Technological Sovereignty: What Chances for Alternative Practices to Emerge in Daily IT Use?

Résumé 0

This paper presents the tension between commercial monopolistic practices offered by Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft (GAFAM) in terms of IT and the possible conditions of alternative practices. While the globalization of the IT industry is seen as a “democratization of knowledge,” we will attempt to show that, on the contrary, digital alphabetization left in the hands of the IT giants leads to practices that are shaped in their own interest. By getting into the users’ daily life, it walks off with vocabulary and imagination, thus ensuring the preservation of its monopole and preventing the emancipation possibilities that IT seemed to promise. However, some of these advances are blocked by alternative practices (recovering vocabulary, creating free software and promoting alternative alphabetization). This paper takes an interest in this activist field and offers several leads for a reflexive approach for a free and truly emancipating IT pedagogy.