Platform and Collective Intelligence

1Organizations and Digital Technology

Within contemporary society, information and communication technologies (ICTs) are the bearers of the “imaginary of a technical action initiating new social projects” (Papy 2009, p. 15).

In recent years, public and private organizations¹ have been receptive to this discourse and have equipped themselves with digital technical devices that respond to the new forms of modernity brought about by ICT and the “information society” (IS).

In order to achieve the ambition of this book, it seems useful to present the current context of Western organizations and more particularly that inherent to the information society.

1.1. Organizations of the “information society”

Having emerged in the 1990s, the concept of the “information society” reflects a conception that combines political² discourse and technical³ infrastructure. The whole is marked by neo-liberalism in a context of accelerated globalization and strong economic competition. Thus, in three decades, the digitization of society has materialized, mainly in the Northern countries⁴. This social project, carried by industrial countries and private⁵, public⁶ or associative actors, is then “a source of new forms of organization and emancipation, it is also a source of new modalities of social control and of enslavement” (Mattelart 2018, p. 4). In fact, technology, instantiated by digital technologies, no longer expresses itself only in control or structuring, but accompanies the social construction ...