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The digital heritage

In the XXIst Century, most of the human productions are made with digital tools and circulate in digital form: written, photo, sound, video, multimedia...

What is heritage? It is the access to human productions of the past and present (cultural, artistic, industrial, built, financial...). Heritage has a cultural, political, economic and historical value. Without heritage, societies have no history. Without the Eiffel Tower, without the Sacré Cœur, without the Louvre Museum and other elements of architectural heritage, Paris would not have a tourist economy, for example.

The heritage that we will be able to produce from contemporary digital productions will strongly contribute to our future wealth, in every sense of the word. But how can we identify, build up and enhance our digital heritage? Methodological, technical and strategic elements.

Taking back control of our data
Taking back control of our data

A cultural path, not just a technical and legal one.

When American law reigns over European data, the only response is to rebuild a culture of digital sovereignty, piece by piece, NAS by NAS, one step at a time. The European “sovereign cloud,” a legal illusionIn December 2025, a legal analysis (…)
4 February 2026
  10 min
Sovereign Digital, a Micropolitical Choice
Sovereign Digital, a Micropolitical Choice

Escaping the Hegemonic Imaginary of Digital Tools.

Our daily choices of digital tools lock us into a capitalist imaginary. Moving from Microsoft to Free Software is not just a technical issue: it is a political act. Why and how. The Unconsciousness of Our DependencyWe are prisoners of a (…)
31 January 2026
  6 min
Digital sovereignty, a democratic emergency
Digital sovereignty, a democratic emergency

When our public institutions jeopardize our collective autonomy.

The loss of our digital sovereignty does not result from the thoughtlessness of citizen-users, but from a form of political unconsciousness regarding the power issues carried by industrial tools, including and particularly digital tools. This (…)
12 November 2025
  4 min
Sovereignty or Security?
Sovereignty or Security?

Digital responsibility put to the test of reality.

The fire at a state data center in South Korea in September 2025 proves human fragility in the face of digital storage. Between risky sovereignty and secure dependency, what price are we willing to accept for our digital heritage? The Illusion of (…)
20 October 2025
  5 min
Reflection on the Evolution of Audiovisual Media in Libraries
Reflection on the Evolution of Audiovisual Media in Libraries

For a citizen-driven heritage preservation of territorial audiovisual creations.

Libraries are facing the disappearance of physical audiovisual media. This technical transformation calls, in my view, for an anthropological redefinition of their missions (in the audiovisual field) around participatory creation and digital (…)
6 October 2025
  5 min
Conformism versus Sovereignty
Conformism versus Sovereignty

The comfort of digital dependence versus the requirement of data mastery.

Our digital lives rely on standardized tools. While this conformism simplifies usage, it exposes us to a loss of control. Let us reflect on this societal choice that shapes our collective future more than we think. The Seduction of Digital (…)
26 September 2025
  4 min
For a Political Consciousness of Digital Technology
For a Political Consciousness of Digital Technology

When our technological choices shape tomorrow’s world.

Every click, every application used, every digital service adopted constitutes a political act that participates in building our collective future, far beyond our individual uses. Digital technology as an artificial environment of existenceI (…)
20 September 2025
  7 min
“The flavor of data”: for a phenomenology of digital autonomy
“The flavor of data”: for a phenomenology of digital autonomy

Sentiment of dependency and digital sovereignty.

In the contemporary digital ecosystem, our apparent freedom of use conceals a structural and total dependence on platforms. This illusion of autonomy masks the disappearance of our individual and collective sovereignty. The invisible (…)
5 August 2025
  8 min
The Fantasy of Digital Ecology
The Fantasy of Digital Ecology

When individual guilt-shaming masks industrial predation.

In our situation of ecological emergency, greenwashing diverts our attention from the real culprits. While we conscientiously sort our waste, the digital industry devours the planet with complete impunity. The mirage of individual responsibility (…)
29 July 2025
  4 min
Cultural data and cultural rights
Cultural data and cultural rights

For an inclusive heritage democracy in the digital age.

Citizen cultural data is tomorrow’s heritage. Their recognition and preservation constitute a major democratic challenge for building a constructive collective memory for future democracies. The technical foundations of an interoperable digital (…)
21 June 2025
  4 min
Cultivating digital sovereignty
Cultivating digital sovereignty

For a democratic reclaiming of our digital spaces.

Faced with our growing dependence on tech giants, digital sovereignty is becoming a major democratic challenge. It’s time to act collectively. The foundations of digital sovereigntyDigital sovereignty refers to the ability of a State, (…)
14 June 2025
  8 min
Digital politics
Digital politics

When clicking becomes voting: the hidden face of our technological choices.

Code is law: digital tools are not neutral. Our daily technological choices are political acts that shape the world. Here are concrete elements for personal and collective awareness and action. The Choice of Hosting: A Masked Political Decision (…)
11 June 2025
  6 min
Cultural rights and preservation of digital heritage
Cultural rights and preservation of digital heritage

Bernard Stiegler’s technical philosophy sheds political light.

Have you ever tried to find a video you loved on YouTube from ten years ago? A blog post that made an impression on you? Your friends’ photos on MySpace? There’s a good chance this content has vanished. The Internet Archive’s “Vanishing Culture” (…)
27 May 2025
  5 min
Our fragile memory
Our fragile memory

For a digital archiving policy.

Our lives are now inscribed in digital form: emails, photos, documents, etc. But this collective memory is excessively fragile. Without active archiving, our heritage disappears completely, threatening our history and our democracy. The new sites (…)
26 May 2025
  4 min
Liability and computer backup
Liability and computer backup

To stop turning our backs on our future.

Computer backup is often neglected due to a lack of understanding and the illusion of the ubiquity of digital data. This unawareness exposes us to significant technical, economic, and personal vulnerabilities. I’m not going to bother with that! (…)
5 May 2025
  5 min
Digital and rationality
Digital and rationality

For a non-phantasmic vision of digital technologies.

Digital technology, often wrongly associated with rationality, is in reality an imperfect and material technology. Our choices of digital tools are political and determine the world we collectively build. A Pseudo-Critical SpiritIn debates, (…)
25 April 2025
  6 min
Podcast: “The living archive” (Benoît Labourdette, 44', 2023, french speaking).
Podcast: “The living archive”

Benoît Labourdette reflects on the challenges of digital archiving in the arts and culture (44’, 2023).

How empowering people to take responsibility for archiving and using data can be a real strategy for the vitality of creation, both artistically and economically.In this podcast (44 minutes), I lay the conceptual and technical foundations, (…)
16 November 2023
  3 min
Digital is not immaterial
Digital is not immaterial

Elements of understanding.

The digital world is much more material than we think. It seems important to me to take the measure of it in a concrete way, it is what can allow to build good strategies of organization of its data: to better manage them, not to lose them in the (…)
25 March 2023
  8 min
“The Long Tail”: Cultural Diversity in the Digital Age
“The Long Tail”: Cultural Diversity in the Digital Age

Tool for the design of cultural projects.

The “long tail” is one of the essential concepts of the Internet economy. Contrary to popular belief, on the Internet it is the great diversity of a myriad of confidential works that produces an essential part of the revenues, and this over the (…)
5 September 2022
  5 min
Audio recording of the conference “Artistic creation and digital heritage”.
“Artistic creation and digital heritage”: conference by Benoît Labourdette

Bibliothèque Forney (Paris) on Thursday, April 28, 2022 from 7:30 pm to 9 pm. Free admission.

Awareness and responsibility in the present with regard to our digital heritage are the guarantee of the construction of our humanity.Human beings have always told the story of their sensitivities and their visions of the world by all possible (…)
28 April 2022
  2 min