= Can you also tell us about your issue: Internet: anges et démons! (The
Internet: Angels and Devils!)?
Cultures en mouvement (Cultures in Movement), a magazine I sometimes write for, asked me in April 1999 to guest-edit a special issue on cyberculture. I brought together specialists from very different fields — an economist, a sociologist, a psychiatrist, an artist, the head of an association — to talk about the Internet. We quickly agreed that the Internet brings out the best as well as the worst. So we called the special issue Internet: anges et démons! (The Internet: Angels and Devils!). The articles were published in the magazine at the same time as we opened a site with the same name hosted by place-internet.com. The media praised the site, which presents the Internet calmly and with a healthy reserve.
= What exactly is your professional activity?
I spent about 20 years at Bull. There I was involved in all the adventures of computer and telecommunications development. I represented the computer industry at ISO (International Organization for Standardization) and chaired the network group of the X/Open consortium. I also took part in the very beginning of the Internet with my colleagues of Honeywell in the US in late 1978. I'm now an information systems consultant at EdF/ GdF (Electricité de France / Gaz de France), where I keep the main computer projects of these firms and their foreign subsdiaries running smoothly. And I write. I've writing since I was a teenager. Short stories (about 100), psycho-sociological essays, articles and novels. It's an inner need as well as a very great pleasure.
= How did using the Internet change your professional life?
As I fell into computers when I was very young, I don't think I was affected by the Internet. I can look at it with enough distance to recognize the mistakes I made with it and to warn about its misuse, while avoiding veteran's fatigue and burn-out.
= How do you see the future?
The important thing about the Internet is the human value that's added to it. The Internet can never be shrewd about a situation, take a risk or replace the intelligence of the heart. The Internet simply speeds up the decision-making process and reduces uncertainty by providing information. We still have to leave time to time, let ideas mature and bring an essential touch of humanity to a relationship. For me, the aim of the Internet is meeting people, not increasing the number of electronic exchanges.
= What do you think of the debate about copyright on the Web?
I regard the Web today as a public domain. That means in practice the notion of copyright on it disappears: everyone can copy everyone else. Anything original risks being copied at once if copyrights are not formally registered or if works are available without payment facilities. A solution is to make people pay for information, but this is no watertight guarantee against it being copied. Anyway, with novels, I prefer them in paper form.