A l’origine du cyberspace, quelques rêves qui ont trouvé à s’incarner dans la technique. Vannevar Bush, J. C. R Licklider, Doug Engelbart, Tim Berners-Lee… le cyberespace est fait de la texture même de leurs rêves. S’il y a un ombilic du cyberespace, c’est là qu’il faut le trouver : dans les replis de quelques psychés individuelles. Le miracle est que cet espace ait pu se déployer a partir de quelque désirs, qu’il ait pu se frayer une voie au travers et grâce à un enchevêtrement de machines, d’institutions, d’idéologies. Il y a entre le désir et le cyberespace dans ses commencements quelque chose de commun. Tous deux ont cette même fragilité, ces même vacillements devant les possibles. Tous deux ont cette même exigence à être reconnus. Tous deux ont cette sorte de dureté devant l’exigence du développement.

Les rêves ne sont pas seulement les produits de nos fonctionnements psychiques dans ce qu’ils ont de plus intime. Ils plongent tout aussi profondément dans l’espace intersubjectif (Kaës, R., La polyphonie du rêve). Le rêve possède deux ombilics. Le premier est l’espace intrapsychique, et le second débouche sur des formations communes et partagées. C’est cette ouverture sur d’autres psychés qui fait que certains rêves peuvent prendre corps dans l’espace social.

D’autres rêveurs, comme Ted Nelson n’ont pas vu leurs rêves se téléverser dans la réalité. Peut êre parce qu’ils n’avaient pas assez de liens vers l’espace intersubjectifs ?

 

Le rêve de Vannevar Bush

Consider a future device for individual use, which is a sort of mechanized private file and library. It needs a name, and, to coin one at random, “memex” will do. A memex is a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.Vannevar Bush

 

Le rêve de Doug Engelbart

Many years ago I dreamed that people were talking seriously about the potential of harnessing a technological and social nervous system to improve the collective IQ of our various organizations. What if suddenly, in an evolutionary sense, we evolved a super new nervous system to upgrade our collective social organisms?

Then I dreamed that we got strategic and began to form cooperative alliances of organizations, employing advanced net-worked computer tools and methods to develop and apply new collective knowledge. Call these alliances Networked Improvement Communities (NICs). The new technologies could enable more effective distributed collaboration, and the potential forshared risk and multiplied bene? ts seemed promising. In the dream, the solution involves giving high priority to the collective capability for a distributed community or organization to develop, integrate, and apply new knowledge. Wealready had this capability, organizations handle new collective problems all the time. But in the dream we become much more effective at it.

In the dream, this collaborative capability was called CoDIAK, for Concurrent Development, Integration, and Application of Knowledge. Doug Engelbart

 

Le rêve de J.C.R. Licklider & Robert Taylor

In a few years, men will be able to communicate more effectively through a machine than face to face. J.C.R. Licklider & Robert Taylor. Science and Technology, April 1968.

 

Le rêve de Tim Berners-Lee

I have a dream for the Web . . . and it has two parts.

In the first part, the Web becomes a much more powerful means for collaboration between people. I have always imagined the information space as something to which everyone has immediate and intuitive access, and not just to browse, but to create. […] Furthermore, the dream of people-to-people communication through shared knowledge must be possible for groups of all sizes, interacting electronically with as much ease as they do now in person.

In the second part of the dream, collaborations extend to computers. Machines become capable of analyzing all the data on the Web – the content, links, and transactions between people and computers. A “Semantic Web,” which should make this possible, has yet to emerge, but when it does, the day-to-day mechanisms of trade, bureaucracy, and our daily lives will be handled by machines talking to machines, leaving humans to provide the inspiration and inuition. The intelligent “agents” people have touted for ages will finally materialize. This machine-understandable Web will come about through the implementation of a series of technical advancements and social agreements that are now beginning. Tim Berners-Lee, Weaving the Web