When the Matrix trilogy was published in the mid-1980s, it introduced to mass culture a number of post-human tropes about the conscious machines that have haunted our collective imaginaries ever since. This volume explores the social representations and significance of technological developments - especially AI and human enhancement - that have started to transform our human agency. It uses these developments to revisit theories of the human mind and its essential characteristics: a first person perspective, concerns and reflexivity. It looks (...) at how the smart machines are used as agents of change in the basic institutions and organisations that hold contemporary societies together: for example in the family and the household, in commercial corporations, in health institutions, or in the military. Its main purpose it to enrich the ongoing public discussion of the social and political implications of the smart machines by looking at the extent to which they further digitalize and bureaucratize the world, in particular by asking whether they are used to develop techno-totalitarian societies that corrode normativity and solidarity. talize and bureaucratize the world, in particular by asking whether they are used to develop techno-totalitarian societies that corrode normativity and solidarity. (shrink)

Cet article met en perspective sociologique la croissance de l’utilisation des réseaux socionumériques et propose une approche néo-structurale pour l’analyse des profils des utilisateurs. Il insiste notamment sur les comparaisons sociales et les jeux de statut comme l’une des dimensions de la rationalisation contemporaine de la gestion des interdépendances dans ces réseaux socionumériques. Cette rationalisation est mise en relation avec la flexibilisation des marchés du travail et l’affaiblissement des solidarités universalistes. L’analyse sociologique des réseaux met en évidence le travail relationnel (...) et symbolique des acteurs qui cherchent à gérer ainsi leur capital relationnel, une rationalité sociale qui les guide, les rouages relationnels d’une discipline sociale complexe qui leur permet de se coordonner, qu’ils considèrent comme légitime et qui constitue aussi une composante du capital social du collectif. On suggère enfin que les avancées de la recherche sur les réseaux sociaux et organisationnels peuvent être mises à profit pour identifier les formes de discipline sociale qui émergent de ces nouvelles pratiques de construction d’une présence en ligne.This article brings a sociological perspective to bear on the increasing use of social networking sites and offers a neo-structural approach to analyses of user profiles. It lays particular emphasis on social comparison and the “status game” as one of the dimensions of contemporary rationalisation in the management of interdependencies in social networking sites. This rationalisation is added to increasing labour market flexibility and weakening universalist solidarity. Sociological analysis of these networks brings out the relational and symbolic work accomplished by those involved, as they seek to manage their relational capital. The social rationality that guides them enables them to cross-coordinate and the relational workings of a complex social discipline, which they see as legitimate and is also a component of the collective social capital. We suggest, finally, that advances in research on social and organisational networks could help to identify forms of social discipline that are emerging from the new practice of constructing on-line presence. (shrink)