Articles

Smart objects are invading our daily lives. Our gadgets are getting smarter and smarter. They inform us about our geographical location, our fame in social networks, our biological or financial health, and transmit this information to companies that want to do us good... It's going very fast. 

In 1993, I had written an article following a Swiss TV program on the theme "Should tobacco smoke be regulated outside the private sphere? having sensed the rise of scientific fundamentalism. Fifteen years later, in the midst of the AH5N1 crisis, I reworked this article for the Matin Dimanche readers' letter. Today, it is time to put it back on the front page...

Attention is the most precious commodity of the human being - and probably of any conscious creature. It is the attention I give to a person, an object, a situation that gives it reality. I pay attention to you, I am interested in you: I charge this attention with appreciation, disdain, interest, love, judgement, expectation, desire, disgust, etc.

To say "I am" is to affirm one's existence. It is what is added after "I am" that is currently creating insoluble and dangerous problems.

Let me explain. The first biological life forms appeared on Earth about 3.5 billion years ago. These first cells developed, specialized, complexified, producing in the course of time an extraordinary diversity of aquatic organisms. 

In 1988, John Carpenter directed the movie "They Live", visible on YouTube). In this film, he describes a lobotomized and obedient society, with its omnipresent advertising boards praising seductive products and services, and its TV broadcasting everywhere the same soporific information and series to which we are accustomed today...

The scene takes place in the Middle Ages, in a castle. It is winter, the fire crackles in a fireplace. Around it, slumped in cushions, two lords with vast estates are drinking and plotting. They are looking for ways to annex new territories, to extend their power. Wine unlocks their imagination.

Dear incarcerated,

Even in your worst nightmares, you would never have imagined that one day your prison would shrink to the point where there remained no other solution for you but to escape. And you had arranged things so well. Your work, your hobbies, your insurances, your social position, your philosophical or religious options, everything seemed so stable, solid, secure, there for eternity. 

Geneva Wins!  An expression of Geneva's collective consciousness, this slogan was born out of the crisis. It is a perfect illustration of two diametrically opposed trends. Underneath its rebellious and winning exterior, "Genève gagne" sounds like a timid and uncertain affirmation, like a last attempt to deny the atmosphere of gloom that makes every inspiration a superhuman effort.

In 1991, the Swiss Confederation celebrated its 700th anniversary. Great events were planned on the scale of the country, initially to be centered on utopia, on the possible futures of this country, reflection to which each and everyone was invited. Finally, this event took the form of an exhibition of regional particularities.

To the head of external planning, Orion.
The work is going well. Important progress has been made in terms of vegetation. Acid rain has already devastated one fifth of the flora.

What if we told you: conjugate Switzerland in the past, present and future? A few years before the 700th anniversary of the creation of the Swiss Confederation, this idea resonated in me, filled the air and gave joyful shapes to the clouds as I visited the Ranft Gorge, the deep valley where Nicolas de Flue lived as a hermit for 20 years.

Dear Editor,
I was delighted to learn that the Military Department had given its backing to the assault rifle shooting courses given to schoolchildren in Sissach as part of the "Holiday Passport" scheme. And it wasn't half-hearted: human-shaped targets were used.