Paris in an apocalyptic future ... The world of tomorrow could sink into madness.

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  • Thibaut Nguyen, director of the Trends and Prospective department at Ipsos, Virginie Tournay, research director at the CNRS and member of the Red Team and Stéphanie Nicot, artistic director of the Les Imaginales festival are setting foot in the world of tomorrow.

  • Do we have any reason to be happy about moving to 2021?

    Up to you…

What can we hope for the future?

The year 2020 plunged the world into astonishment with the arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic.

On the menu for the last twelve months: repeated confinements, unprecedented economic crisis, social divide, mental disorders of populations ... Before wishing your best wishes to your loved ones,

20 Minutes

interviewed three specialists of the future to help you see more. clear on the year ahead (and beyond).

Thibaut Nguyen, director of the Trends and Prospective department at Ipsos, Virginie Tournay, research director at CNRS, member of the Red Team responsible for creating futuristic and disruptive scenarios for the benefit of defense innovation and Stéphanie Nicot, artistic director of the festival The Imaginals diagnose today's world before considering the one that awaits us.

Do we have any reason to be happy about moving to 2021?

We let you be the judges.

  • Thibaut Nguyen: "I think we will have to go down to the bottom of the pool"

“The years are even crazier than expected.

There is a boost to movements that were already perceptible: fragmentation and mental destabilization.

The movement to break up collectives continues as we have seen with the lack of medical, scientific and political unity.

Another strong element is the difficulty in catching the truth.

What is true?

What do we know about Covid-19?

I am struck to see that after nine months almost less is known than at the start of the pandemic.

It is increasingly difficult to rely on objective external benchmarks.

Everyone will be forced to turn to their own convictions and, once again, this will weaken the collective.

Imagine a boat in which the crew does not agree on which path to take.

Groups form, argue and suddenly they hit a rock.

We have to make an urgent decision, but they don't agree more than before.

Today, we hit a rock, but there is no consensus on the direction that society should take - which are the right values, the right way to be happy.

"

"In the next two years, we will see a huge fragmentation of society and chaos"

“This crisis holds up an amplifying mirror to each of the ideologies that were already in place.

Those who said technology will save the world say it even more.

Environmentalists are comforted in their idea.

For three months, there was no automobile consumption, no pollution, nature took back its rights.

And the nationalists, too.

The context validates them in the idea that we must close the borders, stop producing in China… In the next two years, we will see an enormous fragmentation of society and chaos.

We will have to wait a few years for a new order to emerge.

I think we will have to go down to the bottom of the pool.

I do not believe that there is room immediately to create the "next world" with great fanfare from 2021. This period forces us to ask ourselves the question about the life we ​​want to lead, even if this question force to make difficult observations.

In therapy, we look for things buried in order to get better.

In my opinion, there will be a long phase of self-diagnosis.

This is very good news for humanity.

"

  • Virginie Tournay: "We don't know how to arbitrate our future"

“The Covid-19 crisis has not reshuffled the cards.

It is a catalyst for signals already present in society.

First, it highlighted citizens' mistrust of our public institutions and expertise, whether through the rejection of vaccination or, on the contrary, the a priori belief in the effectiveness of the Chloroquine.

We are witnessing a questioning of social and cultural authority, whether in science or public and administrative organizations.

The pandemic has accelerated the erasure of traditional borders.

The boundaries between private life, public life, private life, professional life, are re-examined.

Today, politicians, scientists and citizens are tweeting… And this is not without consequences for the hierarchy of scales of truth: we no longer manage to know who is the expert, the activist, who holds an authoritative discourse , who speaks in the name of what… Public speech is hybrid and ambiguous, which accentuates the phenomenon of mistrust and populism.

"

"We have to go through a virtual relay to be able to communicate with each other"

“The pandemic has called into question certain collective attitudes that we no longer question.

There is a contradiction between security and social cohesion: in order to form a society, we must put physical distance between people.

Likewise, the meeting of the physical presence and the digitization of our society creates a paradox.

It reminds me

of Steven Spielberg's

Ready Player One

, which describes a world where people take refuge in the virtual world to overcome the chaos of society.

It is, of course, an exaggeration, but, today, one is obliged to go through a virtual relay to be able to communicate with each other.

In my opinion, we are immersed in a "presentism": we are attached to a past that is no longer and we try to project ourselves into a future that is not yet.

We do not know how to arbitrate our present, our republican base is abused, There are no more benchmarks on which society seems to agree.

What will define the general interest tomorrow?

"

  • Stéphanie Nicot: “The crisis leads us to ask the question again: what is a human being?

    "

“Science fiction has thought about pandemics and what they could do for a very long time.

The way zombie pandemics are developing at full speed where no one controls anything, where barriers are put up that end up giving way.

It is ultimately a fairly successful metaphor for Covid-19, even if it is unrealistic.

Obviously, we don't bite our neighbors.

We saw it coming in twenty or thirty years and we got to the heart of the matter much faster than expected.

The pandemic forces us to ask ourselves the question of the fragility of our systems.

Our horizon is blocked, it is a first problem.

But in the new currents of science fiction, we see new generations of authors who describe long-term futures.

The first optimism is to keep writing science fiction stories that are not stuck in a grim present or near future.

"

"One of the major challenges to come is the diversity of sexes and genders, stop locking up in boxes"

“I am thinking

of Estelle Faye's

Magellanic Clouds,

which revives a kind of piracy.

There are always revolts, spaces of freedom, people who fight for the world to change.

Two of the three female characters in the book are lesbians.

To my amazement, the jury of the Elder Rosny Prize, made up of 80% of heterosexual white males over 50, rewarded him.

However, the absence of a central male character must have shaken them up a bit.

However, they voted for this book.

One of the big challenges to come is the diversity of sexes and genders, to stop wanting to lock people up in small boxes.

This leads us to ask the question in a non-ideological way: what is a human being and what makes the human bond?

"

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