Section: Research Program

Economy of the digital world

The digital revolution is impacting all sectors of our societies and organisations, education, energy, tranportation, health, to name a few. This revolution results in the phenomena of Schumpeter's creative destruction, with the disparition of traditional sectors and the creation of new ones. Our societies, which did not anticipate the depth of the changes, have to struggle to adapt to the pace of the development of the industry. Legal reforms in various important sectors including taxation are at stake. Some countries, more reactive than others, are clearly pulling the changes, exploiting the benefits for businesses and the capacity to generate information and value, while others are trying to catch up with the global trends.

Data form the bricks of the information society, and their flows between users and services constitute the blood of the industry. We focus in Dice on the strategic role of data in this revolution, and in particular on the systems that harvest the data and concentrate it.

We are also interested in the global political impact of this revolution, which deeply changes the relations between governments and citizens. If the privacy is the focus of considerable attention, together with the state surveillance, in Europe in particular, it is only one aspect of the new knowledge made available. Social media produce considerable knowledge not only on individuals, but on populations as well, their economic fate, their political orientation, etc. On the other hand, open data from governments allow citizens to monitor the action of their governments, as well as to contribute to it. The digital revolution, with the capacity to access information in ways unthinkable in the recent past, modifies completely the balance of powers between citizens, states and corporations.

A new trend is emerging in the humanities, around in particular the digital studies, which promote the cooperation between computer scientists and specialists of social sciences. Among them, the Berkman center for Internet and Society in Harvard, the Medialab at MIT, or the Web Science Institute in the UK have gained strong visibility. They address positive as well as negative externalities of IT for societies, that is the new potentials offered as well as their risks. The Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society in Berkeley also adresses fundamental political impacts on democracy, which can be enhanced by open data as well as another philosophy of political power as currently implemented in the State of California for instance. The Open Data Institute in the UK is also a leading center for political issues in Europe. France should catch up on these research trends, at the intersection of different scientific fields.