This book exemplifies the growth of French innovation we’ve seen in recent years. At the center lies what the authors call “the Internet of Augmented Me” - a phrase that summarizes the complex relationship between human choice, digital solutions and environmental factors that will drive our future. I’m excited to see what will happen in the world of French innovation over the course of this decade.
As sister democracies, committed to personal liberty and self-determination, the United States and France share a long and proud history. We must remember this history as the pace of technological and political change continues to increase. Isolationism is not rational in a world where people can share ideas, information and stories with a few swipes, taps and tweets. By recommitting ourselves to our nations’ ideals, we can create a global tech ecosystem where everyone - regardless of where they come from or how they identify - can grow and thrive.
The authors bring together a remarkable array of ideas and examples - giving you an image of what the future can and should be. This book is a great way to kick off the 2020s - a decade that, as these pages show, is full of possibilities and opportunities to make our world a safer, stronger and more sustainable place.
André Joffre, President, FNBP (National Federation of Banques Populaires) and Michel Roux, General Director, FNBP, FRANCE
It is a great honor that the authors wanted Banques Populaire to preface this book. Banques Populaire is the fruit of a humanist movement that pushed, at the end of the 19th Century, small artisans and traders to pool their savings to come to the aid of those of them who could not have access to credit, then reserved by traditional banks only for large industry.
The French spirit likes to question established orders and Banques Populaire has been nourished by this audacity of transgression, of a form of protest cooperation, which pushes to innovate and to undertake. It also made the choice of cooperative status to exercise its activity because it highlights relational, geographic proximity and long-term vision. Thus, year after year, it reserves more than 85% of its results, thus creating a new form of mutualization through three means of solidarity: intergenerational, intersectoral and inter-territorial.
We find this same spirit in the Internet of Augmented Me (I.AM). It places the human at the heart and it consecrates the advent of the convergence of digital, ecological, environmental, societal, educational, ethical, economic, industrial transitions and health.
I.AM lays the foundation for new industrial, societal and economic models from the Covid-19 era.
The authors also outline the ways for a new era for France, which must be fully aware of its very great capacity:
– to foster new creations of values that increase and protect humans;
– to build the elements of trust essential to the creation of transversalities and allowing joint work;
– to reinvent a lot of our daily lives for a better world.
Creativity and innovation are part of the solutions and France is sitting on a heap of gold.
Thanks go to I.AM for reminding us!
Pascal Faure, Director, INPI (National Institute of Intellectual Property), FRANCE
The world has never changed so fast! Across the planet, the 20th Century saw the birth of a very new way of life, in a context of extraordinary and increasingly globalized innovation in every sector.
France, which was ranked second-most innovative European country in 2019 by the European Patent Office and Europe in general, has substantially contributed to the change, driven by two factors. First, a strong industry in many important fields such as transport, space, energy, telecommunications and chemistry. Second, a tremendous display of skill and success in the new technology sector, especially digital and biotech, proudly vindicated by France today with the massive mobilization of people and resources around what has become the so-called “Start-up Nation” and, more generally speaking, “French Tech”.
Such rapid progress on an unprecedented scale has raised new issues of unparalleled complexity. We are at the dawn of a century that holds great promise but also carries enormous risks if we are not able to contain the technological race within a humanist perspective.
We are faced with new expectations - technological, environmental, societal and ethical - and new constraints, which cannot be dealt with separately but must be addressed in an overall approach.
In the forthcoming decades, humanity must take up challenges that are immense and perhaps even existential. Only the structured acquisition and convergence of knowledge will enable humanity to control its future.
Our thanks go to the authors who have shared their reflections on these essential topics. They rightly stress the need to trust in new pathways to adopt the decentralization and collaborative approaches required for our increasingly complex economies. Ultimately, they remind us of an obvious but often hidden truth: intangible assets have become the necessary basis of our evolving world.
Wai Keung Eric Leung, Vice President, Innopark Shenzhen, Founder and COO, Shenzhen XY Interactive Technology, CHINA
The masterpiece I.AM tackles the challenges of redefining growth in the era of innovation and showcasing of the realization of digital value.
The insight gained as a result of the I.AM has underlined the genuine digital value by emphasizing the importance of decentralization, the major role of Blockchain technology, as a whole.
This includes the augmentation of the digital entanglement (the visible inside of the invisible), with I.AM representing the digital “a la carte” guide and the architecture of the future mirror world. Government and industrial leaders, etc. shall act together in an artistic manner with the great predictive intelligence.
Prof. N.K. Goyal, President, CMAI Association of INDIA, Chairman Emeritus, TEMA, INDIA
I am very happy to see this book!
Compliments to the six co-authors, this is a most wonderful, enlightening and updated book on the subject. The digital world has changed the way we live and work. Everything is going towards Digital. Increasingly, it looks like humans will become irrelevant and technology will take over everything in human life. This has brought in related issues of data privacy and security and cyber diplomacy. There is technology greed over human aspirations, relations and respectability.
I am sure that this book will be a revelation for stakeholders and will help in framing appropriate policies for Digital economy in the world.
Introduction
We are at the dawn of a new era, the “Internet of Augmented Me”, I.AM.
I.AM catalyzes the “convergence for good” of three worlds - the biological, the physical and the digital, helping us to better tackle the toughest challenges of the 2020s: climate change, resource depletion, an aging population, social inclusion, the empowerment of people and World health crises, such as COVID-19.
People expect to be ethically augmented and cured in a trustworthy manner, while having the final say, giving a genuine sense to their life on a sustainable planet.
As Bill Gates puts it, “Technology is unlocking the innate compassion we have for our fellow human beings.”
This is exactly what I.AM deals with. Gary Shapiro, President and CEO of the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) inspired I.AM. The six co-authors are from very diverse backgrounds - industry (Airbus, EDF), start-ups (BTU), consulting (Tasmane), academia (IMT France) and non-profit organizations (Mission CES France) - and they present, in a sharp and comprehensive manner, every angle of I.AM: humans, society, ethics, trust, economics, opportunities, technology, industry and so on.
This