Conférence du 18 janvier 2024

Conference of January 18, 2024

Luc de Brabandere - Belgian mathematician and philosopher

Introduction

After my studies in civil engineering at UCL and, later at 44, in philosophy, I found my first job in the internet, a concept which at the time already raised immense hopes: access to knowledge, freedom, sharing of wealth with the third world, etc.

If I had had to give a lecture on the subject at the time, I would certainly have chosen the following title:

"What kind of internet for what kind of Europe?"

Today, 40 years later, I am strongly tempted to reverse the two parts of this title so that it becomes:

"What kind of Europe for what kind of internet?"

The difference is not insignificant.

Because between yesterday and today, in 40 years, many things have changed, which we will now talk about.

I propose to divide my presentation into three parts:

What has happened in the world of the internet over the last 40 years, mainly in Europe?
Why did it happen this way?
What can we hope for in the future?

Part One
What has happened in the last 40 years?

Je ne puis m'empêcher de me remémorer une des phrases favorites d’un de mes meilleurs amis, André Mahy, aujourd'hui disparu, et à l'époque mon partenaire de tennis ici même au Léopold club. Il disait en substance « il ne faut pas se retourner sur une balle perdue ».

Faisons-le quand même aujourd'hui, pour quelques instants. Non pas par nostalgie, mais afin de mieux comprendre comment nous avons pu perdre une situation au départ si avantageuse dans le développement initial d’Internet, au bénéfice des États-Unis.

Il y a 40 ans, l'Europe était la grande pionnière dans le domaine de l'internet, celui-là même qui débouche maintenant à une vitesse stupéfiante vers l'intelligence artificielle (IA) que nous engloberons pour les besoins de cette présentation dans l'internet.

Aujourd’hui, tout a disparu, et cela presque exclusivement au bénéfice de l’Amérique.

Si on regarde le cimetière de toutes ces sociétés, et donc ce gigantesque rendez-vous raté pour l’Europe, on distingue clairement 3 types de situations, derrière des idées souvent révolutionnaires et géniales :

De grandes entités qui n’ont pas réussi à avancer, évoluer, s’adapter ;
Des petites structures naissantes qui n’ont pas réussi à grandir, à surmonter les difficultés rencontrées sur les marchés et leur environnement hautement concurrentiel ;
Finalement et c’est peut-être le plus triste, celles qui, après avoir surmonté ces obstacles, se sont fait racheter, un peu plus tôt ou un peu plus tard, par de grands groupes américains.

Accordons-nous sur quelques exemples de ce qui s’est passé :

Des grandes entités, qui souvent n’ont pas réussi à avancer, évoluer, s’adapter :

Comme « champions européens » débarquant dans ces nouvelles technologies, nous avions à l’époque Bull en France, Olivetti en Italie, Siemens en Allemagne et Philips en Hollande ; mais aussi Nokia en Finlande, Sinclair au Royaume-Uni (avec son ZX81 qui était un des tous premiers « petits » ordinateurs) ; le Minitel en France, vrai précurseur, coup de génie, qui était vraiment le premier « Internet » - 10/15 ans avant tous les autres ; et j’en passe.
Un peu plus tard, l’Internet proprement dit a été créé par 2 européens du CERN, Tim Berner-Lee (anglais) et Robert Cailliau (belge). Je ne m’étendrai pas longtemps sur ce sujet, et pour ceux qui sont intéressés je recommande la lecture du livre « Alexandria » qui raconte en détail le déroulement (malheureusement non couronné de succès) de cette aventure. Juste une anecdote : ces deux chercheurs ont fait des pieds et des mains pour avoir un rendez-vous avec Jacques Delors, Président de la Commission Européenne à l’époque, et se sont heurtés à des fins de non-recevoir systématiques de son Cabinet. Encore une extraordinaire opportunité manquée en Europe pour y garder le développement embryonnaire de l’Internet.
A contre-courant, quelques succès pérennes et toujours européens :
- La création du réseau SWIFT (en Belgique), devenu mondial depuis ;
- Spotify : fondé en Suède en 2006 par deux entrepreneurs, devenu l'un des services de streaming musical les plus populaires à l'échelle mondiale ;
- Airbus.

Des rachats de « Success Stories » par des groupes américains :

Skype, développé au départ par des Estoniens et des Finlandais, rachetée en 2011 par Microsoft pour environ 8,5 milliards de $ ;
Booking.com, structure créée au départ par 2 entrepreneurs néerlandais, acquise par Price line Group aux USA en 2005, société qui a fondé Booking.com ensuite.

Des erreurs stratégiques grossières, des détails qui n’en sont pas :

Pour Nokia en Finlande, un refus catégorique du management d’abandonner au moment opportun le principe du clavier à touches du Nokia 1100 lancé en 2003 (et ce pour un écran tactile), ce modèle ayant déjà été vendu à des centaines de millions d’exemplaires dans le monde entier, avec Nokia leader mondial du marché ;
Pour le Minitel en France, des hypothèses de travail absurdes imposées dans la méconnaissance des marchés et des évolutions technologiques et de société, comme le clavier ABCDE en lieu et place de AZERTY ;
Pour l’invention révolutionnaire des deux chercheurs du CERN (Berner-Lee et Roger Caillot) le manque de vision des États et ultimement des instances européennes : en effet, peu après le rendez-vous manqué avec le Cabinet Delors, ces deux entrepreneurs ont concrétisé des contacts avec le MIT de Boston et l’Internet naissant a déménagé avec armes et bagages aux USA.

En conclusion, l’Europe, malgré toutes les bonnes cartes dont elle disposait pour devenir un leader mondial dans les technologies de l’internet, n’a pas pu y réussir, laissant la part belle aux États-Unis.

Part Two
Why?

Reality and perception

Complementary talents

To explain why things happened this way in Europe with the Internet, I'm going to take a detour through a world that has nothing to do with it: astronomy .

After millennia during which man thought exactly the opposite, Copernicus was the first (in the middle of the 16th century) to say that it was the earth that revolved around the sun.

This story is extraordinary in more ways than one, because the work of the Pole Copernicus was complemented by that of the Italian Galileo (heliocentric theory) thanks to a telescope invented by a Dutch scientist, and then by the work of the German mathematician and astronomer Kepler who worked on data collected by the Dane Tycho Brahe, and all of this would finally be taken up in a masterful synthesis by the Englishman Newton!

This example shows a successful (at the time!) complementary collaboration between contemporary European scientists of many different nationalities.

The job of science is not to change the reality of things, but rather our perception of them. The solar system is today exactly as it was in antiquity, but thanks to these scientists, we see it differently.

Creativity is often European, but innovation, defined as the ability to change the reality of things, is most often American.

This concept of complementarity is important. History shows us that deficiencies can often be filled by setting up pairs, which skillfully bring together these two skills that are too often separated.

Let us cite as examples in companies their very names: Mercedes Benz, Rolls Royce, Hewlett Packard; or Yves Saint Laurent who probably could not have created his fashion empire without the complementary skills of Pierre Bergé; nor Jules Verne unleash his extraordinary imagination without the rigor of his publisher, forcibly bringing him back to reality.

And here are other examples of successes or difficulties that result from the good or less good symbiosis in the change/perception of change pairing:

Starbucks : The cappuccino is Italian!! But it took Americans in the seventies - when there was no cappuccino in the United States - to develop this multinational on the basis of a product (the reality - the cappuccino) thanks to a new perception of the latter, to make it a mass product.
Similarly, we can cite Disney : if you look at the history of Walt Disney and what was at the origin of the success of his company, it is indeed the change in perception of the story of Snow White - timeless heroine of the tales of Grimm - transposed onto an original medium (the animated film);
Finally, I will cite the example of the General Bank which merged with the General Savings and Retirement Fund to become Fortis : while the merger of these two entities was a legal reality, for a long time afterward inside the offices of the new merged institution there were some employees who clocked in and others who did not, and who therefore entered through entrances specifically marked ex Fortis and ex CGER.

In conclusion , I would therefore say that, contrary to what has happened (is happening) in the USA, and as the examples cited show, Europe has not managed to bring together talent, essentially around the pairing of analyzing reality and perceiving it, and this is true both in the microcosms of societies and at the level of States and ultimately of the EU.

Part Three
How to remedy this deficiency

I don’t much like telling people what to do, because my job is much more about digressing on “how to think” than on “what to think”, and above all I want to avoid the “all we have to do is” and other “it is enough that” formulas.

That said, I am absolutely convinced that there is a great deal to be done as Europeans.

I propose four lines of thought to bring about the indispensable changes in the future.

(1) Regaining our independence, autonomy and sovereignty

Europe must reclaim those values that have been lost over the course of its recent history. Without them, many battles cannot be won.

Take the example of the “cloud computing” market: this market (which consists of managing data storage on behalf of third parties) is largely dominated worldwide by large American players (Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform) that are developing extremely fast, leaving European players (SAP, Deutsche Telekom, Amadeus IT, Cap Gemini) with only marginal market shares.

What is more, the perception of this concept remains very negative in Europe, with many economic players still considering that this way of working involves great uncertainties (confidentiality, security) without seeing the advantages (decentralisation, specialisation in core business activities).

(2) Making regulations more flexible

Rules are indispensable in complex modern life, but in many situations the way they are implemented could be improved by replacing them with regulation.

Take the example of a crossroads: the objective is to be able to cross it safely while maintaining good standards of efficiency and freedom. It can be governed by installing traffic lights, green when it is your turn to go. Efficiency suffers when there is little traffic, because drivers are forced to wait for no reason. By replacing these rules with regulation such as a roundabout, where each newcomer must yield priority, organisation and efficiency are better combined. Regulation allows a certain “distance” from a rule, which is a source of efficiency and flexibility.

Another example: the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation). This achievement is considered a success. Nevertheless, is it not too narrow? Indeed, beyond privacy-protection considerations, should we not look at metadata (who processes and assembles it) and which is used in algorithms? According to many experts, these should be regulated to ensure the transparency of how they work. Europe is not lagging behind in this area, having tabled on 9 December last a first text aimed at organising (or supervising the functioning of) the artificial intelligence environment.

Still on the subject of data protection, the problem faced by attempts at regulation is the speed at which the underlying technology (metadata and artificial intelligence) is developing. The latter create new problems related to intellectual property. ChatGPT (an artificial intelligence language model) has in fact become the greatest heist of all time, because all the data transferred to it should be, and no longer is, subject to the rules governing intellectual property.

Conversely, the GDPR often acts as a brake on the use of data in everyday life. For example, and as an anecdote, I started a book to teach children to think, and asked an illustrator to draw a pipe seen from the front with the caption “this is not a pipe” underneath. After inquiring, I found that €500 in copyright fees had to be paid to make this image and use this caption, and I then abandoned the project.

Replacing rigid regulations with more flexible forms of regulation on a large scale in Europe would certainly be a source of efficiency and productivity.

(3) Being creative, for example in the world of finance

As you surely know, about ten days ago the first ETF (investment fund) denominated in cryptocurrencies (bitcoins) finally saw the light of day on Wall Street, having received the necessary authorisations from the competent authorities.

This development was foreseeable, and here too Europe could have been a pioneer and got ahead of the Americans by creating the crypto Euro, by developing regulation for products that are otherwise complex.

To go back a little on cryptocurrencies and bitcoin, I would say in brief that this is a new architecture on the Internet, based on the concept of the

“Blockchain”. In it, all transactions are identified without the need for intermediaries (bankers, notaries, lawyers). Thanks to this new technology, one (everyone) knows (or can know or demonstrate) who owns bitcoin XX and who owned it before. To make a comparison, it is as if one could know, for each banknote and thanks to the number printed on it, who currently owns it and how that ownership came about.

(4) Overhauling education (working on perception)

As I said at the beginning of this talk, to succeed in bringing about change, one must both make the change (or the action) and change the perception of it (which must not remain the old one).

I believe that Europeans do not sufficiently realise what is going on and the underlying stakes.

There is currently a very negative perception of the European Union and of Europe in general; it is grossly unfair, when one looks at the added value created by the single market and its induced benefits.

Political leaders must understand that their actions, attitudes and choices can have a significant impact on this perception. Two examples:

Mr Santer, previously Prime Minister of Luxembourg, then became President of the European Commission, a post he held from 1995 to 1999. In 2003, Amazon decided to establish its headquarters in Luxembourg. It is common knowledge that the general business (and tax) environment was very favourable to multinationals in that country at the time. The perception of what happened (or did not) is very negative.
President Barroso, former Prime Minister of Portugal and former President of the European Commission (2004 – 2014), became, shortly after the end of his term (in 2016), non-executive Chairman at Goldman Sachs, a paid position of course. He was able to take advantage of his old address book built up at the Commission to open doors for Goldman in all the European cabinets. Same public-perception problem.

At the level of perception, and of how it is created and/or influenced, I think everything must start very early, that is to say in education.

At the origin of perception lies knowledge. If we look at what is happening in Belgium, we are witnessing big-money fights between the two great traditional channels of information, the written press and the audiovisual press (RTBF), presumably for influence and market share. But is this not a rearguard battle? Nowadays, young people get their information mainly on TikTok. And so, if we want to judge, and possibly act on, their sources of information, the approach must start from an analysis of this platform.

Further upstream still, we would like them to acquire judgement and critical thinking as quickly as possible through their education. In this regard, I personally took classes in Greek during my adolescence, and even today I think it is the best way to gain access to logic, the basis of all quality reasoning. I am also fighting to try to introduce a logic course into the secondary-school curriculum, mainly because I fear that Greek will be abandoned altogether in favour of other subjects.

Logic is indispensable, not only for anyone interested in philosophy, but also in the business world and therefore in employment. I believe there is no longer a single job today behind which there is not an algorithm (whose DNA is logic); these have become indispensable in every toolbox. But of course, one can have a very beautiful toolbox and not be handy!! And this is where teachers come in, whose task is to teach their pupils how to use their toolbox correctly.

CONCLUSIONS

What kind of Europe for what kind of Internet? There is not one Internet, there is not one artificial intelligence, and there is no lost opportunity in a binary conceptualization.

The internet and one of its extensions, artificial intelligence, have been taken over by the Americans, that's true. But the opportunities that these new markets and technologies offer are magnificent and diverse, and Europe is perfectly capable of seizing many of them.

Political structures, at both the national and EU levels, must first and foremost instill this perception in as many people as possible; and then work to regain independence, autonomy, and sovereignty, creating a more dynamic environment. This must be achieved not only through regulations that both organize and constrain, but also through individuals who must rediscover the meaning of enterprise and an appetite for risk. It will all begin with an overhaul of education.

"Let's not dwell on a stray bullet."