Epistémo Marketing

Le philosophe et sociologue Gilles Lipovetsky auteur de "l'empire de l'éphémère" (éditions Gallimard /Folio Essais - 1991) nous parle en vidéo de cette tendance lourde du même nom. nous avions interviewé l'auteur autour de son livre "Le bonheur paradoxal"

La version définitive de l'ouvrage "Entreprise 2018" qui à réuni plus d'une cinquantaine d'auteurs, experts, praticiens, sous la direction de René Duringer (Directeur de la prospective et du congrès de l’Ordre des Experts Comptables, animateur de Smartfutur) est désormais en ligne.

L'e-book en pdf téléchargeable (308 pages) consacre un chapitre au Marketing :  "Marketing & Entreprise2018" (p.202)

Ma propre contribution, "Marketing du Futur, Esquisse des possibles" est lisible, pages 202 à 210.

Bonne lecture

Denis FAILLY

Entreprise2018 Version definitive ultimate fevrier 2009

Une interview de François Laurent, co-président de l'ADETEM créateur du blog Marketingisdead

Denis Failly - François, ton nouveau livre "Marketing 2.0, l'intelligence collaborative", est écrit par quelqu'un qui à mené une carrière d'hommes d'études, de marketing et de communication au sein des grands groupes dédiés à ces domaines, tu es donc un praticien et un témoin privilégié des évolutions. Au fond si le marketing est en crise, qu'est ce qui a fondamentalement changé entre le marketing du 20ème siècle le marketing d'aujourd'hui et de demain à inventer ?

François Laurent - Les moyens dont disposent aujourd'hui les consommateurs face aux marques : le marketing doit aujourd'hui faire face à deux révolutions qui se sont succédées en quelques années.
Web 1.0 quand il y a 5 à 6 ans, les consommateurs ont découvert qu'Internet leur permettait d'accéder à des informations dont ils ne disposaient pas auparavant : les comparateurs de prix constituent une source majeur d'information, bien devant les sites des marques et la publicité, ce qui leur permet de dialoguer d'égal à égal avec les distributeurs lors d'un achat (parfois, ils en savent même plus que les vendeurs)
Web 2.0 qui leur permet désormais de dialoguer entre eux, de donner en toute liberté leur avis sur les produits, de les critiquer le cas échéant : jamais la première thèse du Cluetrain Manifesto n'a autant été d'actualité : les marchés sont des conversations ... dont les marketers s'excluent trop souvent !

Denis Failly - Le Web 2, a généré de nouvelles trajectoires comportementales (auto-production, participation, collaboration, comparaison, critiques, e-opinions....) qui débordent le cadre du microcosme marketing et touchent par ondes successives, progressives voire insidieuses, l'ensemble de la société (thématique de la rupture, société de défiance, contestation des experts, des institutions, des dirigeants, révolution dans les sciences nano-bio-cogno...) ; On ne peut s'empêcher de penser que les (re)-constructions qu'appellent ces observations sont aussi, et par extension : sociétales (développement, sens du capitalisme,..), philosophiques (éthique, identité...) voire anthropologiques et civilisationnelles (place et devenir de l'humain, rapport hommes machines/progrès ...), tu emploies d'ailleurs dans le livre le terme Civilisation 2.0 peut tu compléter ou nous préciser ta pensée ?

François Laurent - Le Web 2.0 a radicalement changé la relation aux marques et le pouvoir de ces dernières ... mais aussi aux élites, aux politiques !
Hier, on était dans une organisation verticale de la société - ou one to many - où le pouvoir d'émettre était détenu exclusivement par une minorité : marques, via les publicitaires et autres gens de marketing, dirigeants (entreprises, associations, etc.), politiques, etc.
Aujourd'hui, tout un chacun peut parler à tout un chacun, la société devient horizontale - on rentre dans le domaine du many to many - ce qui bouleverse tous les repères et surtout renverse la tendance hégémonique de la minorité aux pouvoirs (économique, politique, social).
C'est en ce sens que la révolution Web 2.0 dépasse de loin le cadre étroit du seul marketing et que je parle de Civilisation 2.0.

François Laurent - Le développement d'Internet et des outils high tech permet d'autres accès aux consommateurs : le dialogue peut s'effectuer autrement que dans une salle lors d'un focus groupe, il peut se créer lors d'un bulletin board créé pour la circonstance sur la toile ; cependant, on n'obtient pas les mêmes résultats, puisque la première approche privilégie l'accès à la mémoire sémantique, la seconde à l'épisodique, voire la procédurale.
On peut également se contenter d'écouter ce que les consommateurs disent librement sur la toile : la blogosphère notamment constitue un champ d'investigation remarquable (voir le blog http://www.intelligencecollective.info/ qui publie de nombreuses études sur le sujet).
Parallèlement, les sciences cognitives progressent fortement et l'offre en ce domaine est appelée à s'enrichir prochainement : bref, on assiste une passionnante multiplication des moyens d'accéder au consommateur.

Denis Failly -  Lorsqu'on parle de marketing on est amené aussi à s'interroger sur les métiers d'études (marchés, clients, produits...) qui ont longtemps privilégié le quantitativisme à outrance (et je ne parle pas du datamining ou autre Crm analytique) au détriment du qualitatif et de la démarche "observatoire des usages" et non pas simple veille entre soi comme le font certains. L'approche analytique des études consistait à disséquer le client en cibles et en segments en pensant connaître le tout par la partie et par la magie des chiffres; Toi qui connais bien le domaine des études, où en est -on aujourd'hui ?

François Laurent - Il y a la réalité ... et les bonnes pratiques à construire.
La réalité, c'est hélas bien souvent une fuite en avant dans le quantitatif : les clients se muent en une suite de chiffres de plus en plus longue, et comme cela coûte très cher, on va les inonder de spams (pardons de mailings gentiment acceptés lors d'une inscription dans une base "opt in" on ne sait plus trop pour quoi) et les dégouter un peu plus du marketing ou du moins des marketers.
Alors qu'il est possible d'envisager un CRM 2.0 où l'on se glisse tranquillement dans les conversations des internautes ... qui acceptent très bien les marques dans la mesure où elles quittent leur position hégémonique pour dialoguer d'égal à égal.
Je suis en train de construire plusieurs systèmes de ce type - en B2B et en B2C - et j'espère prochainement pouvoir publier quelques résultats sachant que les première retours sont plutôt encourageants.


Denis Failly - Dans l'ouvrage tu énonces que le marketing n'est pas ou plus l'affaire des professeurs mais des praticiens et ne peut-être codifié dans des pensum et autre bibles Marketing « tout en un » à jeter désormais aux orties. Est ce à dire que le marketing n'est plus une question d'outils, de méthodes et recettes mais plus de démarches, états d'esprits, curiosité, intuition, bon sens et auto-construction (et non re-production) « chemin faisant » (anti-planificatrice donc) pour et par l'humain ?

François Laurent - Je pense que les pires ennemis du marketing sont ceux qui rédigent des ouvrages de marketing ... du moins, ceux qui codifient l'expérience passée en la gravant pour toujours dans le marbre.
Le consommateur change extrêmement rapidement - ou du moins sa relation aux marques, aux distributeurs, etc. - parce que l'univers où il évolue subit des bouleversements d'envergure ; prétendre que tout part, par exemple, de motivations et de freins à une époque où les consommateurs sont submergés d'innovations inutiles et indigestes, c'est nier une évidence : ils n'attendent plus rien, ils gèrent le quotidien ! Et comme les innovations de rupture ne se gèrent pas ainsi, on passe à côté de la réalité.
Dans 20 ans, on découvrira enfin les bonnes recettes du marketing collaboratif ... quand il sera presque obsolète (je caricature à peine). Un bon ouvrage de marketing, c'est juste un ouvrage qui vous titille un peu les méninges, vous pousse à regarder le consommateur autrement ... que dans les livres !

Denis Failly - Dans ce contexte 2.0 appelé à l'horizontalité, qui bouillonne de remise en cause, de détournement, de zapping, de désintermédiation et de déplacement des pouvoirs, les marques et leur approches des clients ont-elles encore une légitimité et pour quoi faire ?

François Laurent -  Bien sûr que les marques ont une légitimité : celle de faire des bons produits.
C'est-à-dire, revenir aux fondamentaux !
La marque, c'est avant tout le signe d'un bon produit : mais, dans les années 80, le système s'est perverti, elle est devenu un moyen de qualifier son acheteur, système fortement dénoncé par Baudrillard ... mais ô combien efficace, notamment vis à vis de la population chérie et montante des CSP Plus.
Le système identitaire a vécu et les marques n'ont d'autre choix que de retrouver leurs racines ou de disparaitre.


Denis Failly - ADN de la marque, Neuro Marketing, Vision 360 degrés, Programmes de fidélisation, sont parmi d'autres des lithanies et réthoriques (des mémes ?), que l'on voit fleurir dans de nombreux écrits argumentaires, conférences... de prestataires marketing / communication. On peut se demander si ils ne sont -pas des caches misères rassurants face à un vide imaginatif, créatif et devant une réflexion ou des actions (recettes ?) qui s'abreuvent toujours aux mêmes écoles de pensées, aux mêmes sources, au même microcosme qui s'auto-contemple;  De ce point de vue d'ailleurs le discours autour du Web2 ne risque t-il pas aussi de tomber dans ce même travers ?

François Laurent - ADN de la marque, Neuro Marketing, Vision 360 degrés ... les publicitaires font feu de tout bois, peut-être parce qu'ils sont encore plus mal à l'aise que les marketers !
Le Neuro Marketing, c'est juste un figure de rhétorique sans réel fondement, parce que les neurosciences se développent : on récupère et comme la confiture, on tartine.
L'ADN de la marque, ça a un autre nom sur la toile : son identité ! Dire qu'une marque, comme n'importe quel autre émetteur de messages, dispose d'une identité, c'est banal. Mais là encore, on puise dans la science et on tartine la rhétorique (voir ci-dessus).
Le 360, c'est plus grave, parce qu'il y a un côté stupide à croire que l'on peut communiquer avec tous les outils à la fois, conjuguer verticalité et horizontalité. J'ai à ce sujet, une image que j'aime bien : les consommateurs qui discutent entre eux sur la toile, sont comme de gentilles grenouillent qui coassent entre elles ; communiquer verticalement, c'est comme jeter un pavé dans la mare ... et se demander pourquoi elles s'enfuient !


Denis Failly - La majorité des contenus qui alimentent la toile sont le fait de particuliers, qui par ailleurs sont potentiellement des prospects ou des clients pour les marques, hors on constate qu'un certain nombre de sites de grands annonceurs bien que riche de services, d'informations utiles, d'interfaces navigationnelles esthétiques et pratiques persitent à ne pas engager la relation, le dialogue véritable (commentaires, remontées, témoignage...) avec les internautes, comme si ils s'accomodaient du Web 2 dans des aspects purement technologiques (3D, Ajax, Flash...) en niant totalement le ressort et le besoin d'humanisation et de collaboration que révèle Web 2; Comment expliques tu cet autisme et qu'elles seraient les contours d'un véritabe marketing collaboratif ?

François Laurent - Le Web 2.0, c'est tout sauf une affaire de technologie !
Les internautes n'ont pas toujours envie de venir sur les sites des marques quand ils peuvent discuter tranquillement entre eux ... d'où le développement de plateformes de blogs comme Blogsdevoyage (Expédia) ou Blogscheval (Haras Nationaux).
Plus récemment, des sociétés comme Cisco ont lancé des sites collaboratifs sur des thèmes volontairement éloignés de leur cœur de métier : ainsi sur Human Network de Cisco, tout citoyen peut proposer des réponses concrètes « aux défis de notre société : sur l’emploi, l’environnement, l’économie, l’éducation, la santé, la vie associative », etc.
Il est toutefois trop tout pour en connaître les réelles retombées.


Denis Failly - Pourrais tu nous citer un exemple de marques, fabricants, sites...qui te semble préfigurer dans le bon sens la pratique d'un marketing intelligent et au fait des mutations en cours ?

François Laurent - L'Oréal constitue pour moi un bon exemple : celui des gens qui osent, sans peur de prendre des risques.
L'exemple du http://www.journaldemapeau.fr est intéressant : ils lancent un faux blog pour faire la promotion de leur nouveau produit miracle : Peel Microabrasion. Mais les consommatrices ne s’en laissent pas compter : les commentaires négatifs affluent. Comment réagir ? En reconnaissant humblement son erreur, et en jouant le jeu de l'honnêteté : ils modifient le blog, y accueillent de vrais consommatrices ... et c'est un succès.
Ils n'ont pas non plus hésité à utiliser des spots créés par des téléspectateurs sur Current TV aux USA, la chaine créée par Al Gore dont 1/3 des contenus sont confectionnés par les téléspectateurs : résultat une publicité de qualité, conforme à l'environnement de la chaine ... je me demande d'ailleurs pourquoi ils continuent à payer des sommes folles des agences de publicité qui ne font pas toujours mieux !


Denis Failly - Dans des contextes à densités technologiques et dématèrialisées croissantes, comment vois - tu évoluer à long terme le marketing, face notamment à la multitude des univers , des supports , des objets, des interfaces (virtuels / réels, homme-machine, ubiquité, pervasivité...) que l'on est susceptible de voir apparaître ?

François Laurent - Deux évolutions sont à prévoir :
- celle des amoureux de technologie ... tous les publicitaires aimant la facilité : on va poursuivre les consommateurs jusqu'au plus profond de leur intimité en leur envoyant des messages sur leur mobile quand ils auront le malheur de passer devant une boutique ... et il y en a beaucoup en ville ! L'idée, c'est de vendre de plus en plus cher des prouesses technologiques à des annonceurs sans se soucier de ce que les consommateurs sont capables d'accepter.
- celles des marketers à l'écoute des citoyens : plus discussion, plus de collaboration, plus d'éthique, moins de superflu, moins de gâchis, etc. Pour moi, un des plus beaux exemple de Marketing 2.0, ce sont les AMAP : il n'y a pas un gramme de technologie là-dedans.
Le marketing 2.0, c'est le marketing de la réconciliation entre les marques et les consommateurs : et dans ce domaine, il y a beaucoup à faire !

Denis Failly - Pour terminer, tu développes une charge assez virulente et d'ailleurs argumentée, vis à vis du Marketing, et je me demandais comment tes écrits, réflexions, que ce soit dans l'ouvrage dont nous parlons ou à travers ton blog (le titre « Marketing is dead » est clair) sont perçus par les grands annonceurs, disons traditionnels, qui sont membres de l'Adetem (Association Nationale du marketing) dont tu es Co- Président ?

François Laurent - Ma charge n'est pas une charge contre le marketing : on ne publie pas un livre comme celui-ci si on pense que le marketing ne sert à rien.
Ma charge est une charge contre le mauvais marketing, ce qui n'est pas la même chose et un plaidoyer pour un marketing qui arrête de prendre les consommateurs comme une suite de chiffres (dont ceux inscrits sur leur carte bancaire) : il faut retrouver l'esprit fondateur qui était beaucoup plus emprunt d'humanité.
Les marketers doivent réapprendre à respecter leurs clients ; la bonne nouvelle, c'est que cette prise de conscience me semble plutôt en bonne voie. La mauvaise, c'est que le chemin à parcourir est encore long. Heureusement, je suis optimiste, et j'ai la chance de pouvoir discuter avec des marketers qui œuvrent dans le bon sens.
 

Denis Failly - Merci François

Humanité 2.0,
La bible du changement

Une interview de Ray Kurzweil  autour de Humanité 2.0, La bible du changement (M21 Editions, 2007)
Titre original "The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology"

Denis Failly - Welcome Ray Kurzweil and thank you to grant me a interview for the french blog dedicated to innovation and futur: Les Entretiens du Futur. Let's go now in the heart of the matter. What is "Singularity" the center peace of your book  "The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology" ?

Ray Kurzveil - Within a quarter century, nonbiological intelligence will match the range and subtlety of human intelligence. It will then soar past it because of the continuing acceleration of information-based technologies, as well as the ability of machines to instantly share their knowledge. Intelligent nanorobots will be deeply integrated in our bodies, our brains, and our environment, overcoming pollution and poverty, providing vastly extended longevity, full-immersion virtual reality incorporating all of the senses (like “The Matrix”), "experience beaming” (like “Being John Malkovich”), and vastly enhanced human intelligence.  The result will be an intimate merger between the technology-creating species and the technological evolutionary process it spawned.

Nonbiological intelligence will have access to its own design and will be able to improve itself in an increasingly rapid redesign cycle. We’ll get to a point where technical progress will be so fast that unenhanced human intelligence will be unable to follow it. That will mark the Singularity.

I set the date for the Singularity—representing a profound and disruptive transformation in human capability—as 2045. The nonbiological intelligence created in that year will be one billion times more powerful than all human intelligence today.

The term “Singularity” in my book is comparable to the use of this term by the physics community. Just as we find it hard to see beyond the event horizon of a black hole, we also find it difficult to see beyond the event horizon of the historical Singularity. How can we, with our limited biological brains, imagine what our future civilization, with its intelligence multiplied trillions-fold, be capable of thinking and doing? Nevertheless, just as we can draw conclusions about the nature of black holes through our conceptual thinking, despite never having actually been inside one, our thinking today is powerful enough to have meaningful insights into the implications of the Singularity. That’s what I’ve tried to do in this book.



Denis Failly - You talk us about the ability of futur machine to reach and overpass the ability of computation of human brain (and even human race) could you give us some elements of comparison, some order of magnitude  about this "futur software of human intelligence"

Ray Kurzweil - In the book, I show how we need about 10 quadrillion (10^16) calculations per second (cps) to provide a functional equivalent to all the regions of the brain. Some estimates are lower than this by a factor of 100. Supercomputers are already at 100 trillion (10^14) cps, and will hit 10^16 cps around the end of this decade. Several supercomputers with 1 quadrillion cps are already on the drawing board, with two Japanese efforts targeting 10 quadrillion cps around the end of the decade. By 2020, 10 quadrillion cps will be available for around $1,000. Achieving the hardware requirement was controversial when my last book on this topic, The Age of Spiritual Machines, came out in 1999, but is now pretty much of a mainstream view among informed observers. Now the controversy is focused on the algorithms.

To understand the principles of human intelligence we need to reverse-engineer the human brain. Here, progress is far greater than most people realize. The spatial and temporal (time) resolution of brain scanning is also progressing at an exponential rate, roughly doubling each year, like most everything else having to do with information. Just recently, scanning tools can see individual interneuronal connections, and watch them fire in real time. Already, we have mathematical models and simulations of a couple dozen regions of the brain, including the cerebellum, which comprises more than half the neurons in the brain. IBM is now creating a simulation of about 10,000 cortical neurons, including tens of millions of connections. The first version will simulate the electrical activity, and a future version will also simulate the relevant chemical activity. By the mid 2020s, it’s conservative to conclude that we will have effective models for all of the brain.

At that point, we’ll have a full understanding of the methods of the human brain. One benefit will be a deep understanding of ourselves, but the key implication is that it will expand the toolkit of techniques we can apply to create artificial intelligence. We will then be able to create nonbiological systems that match human intelligence in the ways that humans are now superior, for example, our pattern- recognition abilities. These superintelligent computers will be able to do things we are not able to do, such as share knowledge and skills at electronic speeds.

By 2030, a thousand dollars of computation will be about a thousand times more powerful than a human brain. Keep in mind also that computers will not be organized as discrete objects as they are today. There will be a web of computing deeply integrated into the environment, our bodies and brains.


Denis Failly - Is it time of AI (Artificial Intelligence) return ?

Ray Kurzweil - There was a boom and bust cycle in AI during the 1980s, similar to what we saw recently in e-commerce and telecommunications. Such boom-bust cycles are often harbingers of true revolutions; recall the railroad boom and bust in the 19th century. But just as the Internet “bust” was not the end of the Internet, the so-called “AI Winter” was not the end of the story for AI either. There are hundreds of applications of “narrow AI” (machine intelligence that equals or exceeds human intelligence for specific tasks) now permeating our modern infrastructure. Every time you send an email or make a cell phone call, intelligent algorithms route the information. AI programs diagnose electrocardiograms with an accuracy rivaling doctors, evaluate medical images, fly and land airplanes, guide intelligent autonomous weapons, make automated investment decisions for over a trillion dollars of funds, and guide industrial processes. These were all research projects a couple of decades ago. If all the intelligent software in the world were to suddenly stop functioning, modern civilization would grind to a halt. Of course, our AI programs are not intelligent enough to organize such a conspiracy, at least not yet.


Denis Failly - isn’t there any limits to expand the power of computation?

Ray Kurzweil - There are limits to the exponential growth inherent in each paradigm. Moore’s law was not the first paradigm to bring exponential growth to computing, but rather the fifth. In the 1950s they were shrinking vacuum tubes to keep the exponential growth going and then that paradigm hit a wall. But the exponential growth of computing didn’t stop. It kept going, with the new paradigm of transistors taking over. Each time we can see the end of the road for a paradigm, it creates research pressure to create the next one. That’s happening now with Moore’s law, even though we are still about fifteen years away from the end of our ability to shrink transistors on a flat integrated circuit. We’re making dramatic progress in creating the sixth paradigm, which is three-dimensional molecular computing.

The ultimate 2 pound computer could provide 1042 cps, which will be about 10 quadrillion (10^16) times more powerful than all human brains put together today. And that’s if we restrict the computer to staying at a cold temperature. If we allow it to get hot, we could improve that by a factor of another 100 million. And, of course, we’ll be devoting more than two pounds of matter to computing. Ultimately, we’ll use a significant portion of the matter and energy in our vicinity. So, yes, there are limits, but they’re not very limiting.


Denis Failly - Jumping over the 6 phases that you describe in your book, The singularity will be the point of merging  between our biological condition with three revolutions, where non biological intelligence transcend the biological one, shall we become a kind of human 2.0 ?

Ray Kurzweil - In the book, I talk about three great overlapping revolutions that go by the letters “GNR,” which stands for genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics. Each will provide a dramatic increase to human longevity, among other profound impacts.


G as Genetics [NDLR]

Ray Kurzweil - We’re in the early stages of the genetics—also called biotechnology—revolution right now. Biotechnology is providing the means to actually change your genes: not just designer babies but designer baby boomers. We’ll also be able to rejuvenate all of your body’s tissues and organs by transforming your skin cells into youthful versions of every other cell type. Already, new drug development is precisely targeting key steps in the process of atherosclerosis (the cause of heart disease), cancerous tumor formation, and the metabolic processes underlying each major disease and aging process. The biotechnology revolution is already in its early stages and will reach its peak in the second decade of this century, at which point we’ll be able to overcome most major diseases and dramatically slow down the aging process.

As we are learning about the information processes underlying biology, we are devising ways of mastering them to overcome disease and aging and extend human potential. One powerful approach is to start with biology's information backbone: the genome. With gene technologies, we're now on the verge of being able to control how genes express themselves. We now have a powerful new tool called RNA interference (RNAi), which is capable of turning specific genes off. It blocks the messenger RNA of specific genes, preventing them from creating proteins. Since viral diseases, cancer, and many other diseases use gene expression at some crucial point in their life cycle, this promises to be a breakthrough technology. One gene we’d like to turn off is the fat insulin receptor gene, which tells the fat cells to hold on to every calorie. When that gene was blocked in mice, those mice ate a lot but remained thin and healthy, and actually lived 20 percent longer.

New means of adding new genes, called gene therapy, are also emerging that have overcome earlier problems with achieving precise placement of the new genetic information. One company I’m involved with, United Therapeutics, cured pulmonary hypertension in animals using a new form of gene therapy and it has now been approved for human trials.

Another important line of attack is to regrow our own cells, tissues, and even whole organs, and introduce them into our bodies without surgery. One major benefit of this “therapeutic cloning” technique is that we will be able to create these new tissues and organs from versions of our cells that have also been made younger the emerging field of rejuvenation medicine. For example, we will be able to create new heart cells from your skin cells and introduce them into your system through the bloodstream. Over time, your heart cells get replaced with these new cells, and the result is a rejuvenated “young” heart with your own DNA.

Drug discovery was once a matter of finding substances that produced some beneficial effect without excessive side effects. This process was similar to early humans’ tool discovery, which was limited to simply finding rocks and natural implements that could be used for helpful purposes. Today, we are learning the precise biochemical pathways that underlie both disease and aging processes, and are able to design drugs to carry out precise missions at the molecular level.
The scope and scale of these efforts is vast.

But perfecting our biology will only get us so far. The reality is that biology will never be able to match what we will be capable of engineering, now that we are gaining a deep understanding of biology's principles of operation.



N as Nano revolution [NDLR]

Ray Kurzweil - With nanotechnology, we will be able to go beyond the limits of biology, and replace your current “human body version 1.0” with a dramatically upgraded version 2.0, providing radical life extension.
The “killer app” of nanotechnology is “nanobots,” which are blood-cell sized robots that can travel in the bloodstream destroying pathogens, removing debris, correcting DNA errors, and reversing aging processes.

We’re already in the early stages of augmenting and replacing each of our organs, even portions of our brains with neural implants, the most recent versions of which allow patients to download new software to their neural implants from outside their bodies. In the book, I describe how each of our organs will ultimately be replaced. For example, nanobots could deliver to our bloodstream an optimal set of all the nutrients, hormones, and other substances we need, as well as remove toxins and waste products.

The gastrointestinal tract could be reserved for culinary pleasures rather than the tedious biological function of providing nutrients. After all, we’ve already in some ways separated the communication and pleasurable aspects of sex from its biological function.

As another example, a nanotechnology theorist, Rob Freitas, has a conceptual design for nanobots that replace our red blood cells. A conservative analysis shows that if you replaced 10 percent of your red blood cells with Freitas’ “respirocytes,” you could sit at the bottom of a pool for four hours without taking a breath.


R as Robotics [NDLR]

Ray Kurzweil - The robotics revolution, which really refers to “strong” AI, that is, artificial intelligence at the human level, which we talked about earlier. We’ll have both the hardware and software to recreate human intelligence by the end of the 2020s. We’ll be able to improve these methods and harness the speed, memory capabilities, and knowledge- sharing ability of machines.


To scan the brain and recreate it [NDLR]

Ray Kurzweil - We’ll ultimately be able to scan all the salient details of our brains from inside, using billions of nanobots in the capillaries. We can then back up the information. Using nanotechnology-based manufacturing, we could recreate your brain, or better yet reinstantiate it in a more capable computing substrate.

Our biological brains use chemical signaling, which transmit information at only a few hundred feet per second. Electronics is already millions of times faster than this. In the book, I show how one cubic inch of nanotube circuitry would be about one hundred million times more powerful than the human brain. So we’ll have more powerful means of instantiating our intelligence than the extremely slow speeds of our interneuronal connections.

The nanobots will keep us healthy, provide full-immersion virtual reality from within the nervous system, provide direct brain-to-brain communication over the Internet, and otherwise greatly expand human intelligence. But keep in mind that nonbiological intelligence is doubling in capability each year, whereas our biological intelligence is essentially fixed in capacity. As we get to the 2030s, the nonbiological portion of our intelligence will predominate.

Our interneuronal connections compute at about 200 transactions per second, at least a million times slower than electronics.


Denis Failly - What do you answer to people who think that , old age, ills, death, are the normal fate (Human entropy if I can say) of our existence and we have note to interfere with it ?

Ray Kurzweil - Aging may be “natural,” but I don’t see anything positive in losing my mental agility, sensory acuity, physical limberness, sexual desire, or any other human ability.

In my view, death is a tragedy. It's a tremendous loss of personality, skills, knowledge, relationships. We've rationalized it as a good thing because that's really been the only alternative we've had. But disease, aging, and death are problems we are now in a position to overcome.


Denis Failly - How can you make such predictions in the technological developements which lead to Singularity?

Ray Kurzweil - Predicting specific projects is indeed not feasible. But the result of the overall complex, chaotic evolutionary process of technological progress is predictable.

People intuitively assume that the current rate of progress will continue for future periods. Even for those who have been around long enough to experience how the pace of change increases over time, unexamined intuition leaves one with the impression that change occurs at the same rate that we have experienced most recently. From the mathematician’s perspective, the reason for this is that an exponential curve looks like a straight line when examined for only a brief duration. As a result, even sophisticated commentators, when considering the future, typically use the current pace of change to determine their expectations in extrapolating progress over the next ten years or one hundred years. This is why I describe this way of looking at the future as the “intuitive linear” view. But a serious assessment of the history of technology reveals that technological change is exponential. Exponential growth is a feature of any evolutionary process, of which technology is a primary example.

As I show in the book, this has also been true of biological evolution. Indeed, technological evolution emerges from biological evolution. You can examine the data in different ways, on different timescales, and for a wide variety of technologies, ranging from electronic to biological, as well as for their implications, ranging from the amount of human knowledge to the size of the economy, and you get the same exponential—not linear—progression. I have over forty graphs in the book from a broad variety of fields that show the exponential nature of progress in information-based measures. For the price-performance of computing, this goes back over a century, well before Gordon Moore was even born.

Predicting which company or product will succeed is indeed very difficult, if not impossible. The same difficulty occurs in predicting which technical design or standard will prevail. For example, how will the wireless-communication protocols Wimax, CDMA, and 3G fare over the next several years? However, as I argue extensively in the book, we find remarkably precise and predictable exponential trends when assessing the overall effectiveness (as measured in a variety of ways) of information technologies. And as I mentioned above, information technology will ultimately underlie everything of value.

We see examples in other areas of science of very smooth and reliable outcomes resulting from the interaction of a great many unpredictable events. Consider that predicting the path of a single molecule in a gas is essentially impossible, but predicting the properties of the entire gas—comprised of a great many chaotically interacting molecules—can be done very reliably through the laws of thermodynamics. Analogously, it is not possible to reliably predict the results of a specific project or company, but the overall capabilities of information technology, comprised of many chaotic activities, can nonetheless be dependably anticipated through what I call "the law of accelerating returns."


Denis Failly - The future that you describe us generate at the same time some hopes and some perils, isn't it a utopian vision ?

Ray Kurzweil - A common mistake that people make when considering the future is to envision a major change to today’s world, such as radical life extension, as if nothing else were going to change. The GNR revolutions will result in other transformations that address this issue. For example, nanotechnology will enable us to create virtually any physical product from information and very inexpensive raw materials, leading to radical wealth creation. We’ll have the means to meet the material needs of any conceivable size population of biological humans. Nanotechnology will also provide the means of cleaning up environmental damage from earlier stages of industrialization.

It’s true that the dramatic scale of the technologies of the next couple of decades will enable human civilization to overcome problems that we have struggled with for eons. But these developments are not without their dangers. Technology is a double edged sword—we don’t have to look past the 20th century to see the intertwined promise and peril of technology.

G, N, and R each have their downsides. The existential threat from genetic technologies is already here: the same technology that will soon make major strides against cancer, heart disease, and other diseases could also be employed by a bioterrorist to create a bioengineered biological virus that combines ease of transmission, deadliness, and stealthiness, that is, a long incubation period. The tools and knowledge to do this are far more widespread than the tools and knowledge to create an atomic bomb, and the impact could be far worse.


Denis Failly - In front of inerty, ignorance, misunderstanding, precaution principle, don't you think that some Research (GNR...), technological advances, have to be postponed ?

Ray Kurzweil - It’s a little late for that. But the idea of relinquishing new technologies such as biotechnology and nanotechnology is already being advocated. I argue in the book that this would be the wrong strategy. Besides depriving human society of the profound benefits of these technologies, such a strategy would actually make the dangers worse by driving development underground, where responsible scientists would not have easy access to the tools needed to defend us.

I discuss strategies for protecting against dangers from abuse or accidental misuse of these very powerful technologies in chapter 8. The overall message is that we need to give a higher priority to preparing protective strategies and systems. We need to put a few more stones on the defense side of the scale. I’ve given testimony to Congress on a specific proposal for a “Manhattan” style project to create a rapid response system that could protect society from a new virulent biological virus. One strategy would be to use RNAi, which has been shown to be effective against viral diseases. We would set up a system that could quickly sequence a new virus, prepare a RNA interference medication, and rapidly gear up production. We have the knowledge to create such a system, but we have not done so. We need to have something like this in place before its needed.

Ultimately, however, nanotechnology will provide a completely effective defense against biological viruses.


Denis Failly - If « machines » Nano robots acquire the power of replication like Virus, and are empowered of non biological intelligence they could auto-decide and win, in the extrem, a complete autonomy and why not to become agressive, so which control shall we keep on this risk, shall we create some machines anti-machines ?

Ray Kurzweil - The existential threat from engineered biological viruses exists right now.
There are already proposals for ethical standards for nanotechnology that are based on the Asilomar conference standards that have worked well thus far in biotechnology. These standards will be effective against unintentional dangers. For example, we do not need to provide self-replication to accomplish nanotechnology manufacturing.

We’ll need to create a nanotechnology immune system—good nanobots that can protect us from the bad ones.

I’ve debated this particular point with a number of other theorists, but I show in the book why the nanobot immune system we put in place will need the ability to self-replicate. That’s basically the same “lesson” that biological evolution learned.
Ultimately, however, strong AI will provide a completely effective defense against self-replicating nanotechnology.

History teaches us that the more intelligent civilization—the one with the most advanced technology—prevails. But I do have an overall strategy for dealing with unfriendly AI, which I discuss in chapter 8.


Denis Failly - We live in age of non synchronization, between time of the Technology, and time of institutions, politics, citizens...so this revolution will have a deep impact on the running of our Civilization (sociological, anthropological, organizational, juridical, éthical...) so how to run this asymmetry and to face the opposition ?

Ray Kurzweil - There were objections to the plow also, but that didn’t stop people form using it. The same can be said for every new step in technology. Technologies do have to prove themselves. For every technology that is adopted, many are discarded. Each technology has to demonstrate that it meets basic human needs. The cell phone, for example, meets our need to communicate with one another. We are not going to reach the Singularity in some single great leap forward, but rather through a great many small steps, each seemingly benign and modest in scope.


Denis Failly - What about unequal population access to life extension and superintelligence that could suppose Singularity age ?

Ray Kurzweil - We need to consider an important feature of the law of accelerating returns, which is a 50 percent annual deflation factor for information technologies, a factor which itself will increase. Technologies start out affordable only by the wealthy, but at this stage, they actually don’t work very well. At the next stage, they’re merely expensive, and work a bit better. Then they work quite well and are inexpensive. Ultimately, they’re almost free. Cell phones are now at the inexpensive stage. There are countries in Asia where most people were pushing a plow fifteen years ago, yet now have thriving information economies and most people have a cell phone. This progression from early adoption of unaffordable technologies that don’t work well to late adoption of refined technologies that are very inexpensive is currently a decade-long process. But that too will accelerate. Ten years from now, this will be a five year progression, and twenty years from now it will be only a two- to three-year lag.

This model applies not just to electronic gadgets but to anything having to do with information, and ultimately that will be mean everything of value, including all manufactured products. In biology, we went from a cost of ten dollars to sequence a base pair of DNA in 1990 to about a penny today. AIDS drugs started out costing tens of thousands of dollars per patient per year and didn’t work very well, whereas today, effective drugs are about a hundred dollars per patient per year in poor countries. That’s still more than we’d like, but the technology is moving in the right direction. So the digital divide and the have-have not divide is diminishing, not exacerbating. Ultimately, everyone will have great wealth at their disposal.


Denis Failly - And God in all this ?

Ray Kurzweil - Although the different religious traditions have somewhat different conceptions of God, the common thread is that God represents unlimited—infinite—levels of intelligence, knowledge, creativity, beauty, and love. As systems evolve—through biology and technology—we find that they become more complex, more intelligent and more knowledgeable. They become more intricate and more beautiful, more capable of higher emotions such as love. So they grow exponentially in intelligence, knowledge, creativity, beauty, and love, all of the qualities people ascribe to God without limit. Although evolution does not reach a literally infinite level of these attributes, it does accelerate towards ever greater levels, so we can view evolution as a spiritual process, moving ever closer to this ideal. The Singularity will represent an explosion of these higher values of complexity.


Denis Failly - Why so few people (even in France) talk us about these deep changes which will impact deeply on our existence and our reason why ?

Ray Kurzweil - Hopefully after they read my new book, they will. But the primary failure is the inability of many observers to think in exponential terms. Most long-range forecasts of what is technically feasible in future time periods dramatically underestimate the power of future developments because they are based on what I call the “intuitive linear” view of history rather than the “historical exponential” view. My models show that we are doubling the paradigm-shift rate every decade. Thus the 20th century was gradually speeding up to the rate of progress at the end of the century; its achievements, therefore, were equivalent to about twenty years of progress at the rate in 2000. We’ll make another twenty years of progress in just fourteen years (by 2014), and then do the same again in only seven years. To express this another way, we won’t experience one hundred years of technological advance in the 21st century; we will witness on the order of 20,000 years of progress (again, when measured by the rate of progress in 2000), or about 1,000 times greater than what was achieved in the 20th century.

The exponential growth of information technologies is even greater: we’re doubling the power of information technologies, as measured by price-performance, bandwidth, capacity and many other types of measures, about every year. That’s a factor of a thousand in ten years, a million in twenty years, and a billion in thirty years. This goes far beyond Moore’s law (the shrinking of transistors on an integrated circuit, allowing us to double the price-performance of electronics each year). Electronics is just one example of many. As another example, it took us 14 years to sequence HIV; we recently sequenced SARS in only 31 days.

Remerciements à l'auteur Ray Kurzveil pour les éléments de contenus de cette interview ainsi qu'a Malo Girod de l'Ain
(M21 Editions).

Denis Failly 

J'étais ce Vendredi invité au petit déjeuner organisé par Armand Braun de la Société Internationale des Conseillers de Synthèse (SICS) pour la sortie d de l'ouvrage "Intelligence de la Complexité" dans le cadre du Colloque de Cerisy de 2005.

"C’est à un véritable mouvement de la pensée qu’Edgar Morin nous invite aujourd'hui : alors qu’un savoir fragmentaire et dispersé nous rend de plus en plus aveugles à nos problèmes fondamentaux, l’intelligence de la complexité devient un besoin vital pour nos personnes, nos cultures, nos sociétés" je rajouterai que ceci est impérieusement valable aussi pour le marketing, le management et disciplines connexes.

J'ai retrouvé quelques visages familliers de l'association pour la pensée complexe  (astrophysiciens, mathématiciens, épistémologues...) et j'ai eu le grand bonheur de rencontrer et m'entretenir avec Edgar Morin  qu'on ne présente plus (enfin pour les ignares voir ici)

Autour de Edgar Morin nous avons retrouvé Jean Louis Lemoigne (voir mon interview) et Edith Heurgon  tous 3 intervenants que vous pouvez retrouver dans les vidéos qui suivent :

Edgar Morin - Sur l'émergence de la complexité - vidéo 1 

 
Jean Louis Le Moigne - Introduction à l'ouvrage et à la démarche

Edith Heurgon - Introduction à l'ouvrage et au Colloque de Cerisy

*Edith Heurgon est Docteur en mathématiques, ancienne responsable de La Prospective à la RATP, co-directrice de la collection "Prospective du présent" des Editions de l'aube et co-directrice du Centre international de Cerisy où elle organise chaque année depuis 1999 un colloque de Prospective