Methods

“To create is to unite.” — Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Stance

My stance is low-key, in the sense that I do not seek to occupy the centre. It is also, by default, confident and enthusiastic.

I work alone but in a network, and therefore never alone: with an ecosystem of partners that I build patiently over the years, sharing common values and complementary expertise.

From home, in the Orne bocage, Normandy. I travel easily when needed, by train and electric bike.

What I do

My work generally consists in understanding, imagining, developing and equipping the existing or possible articulations between actors and between projects, across silos, in their context. To create is to unite.

Combining rather than choosing

I do not like to choose. I prefer to hold together two complementary, sometimes antagonistic logics, without merging one into the other: this is Edgar Morin’s dialogic principle, which runs through my thesis. Among others:

Purposes

• Meaning and efficiency
• The common interest and the particular interest
• Cooperation and competition

Forms of organisation

• Bottom-up and top-down
• Autonomy and connectedness
• Unity and diversity
• The local and the global
• P2P and the commons
• The long term and agility

Techniques

• Innovation and standardisation
• Low tech and high tech
• Machine learning and the semantic web
• Technology and law
• Simplicity and complexity

Five design principles

Conceptualised as part of my thesis (chapter 6), these five principles are particularly useful to me for designing efficient, robust, resilient and regenerative systems. Taken in isolation they are attributes; combined, they give rise to reversibility, autonomy and modularity, then interoperability and traceability, up to the acephality and efficiency of the network.

• Usefulness: what an actant carries must be relevant and readable to others, otherwise it is noise. A purpose that can be decoded.
• Atomicity: each element must be able to exist on its own, detach and recombine. The opposite of the silo and the monolith.
• Genericity: a common grammar and standard interfaces, so that an element can leave its original context and connect with others.
• Shareability: information must be accessible and distributable. This is the political choice of open interfaces.
• Durability: information must remain stable over time and withstand obsolescence and entropy.