TENDRE VERS LA SOBRIÉTÉ NUMÉRIQUE STRIVING FOR DIGITAL MODERATION Frédéric Bordage Illustrations by Marie Morelle
T 14 × 19 cm 64 pages 12 color illustrations softback october 2021 retail price: 10 €
Frédéric Bordage is the founder of GreenIT.fr, a platform devoted to the responsible use of digital. He is one of the pioneers of digital moderation in France and is regularly consulted for his advice on reducing France’s digital environmental impact. This guide is based on an earlier essay entitled Sobriété numérique : les clés pour agir (Buchet-Chastel, 2019).
hese days there are not many daily tasks that can still be performed without a digital device: our screens have become our principal interfaces for working, communicating and entertaining ourselves, so much so that it is now difficult to imagine a world without them. And yet that is how the future is shaping up in the medium term if we do not start changing right now our way of producing and using digital devices. Digital consumes tonnes of minerals, gigawatts of electricity and countless hours of work carried out in appalling conditions throughout the world. Its burden is increasingly unsustainable for our planet, and indeed for our overloaded brains – just look at the scourge of burnouts that has become so common among our colleagues.
Marie Morelle is a press cartoonist and illustrator who won the Crayon d’or for freedom of expression in 2019. She is the illustrator of Catch, tournevis et lutins-robots (Sarbacane, 2020) and Trop fauchée pour m’habiller bon marché (Soliflor, 2018).
72 - society > je passe à l’acte
How do we cleanse ourselves of this compulsive use of digital and constrain the frenetic production of soon-to-be obsolescent devices? Digital moderation is a practical solution to this challenge, and this book shows us how to implement it. This pioneer of responsible digital practices helps us to see through the misleading sales pitches that claim that technology is the answer to everything and instead shows us how to deploy genuine solutions, from the purchase of reconditioned equipment to maintaining our devices, adopting good practices in the home, and following practical advice on minimising our digital footprint and also the risk of addiction and burnout. A world that is less dependent on digital is unavoidable and it is up to us to prepare ourselves for it without further ado.