Michel Serres: brief report about his conference on 01/06/2016 at the Institute Français de Barcelone

Yesterday, some POBICS members and other colleagues went to the Michel Serres conference held at

 the Institute Français de Barcelone. As you will know, Michel Serres is a very important philosopher in the 20-21th with several book published, for instance, the two we read this course: "Atlas" and "The Natural Contract". 

In this ocassion, the old French sailor talked about knowledge and information and the main shifts this apparatus have endured along the humankind existence; as well as about one of his most known books: "Le Petit Pucet" among other topics like academia&university, language, or computers

Here we left our report:

Information and Knowledge:

Information is not the same that knowledge. Knowledge carries a cognizance, but currently, informationis related with the access to Internet in any kind of devices.

Along the existence of the humankind, we have (at least) three kind of knowledge within three diferents revolutions: a) Oral form, supported on memories; writing, supported on books (and some time ago in prints and faster spread of information); and c) Computers supported on Internet. 

In the third moment, phisical money, paper... enter into crisis. This third revolution is not a "tough" revolution, but a "soft". Why? because for Serres, computers have no invented anything: we read books in computers like they were physical books. Personal computers have memory, images, resolve problems... as we did with other devices (books, sheets, abacus...). Some years ago, memory, imagination and reason were within us; nowadays they are outside.

What are the difference between computers and us, then? For Serres, the answer is innovation, the "vanishing point" from Deleuze. He explained it with an history: Christopher Columbus was not looking for America, but for India in order to make bussiness. But what happened? He came across with America. Invention happens when you are looking for a particular thing and you find other different. 

Academia & University:

Academia is also in crisis, and this is due to the ever-faster aknowledgment of new words in the Academy of Letters (30000 in the last years; 3000 in the gap of the years in the 70-80's).

In jobs the speed is just the opposite: we use ever less words to define rural and farming jobs. 

Related to university, with Internet and smartphones knowledge are entangled and mixed: subjects are fused and emerge new kinds of them. Nowadays, a teacher give about a 15% of his knowledge. At the beginning of the 20th Century it was about a 80%.

Politics and Languaje. Le Petit Poucet:

In french, "maintenant" meand literally "in the hand". And this definition is currently more true than ever. We have information and knowledge "maintenant". The classical meaning of this word is "in the front of something". Alexander the Great of Napoleon Bonaparte never could say the have the world on their hands, and now, 3.000.000.000 of persons in the Earth can say it. As Serres said, we have "maintenant" stadistics, forecasts, global datas... and for that, is possible someone of us wants to conquer the world as this emperors pretended.

Photo Credit: ebaes