De la constellation Marconi au métissage hypermédiatique : comment évaluer l’évolution découlant de la « conversion numérique » ?

What is the meaning of Mankind’s entry in the Digital Era? Milad Doueihi explains the central role of digital media in this transition (La Grande conversion numérique and Pour un humanisme numérique). Yet, Marshall McLuhan, had done an equivalent work for electronic media when they were gaining popularity, thus becoming «mass media» (during the 1960: The Gutenberg Galaxy and Understanding Media).  Doueihi underlines the importance of taking in account the specificities of the «code-objects» (fragments of digital writings) that require new «literate practices» according to him; while McLuhan invited us to become aware of the «extension of our central nervous system» by first-generation electronic media, which resorted to automation (decentralization caused by electric interconnection). Each in his own way, these two thinkers convey us to reflect on the close interlinking of technical and cultural factors, in the transformation of our world views in relation with the transfiguration of our media based environment. Then, though they study two different periods in the evolution of communications, and despite the fact that Doueihi doesn’t explicitly refer to McLuhan, the arguments for making them enter into a dialogue are numerous. One of the most important comes from that, at the place where their words seem to meet, rises a paradox that tends to make us doubt of their discourse. Indeed, perplexity installs itself when we realize their respective analysis of their time’s ICTs aims at making us understand that the cultural metamorphosis related to the advent of these dispositifs are of an unprecedented depth… Doueihi, «digitaler by accident», is convinced that computerized media lead to a fundamental paradigmatic change (the digital culture defining itself largely by opposition to the universalist conception of «Progress»). Reciprocally, McLuhan asserted that electronic media, from telegraph to television, had already accomplished a radical overturning of the effects of mechanization (resulting from modern «Progress»)… How can the turn induced by the hypermedia be genuine, if the «conversion» it allows is defined by characteristics similar to those belonging to the «revolution» that is attributed to the penetration of «analog» («first-generation electronic») media in the households of the entire World throughout the XXth century? Confronted to theses paradoxes, we will try to find a walkway between the theoretical perspectives of these two «media anthropologists». To get there, we will show that they don’t conceive the relation between identity and the form of cultural contents on the same mode, although they both look into «reconnecting Meaning to Space». Having failed to conciliate their thesis in the substance, we will finally highlight a proximity of tone between their different approaches of the complexity of the mutations they are witnessing. That link being a playful accent.

Keyphrases: Marshall McLuhan, Milad Doueihi, Humanisme numérique, Media theory, Digital culture, Literature, Space, Time, Identity, Play, Media ecology, Digital humanism