FORUMS TO PREPARE OURSELVES FOR A FUTURE DIGITAL CIVILIZATION

Motivations, Principles, Methods.

Digital Society was thought up over thirty years ago. In three decades, complex, efficient digital systems have been implemented on all continents; there are disparities, sure, but there is also a lot of coherency. This cyber world has already drastically changed our lives; and this is only the beginning.

So Aquitaine Europe Communication, an association based in Bordeaux and operating throughout Aquitaine, asked several partners and personalities to participate in a simple process that might anticipate the world of tomorrow and provide us, in 2007, with a first set of keys.

And so the «Digital Civilizations Forums» were born.

In 2005, discussion in a synod-type environment allowed us to formulate the ten questions to be discussed. In 2006, a casino betting system was the means by which we conceived of a 2026 World’s Fair, and wrote ten future stories to help us get there. In 2007, a digital assembly voted on four scenarios that brought together decreased energy resources, climate change, and the capacity for collective action brought about by the digital, which then led to the presentation of seven different plans of action.

Challenges and Plans of Action

On the morning of Sunday October 7th, 2007, programme director Daniel Kaplan presented the challenges and plans of action that had been voted on (electronically, of course) :

• Education: Visibly increase the global level of education by transforming how such knowledge is transmitted.
• Governance: Mesh institutions and networks to govern a complex world.
• Security: Construct a concerted global catastrophe planning involving nation states, NGOs and citizens.
• Democracy: Extend the scope of digital counter-powers.
• Environment: Provide everyone with the means to measure and compare their carbon footprint.
• Sciences: Define an ethics of “human augmentation.”
• Innovation: Reintroduce the body and the senses into digital interaction.

We have to keep going.
It will be necessary for us to take care of it for the second cycle of Digital Civilizations Forums.

Marcel Desvergne
CI’NUM General Representative
AEC President
marcel.desvergne@aecom.org