Is the Internet alienating and a suppressor of liberties? Or, on the contrary, emancipating and one of the motors of democracy? Neither one nor the other, replies Christophe Lejeune. A Doctor of sociology, this Ulg researcher has just published a short book on the political history of the Internet which – and this is far from being the least informative component – also provides a narrative of its history. 'Democracy 2.0', taking its name from the movement allowing the appropriation of its content by its users, is thus neither an indictment nor a speech for the defence. It is instead an invitation to the thinking through of the responsible and citizenship based use of technology.

Who knows that the Internet network takes its inspiration from the visionary work of the Belgians Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine at the beginning of the 20th century? That if we indeed discover the American military personnel of the Arpanet network at the creation of the 'project', they are far from being the only ones to have developed this global network which allows the entire planet to interconnect? That in the final analysis the Internet was born from the incessant going back and forth between socio-political impulses on the one hand, and on the other a technology whose development was booming? Or further still that it was born from the interaction between the public and private spheres? In bringing together in 90 pages this political history of the Internet, Christophe Lejeune, a young researcher who shares his time between the Ulg and the ULB, does not hide his wish to avoid limiting his comments only to specialists but to touch a wider public. 'I have effectively tried to present the Internet as being not the result of a single perspective,' he enthuses, 'but as the product of a great number of encounters, chance events or accidents, the intercrossing of several stories, of disciplines, backgrounds and researchers which are indeed different but which in the final account are so complementary!' Christophe Lejeune also invites his readers to think about and understand that technology is not neutral. On reading the analysis of the 'incorporating' aspects of Google, for example, which, besides its eminently appealing and practical character, potentially constitutes – notably thanks to the possibilities of tracing users – a tool for monitoring our societies, one is surprised to feel a certain uneasiness. An uneasiness which the researcher brushes aside with a swipe of his hand.  'No! Technology is not alienating…as long as we understand it, that we take an interest in it and that we take possession of it, in a responsible manner, based on citizenship, without bias or dogmatism, in order to live together in democracy!' In the end this specialist of free software and textual analysis technologies refuses to take either one or the other paths traditionally presented, in other words pleading a case for this new tribe of hippies at the beginning of the 21st century, who no longer know any horizons other than those of the 'Web' or of 'interconnections,' or on the other hand a total disgust for this Big Brother, this incarnation of ontological evil. This refusal to 'choose sides' without doubt constitutes one of the principal plus points of his opus. The final part of the work thus invites us to consider the contemporary issues of the Web and information and communication technologies.