Cover of the book “How the hippies, God and science invented the Internet”, Odile Jacob editions
Summer is the time when, holidays and (relative …) disconnection helping, we can leave the screens a little to return to this treasure, the books (“When I think of all the books I have left to read, I am sure of still being happy”: wonderful phrase from Jules Renard). For your summer readings, and afterwards, I recommend “How the hippies, God and science invented the Internet”, by Gilles Babinet (editions Odile Jacob).
The saga of digital creators
Parenthesis before starting: presenting his sixth book some time ago in front of a few happy few, including yours truly, the author specified that his initial title mentioned “science fiction”, which became “science” at the request of his publisher. The SF fan that I am regrets it a bit, but there are anyway mentions in the book to this fabulous literature (which has, among other things, very French origins with the “wonderful-scientist”). For the authors of SF, notes the essayist, “it is necessary to consider devices which come out of known science and which are not totally implausible either”.
Entrepreneur, “digital champion” of France in the European Union, then (re)president of the CNNUm (National Digital Council) since 2021, Gilles Babinet presents the great creators who have marked the development of the Web, such as Tim Berners-Lee, Satoshi Nakamoto and others. On the cover of this essay, three photos: those of Vint Cerf, Richard Stallman and Steve Jobs. The initiator of the free software movement is thus in a good place, and in chapter 3 of the book, “The era of microcomputing”, a section titled “Open source” paints two portraits: “Richard Stallman, the activist” and “Linus Torvalds, the pragmatist”.
The book of course mentions the famous anecdote of the broken printer which made Stallman realize that “the era of computer scientists who freely shared their codes in the form of recorded magnetic tapes was fading away” – but this case, “if true, is only the straw that broke the camel’s back”. Gilles Babinet specifies in a note: “The term “free software” is deliberately used here rather than open source. Because for Richard Stallman: “Open source is a development methodology; free software is a social movement.”
Gilles Babinet also reports Stallman’s refusal to participate in demonstrations against the Vietnam War or in the Putman competition, which “could have revealed his genius in mathematics”. Tested by friends, the computer scientist would have obtained record results there. Stallman’s itinerary, recruited from MIT, which sees his colleagues leave one after another, follows: “The two companies that then occupied the playing field were Microsoft and Apple, each of which jealously guarded the source code of its operating system.” And so came the solitary attempt to write a free operating system, GNU aka “GNU’s not Unix”: “Stallman did not know it yet, but his almost desperate initiative was going to take over the world and establish the spirit and the main rules of open source.”
The following sub-chapter, on Linus Torvalds, recalls the enormous success of GNU/Linux (which is generally called – including here, let’s face it – simply Linux for convenience). “Linux has also participated in the rise of the open source movement, of which it has become one of the bases of a large community with almost political, if not messianic, convictions.”
Data, which has become essential
Where is this movement? Gilles Babinet observes the changing stakes: “Today, open source is a mass phenomenon, whose virtues are no longer disputed; but the issue of domination has largely shifted. It is no longer the code that crystallizes the creation of value, but the data. The objective for digital companies is therefore to have the capacity to collect as much as possible. In this game, the more effective their software will be, the more important the collection will be. This is the case with applications driven by artificial intelligence, and this is why a vast quantity of recent software innovations are today shared with permissive licenses. Large digital companies have even become important contributors to open source linked to artificial intelligence, which serves their well-understood interest.”
The book deals with many other points around the Net and what it carries, from its first steps to the future (the story of an evening in Lisbon with people leading mostly “alternative” lifestyles leaves something to ponder), without techno-solutionism. A most instructive read.
Read also
The National Digital Council affirms its support for Free Software – October 23, 2022
At the roots of Wikipedia, the culture of free software – March 31, 2021
Free software against surveillance: “necessary but not sufficient” – October 31, 2016
Richard Stallman, an authorized biography and a tour – January 12, 2010