ten years later, and the creative minds of the screenplay writers seem very real today.

Today almost everything is digitally connected. Our private and personal exchanges (email, instant messaging, DMs), our travels (taxi, maps…), our physical performances (running apps, dieting apps…), our agendas, our finances and even our medical and personal data. The relationship we have developed with our devices is and will continue to become more and more intimate as technology is now an integrated part of our private and professional lives. Now that applications and solutions become even more precise and predictive, we start to fear who controls the data we provide, and what is gathered? Who is behind the algorithms that push contents and recommendations to us? What are the underlying risks behind who controls and who can hack these technologies? And what about tomorrow? With Mark Zuckerberg announcing his vision of the Facebook Metaverse, we are starting to wonder how this may become a new era of dominance1 (if, and when, it will be operational). As Eric Schmidt said “the world will become more digital than physical. And it’s not necessarily the best thing for human society”2. Therefore we make giving clarity and transparency our purpose.

“Metaverse”, a promising island?

The concept of the “metaverse” has garnered much press coverage of late, addressing such topics as the new appetite for metaverse investment opportunities, a recent virtual land boom, or just the promise of it all, where “crypto, gaming and capitalism collide.” The term “metaverse,” is generally used to refer to the development of virtual reality and augmented reality technologies, featuring a mashup of massive multiplayer gaming, virtual worlds, virtual workspaces, and remote education to create a decentralized wonderland and collaborative space. The grand concept is that the metaverse will be the next iteration of the mobile internet and a major part of both digital and real life.

As currently conceived, the metaverse would feature a synchronous environment giving users a seamless experience across different realms, even if such discrete areas of the virtual world are operated by different developers. It would boast its own economy where users and their avatars interact socially and use digital assets based in both virtual and actual reality, a place where commerce would presumably be heavily based on decentralized finance. No single company or platform would operate the metaverse, but rather, it would be administered by many entities in a decentralized manner and work across multiple computing platforms. The metaverse would look like a virtual world featuring enhanced experiences interfaced that makes you “feel” virtual emotions. Later, the contours of the metaverse would be shaped by user preferences, monetary opportunities and incremental innovations by developers building on what came before. In other words, the vision is that multiple companies, developers and creators will come together to create one metaverse (as opposed to proprietary, closed platforms) and have it evolved into an embodied mobile internet, one that is open and interoperable and would include many facets of life (i.e., work, social interactions, entertainment) in one hybrid space.

For the metaverse to become a reality; that is, successfully link current gaming and communications platforms with other new technologies into a massive new online destination—many obstacles will have to be overcome, even beyond the hardware, software and integration issues.

We need for the metaverse infrastructure to have an infrastructure that will allow disparate developers and studios, e-commerce marketplaces, platforms and service providers to all coexist within one virtual world. To make it even more interesting, it is envisioned to be an interoperable, seamless experience for shoppers, gamers, social media users or just curious internet-goers armed with wallets full of cryptocurrencies to spend and virtual assets to flaunt.

Unfortunately, in terms of platforms and tools, the giants are American, but they were already at the start: the first generation of MySpace, Yahoo, Napster or Altavista was simply carried away. This domination ensured by Facebook, Amazon, Google or Netflix (the “FANG” of tech, distinguished from the “MAN”—Microsoft, Apple and Nvidia of hard / software) does not come from nowhere. The United States has always had an extraordinary ecosystem around computers and electronics, mixing world academic excellence, plentiful private capital, powerful financial markets and considerable public and military orders. However, the criticism of these companies has never been so strong and the concern they inspire so great. It is a global subject, if we include the part of Asia under Chinese influence dominated by its own giants, the BATX (Baidu Alibaba Tencent Xiaomi). The forums and declarations are multiplying about the problems of monopolies, tax evasion, collateral economic damage, attacks on individual data and even on democracy…

What kind of safe harbor?

By dealing ambitiously and offensively with three subjects—taxation, competition, personal data—while remaining faithful to its main principles of market freedom and consumer protection, Europe would have the means to assert itself as the digital power it deserves to be. But would it be sufficient? Let’s take the example of the competition law. The criticism made was it prevents the emergence of European champions by leaning on competition law, but this is not admissible, because there should be no question of giving in on what brings the best in terms of economic dynamism, innovation and value for the consumer. On the other hand, Europe can be much more aggressive on these questions regarding other economic zones which anyhow allow monopolies to be established. A relevant illustration here is the acquisitions of new technology start-ups by US giants which escape of the merger control threshold… but again, wo...

Table des matières

• Cover
• TitlePage
• Copyright
• Preface
• The Next Renaissance is a Renaissance of the Next - Are we the chicken or the egg?
• Border Lines
• Space Odyssey
• Stake of Minds
• Acknowledgement
• Contributors
• Contents