A Crisis of Truth: Fake Words and Images

Maison Suger is pleased to host the third session of the seminar cycle "Accumulations and Accelerations: Computer Totalitarianism III", with David Chavalarias, agrégé in mathematics, Director of the Institute for Complex Systems in Paris, and author of Toxic Data: How Networks Manipulate Our Opinions (Flammarion, 2022).

New techniques for manipulating texts, sounds, and images now make it possible to fabricate words and photographs whose lack of correspondence with physical reality is increasingly difficult to detect. This raises the fear, expressed by German philosopher Byung-Chul Han, of a genuine "crisis of truth" since "digital photography destroys facticity as truth".

Following the success of the first two years of the seminar, which focused on the all-encompassing influence of computing, a third cycle has been organised to explore new counter-truths. The promise of virtual communities can sometimes prove harmful to physical social relations. Remote working, far from promoting equality, tends to increase disparities. The mechanised school, often presented as virtuous, risks reducing education to mere conditioning. And the fantasy of the “augmented” human reinforces capitalist logics of accumulation and acceleration.

The seminar will also examine the threats posed by automated warfare and the mechanised rationalisation of medical care, which can obscure the environmental causes of many diseases. New techniques for manipulating texts, sounds and images are making it increasingly difficult to distinguish between true and false. Finally, the artificialisation of life fosters endless individualisation: isolated humans are caught in a race toward immediate technical pleasures and struggle to grasp collective issues.

Inspired by an interactive pedagogy, the seminar is free and open to all, particularly students and researchers in the humanities, law and philosophy.