Our Manifesto: Shaping Technology for Society
EPISTELEM is intended to help reconcile technological progress and civic conversation or, in other words, knowledge (ἐπιστήμη – episteme) and will (Θέλημα – thelema). We wish to offer you a personal and spontaneous reflection on the significance of the ongoing industrial revolution. While human skills are at the heart of technological advances, excessive specialization and bureaucratization have challenged the generalist dimension of scientific thinking in recent decades. At the same time, political thinking has drifted toward a type of partisan formalism that neglects the historical linkages between humanities and science.
We believe that technological and scientific thinking can still serve social balance, by promoting education through experimentation, self-awareness, resources preservation, comprehension of nature, and a sense of frugality. Although technology is more than just a matter of competition between world powers, technical progress, when aligned with social advancement, shapes history and serves as an essential instrument of democracy and sovereignty.
An event as destabilizing as the pandemic has shed light on the quest for self-production and development, on a personal and local scale. An immense cooperation is taking place through the Internet, with shifting contours and often exceeding conventional market rules. In spite of the educational crisis facing many of our societies, knowledge has never been so accessible. The present challenges lead us to rediscover the techniques of artisanal production, to increase our skills without limits of discipline or style. While research and production have often been confined to vast institutions, people of all backgrounds can now reflect on their desire to accomplish, to produce on their own scale and according to their own means.
Between knowledge and will, or science and conscience, EPISTELEM is a nod to the Abbey of Thélème, the utopia founded by François Rabelais in his 1534 novel Gargantua, on the principles of free will and education. In our own way, we wish to federate a network of people with diverse perspectives, who wish to question the means and the ends of technology, in order to develop a lively analysis and new collective projects. Our professional backgrounds give us a particular perspective on information technologies. However, the boundary between new and “old” technologies, or between high tech and craft is relative. We would like to explore with you the contours of a new relationship with technology, following values of autonomy, stability, and respect for nature, coupled with a desire for reasoned progress.