Ahmed wrote:F. Roddier writing:
... the more a society is interconnected, the more fragile it becomes ...
Conversely, a weakened society because it is no longer able to satisfy what it is based on (work, money, merchandise ...) tends to exploit micro niches through the tools of interconnectivity for temporarily escape his contradictions. This is how uberisation or new forms of marketing (professional or private) are developed on the internet.
There is no question of "micro niches" in F Roddier's text, and I see no cause-and-effect relationship between supposed "contradictions" and "tools of interconnectivity". The evolution of lifestyles thanks to technical progress is by no means the result of a will. Technical progress is certainly motivated by profit, but not only, and precisely not initially for companies with the most significant impacts such as those mentioned, Google and Facebook. Their pioneers set out to fill a void he felt in a field that interested them, that's always how it starts, even for the wheel probably, printing, or radio.
And there is no mystery: if it takes, it is that people appreciate what is provided to them, no offense to the flip-flops. For those who suffer the monopoly of taxis (which the state is at the origin) and its exorbitant prices, uberisation is a legitimate solution, so carpool possible only because there are sites like blablacar. It transforms society, nothing more normal.
On the other hand, the real danger that F Roddier points out is the standardization of the world. The fact that they are essentially on the American model is secondary, I think that the model would be the same regardless of the country as it is capable of presenting attractive innovations. These will be technical and scientific, because if philosophical, political or religious innovations could overcome them, it would have been done for a long time. It is aligned with the most technologically advanced country, and it is not sure that this advance can in practice take forms very different from what we know (even for the food, unfortunately!).
There remains the standardization of the world. The loss of diversity is indeed a danger since humanity finds itself "putting all its eggs in one basket" and that we can no longer make a selection among the multiple solutions that would be tried.
I do not see today how we could do otherwise than standardize in a world which communicates from everywhere and is no more than a "big village". We just need to be aware of the danger, beware of a world government, and be patient until technical progress allows us to leave the earth (which should be a goal of humans, and it is a little more exhilarating than manage scarcity on earth).