INTERFACES AND INTERACTIONS (1)

The emergence of a public sphere of debate from the eighteenth century was based on the development of communications, which transformed political life, empowered public opinion, and enabled mobilization of masses (2). Communications revolution now reaches everyone on the planet, and intersocial relations have come to rival interstate relations (3).

This development of communication presupposes development of communicative interfaces: printed newspaper, radio set, television screen, computer or mobile phone. While the evolution of these interfaces has indeed revolutionized ways in which we interact, the overall assessment remains mixed. This is what we will focus on by addressing the following questions: What is an interface? How does it evolve? In what ways can it become a threat, and how to avoid it?

1) Crossing points between different environments

Let us examine what the term “interface” means, both in its common usage and in a broader sense, in order to understand its role in transfer of information and energy, as well as in knowledge and action.

In its everyday sense, an interface is the part of an artifact that comes into contact with its user and through which user can interact with that artifact. This may include, for example, a computer’s keyboard and screen. Through interface, we act upon artifact, and artifact, in turn, acts upon us.

However, an interface does not enable only interaction with an artifact. When an aircraft pilot manipulates various interfaces, he acts upon the very reality of the machine itself, and not only upon signs. Thus, interface makes it possible to interact with an artifact that itself interacts with its environment. As a result, acting through an artifact and its interface ultimately amounts to acting upon the world.

If we now wish to broaden the series of mediations, we can describe the chain linking a person’s mind to their own body, any possible prostheses, peripherals of the artifact, artifact itself, and its environment. Thus, human interaction with artifacts, through mediation of interfaces, is part of the broader series of interactions between mind and the world.

We can therefore consider interfaces as crossing points between psychic, mechanical and physical. For example, motor cortex enables frontal lobe to command muscular movement. In this case, motor cortex functions as an interface between psychic and physical.

Furthermore, relationship between a decision originating in my frontal lobe and movement of my hand, mediated by my motor cortex, can be compared to relationship between movement of my hand and opening of a door, mediated by the door handle. Through this comparison, we aim to show that interfaces are embedded within the chains that connect human consciousness to body, then to instruments, to environment, and also, as we shall see, to other human beings.

2) Evolution of relations to the world

Interfaces have evolved over time. The nature of interface in use transforms the entire relationship between human beings and the world. For example, communication does not take the same form over telephone as it does in writing. Revolutions that have taken place across various domains of human practice are closely linked to adoption of new interfaces.

Walter Benjamin showed how technical developments transformed our relationship to art with the emergence of photography and cinema. Régis Debray examined the role played by evolution of media in religious and political ideological shifts. Bertrand Badie explained how new technologies have reshaped relations between peoples across continents. One could describe at length societal transformations brought about by technical change (4).

The way in which interfaces have transformed our relationship to the world across most domains has given rise to phenomena such as dematerialization (for example, telephone communication), virtualization (through television fiction or video games), acceleration of time, and compression of space (through transportation and telecommunications). These phenomena have been criticized for fostering an inauthentic relationship to the world when compared to past ways of life. In this perspective, denunciation of interfaces and screens —interposed between the world and ourselves— often leads to calls for limiting power of technology.

However, as Gaston Bachelard has shown, interfaces play a positive role in scientific progress. Instruments, understood as materialized theories, filter phenomena in order to produce precise data. Scientific discovery takes place within a framework that constitutes a rigorous interpretive grid. Use of sophisticated interfaces distinguishes scientific knowledge from ordinary knowledge (5). For example, chemist studies a substance purified through laboratory instruments; astronomer observes space through telescope. When one considers improvements in our ways of life brought about by sciences, one can welcome their progress.

How, moreover, can we explain advantage of scientific instruments over ordinary sensory data? Scientific instruments neutralize our subjectivity. An automatic mechanism replaces direct experience and allows for an objective and quantified recording of facts, as when one measures body temperature with a thermometer (6). Instrument‑mediated perception thus corrects natural perception, which previously hindered access to objectivity. However, we shall see that scientific and technical effectiveness of instrumental objectification comes at a cost: it renders us blind to certain aspects of reality.

Military drone, for example, enables its operator to attack a person without risk and without combat. Absence of face‑to‑face confrontation reduces individual to a pathogenic element to be eliminated. Through drone’s interface, target no longer appears as a human being. Relationship between operator and target is thus dehumanized (7).

Homicide without combat did not begin with drone. Poison, gas, and bombs are also capable of killing indirectly. However, drone combines this form of violence with a use of screen that can be described as “pornographic.” This term is used by Thi Nguyen and Bekka Williams, in their analysis of digital social networks, to characterize a form of consumption without cost or consequences (8). One may speak here of a principle of ease. Just as pornographic images grant access to situations without directly involving us, drone operator witnesses consequences of their lethal act with a certain detachment (9).

It should nevertheless be noted that moral sentiment sometimes persists behind interface. While images of killing scene may leave operator indifferent (or even gratified), they may, on the contrary, provoke public outrage when leaked to media (10). Consequently, although violence or death on screen affects us less than if we were to witness it directly, distance alone is not sufficient to eliminate all moral judgment. Advertising and propaganda clearly demonstrate that a screen can elicit a wide range of emotions.

3) Proliferation of interfaces

We have seen that screen can function as a window onto the real world, and that relating to reality through screen creates an effect of distance. However, screen can also introduce us to a non‑real world. Moreover, with video games, in addition to perceiving fiction through screen, player can act within this fictional world via a console, thereby deepening their immersion in virtual universe (11).

One might think that fiction is not affected by the problem of derealization mentioned earlier, since it is not intended to denote reality. Yet psychological and moral impact of fiction —particularly in the case of combat games— is generally taken into account, depending on whether one fears a banalization of violence or, on the contrary, considers it beneficial to be able to discharge aggression through play. Fiction thus retains an indirect connection to reality as a whole. This is what allows us to make a moral judgment on it and, if necessary, to censor it.

Effect of fiction on our relationship to reality and to morality is all the more significant as interfaces have become ubiquitous. Video games first appeared in amusement parks, then in shopping malls, before entering home through game consoles, and finally becoming available on mobile phones. This shift from public to private spaces, linked to miniaturization, applies to screens in general—from cinema to television, computers, and smartphones (12). In this way, information and communication technologies are penetrating more and more deeply into daily life.

We thus observe a numerical increase in interfaces over time. However, additional factors also contribute to their widespread use. First, design of their form is increasingly refined in order to capture users’ attention, generate excitement, and create momentum and dependency through techniques of stimulation, user retention, and gamification. Second, at the level of content, interfaces most often disseminate a worldview that promotes the use of interfaces themselves, through advertising, films, television series, and news media. Third, we are educated and encouraged to depend on interfaces both at work and in our leisure activities. While social environment promotes the use of interfaces, it simultaneously marginalizes those who resist them.

4) Causes of cybernetic domination

We will put forward several hypotheses to explain the evolution of our societies toward a cybernetic world dominated by information and communication technologies. The relatively recent transformation of our modes of perception and action through interfaces is less the result of public demand than of the economic orientation toward these technologies. When one considers scale of investment in design of machines and software, as well as deployment of infrastructures, one can grasp pressure exerted by the need to make these technologies profitable by encouraging their use.

Another hypothesis, even more pessimistic, may account for proliferation of interfaces. For Herbert Marcuse, consumer society conceals a new form of domination behind the undeniable improvement of our ways of life. As vectors of mass culture, interfaces contribute to what Marcuse calls “surplus repression” required for social productivity. In addition to repression of drives necessary for adaptation to reality principle, modern society introduces a surplus repression in service of production and consumption (13). This form of alienation is all the more difficult to challenge because it is concealed behind the apparent well‑being it provides, offering in return a parody of personalization (14).

Finally, undesirable effects of our interfaces do not necessarily stem from a conscious and insidious intention on the part of elites. They may also emerge from a play of forces and an entropic tendency. For example, the drift of internet —initially conceived as a cyberspace of resistance and gradually transformed into an instrument of generalized platformization— may result from an uncontrollable process. This is comparable to the degradation of a city such as Brasília. Designed as a city of equals, it has, due to increase in population and automobile traffic, turned into an unequal and inhospitable environment (15).

5) Critique of interfaces and money

Let us now attempt to determine cultural impact of a society saturated with communicative interfaces. For Jean Baudrillard, consumer society exalts signs and denies real. Contemporary society is a society of signs, which transforms everyday life into a virtual daily life (16). What Baudrillard says about consumer society can easily be compared with Pierre Bourdieu’s analysis of television. Television operates under the rule of audience ratings. It selects information in favor of conformist ideas, diverts attention from certain issues, distorts reality, encourages narcissism, and hinders critical reflection (17).

This detachment of signs from reality can be compared to detachment of money from things. What Baudrillard’s structuralism, Marcuse’s critical theory, and Situationist critique of value have in common is an analysis of commodity fetishism that is both monetary and ideological. According to critique of value, priority given to labor time in determining monetary value —independently of nature and usefulness of that labor— contributes to making monetary value an unreal value. Real activity of human beings is transformed into commodity labor measured according to abstract time of clock interface. This time functions as a coercive norm, reflected in money independently of real needs. What characterizes reign of abstraction in commodity society is thus the fact that monetary value becomes more important than use value, and that exchange value takes precedence over use value (18).

We can therefore draw a parallel between monetary exchange value and value of esteem associated with conspicuous consumption, insofar as both are detached from use value. Critique of monetary value thus converges with critique of interfaces, understood as media of the Society of Spectacle opposed to reality (19).

6) Virtuous use of technology

The pessimistic approach to interfaces that we have outlined nevertheless leaves room for more optimistic considerations. The aim is not to anathematize interfaces as media, messages, or signs, nor to condemn names, numbers, or money as such. Rather, the question is: how can we avoid perverse effects and ensure virtuous ones in the use of our instrumental and symbolic technologies? We have seen that the main risk lies in a disconnection from reality. Interface must therefore not obstruct our relationship to the world; it should function as a bridge rather than a wall.

A first line of thought can be drawn from Gilbert Simondon (20). For Simondon, automatism, insofar as it restricts the field of possibilities, is a drawback rather than a quality (21). True perfection of a machine lies in its indeterminacy, which allows for openness to multiple possibilities. In this way, human beings, in their interaction with machines, can become coordinators and inventors rather than slaves or mere supervisors. Simondon seeks to valorize human–machine complementarity and to prevent subjugation of humans by machines. It is therefore crucial to grasp the difference between humans and machines, since it is precisely this difference that enables their complementarity, in their coupling at the level of interface (22).

Another promising line of thought that highlights virtuous effects of interfaces is suggested by Michel de Certeau (23). Reappropriation is a way of escaping, at least partially, subjugation. De Certeau contrasts tactics and ruse with the panoptic strategy of power analyzed by Michel Foucault (24). He thus defends creative “use” against passive “consumption.” While machines tend to freeze and formalize earlier practices, new forms of know‑how emerge through use and reappropriation of machines and their interfaces.

A similar effort to escape determinism of subjugation can be found in the work of Stuart Hall. He challenges cybernetic model of transmission and reception and emphasizes breaks and discontinuities in the process. User develops possibilities and is not a passive consumer. An asymmetry between encoding and decoding is possible: there is not only adaptation to dominant codes, but also opposition. If an event is encoded by power with a particular meaning, its decoding may be counter‑hegemonic (25).

Finally, participation —as engagement in social transformation— can be opposed to mere adjustment of agents to a given social model (26). Participation is based on principles of mutual learning, experimentation, collective intelligence, and shared governance. A democratic approach to technology, both in its design and its use, should make it possible to reach agreement beyond subjective viewpoints and to develop practices that serve common good. In this respect, one may draw inspiration from Bruno Latour’s actor‑network theory, Andrew Feenberg’s democratic rationalization, Pat Devine’s negotiated coordination, cooperative movement, and related approaches (27).

Notes

(1) Text of the 20‑minute presentation at the Rencontres de Sophie at the ENSA in Nantes on March 14, 2026, expanded with footnotes.

(2) Jurgen Habermas, L’espace public, Payot, 1998

(3) Bertrand Badie, Nous ne sommes plus seuls au monde, La découverte, 2016, p. 81.

(4) Walter Benjamin, L’œuvre d’art à l’époque de sa reproductibilité technique, 1935 ; Régis Debray, Cours de médiologie générale, NRF, 1991 ; Bertrand Badie, Op. Cit.

(5) Gaston Bachelard, Le nouvel esprit scientifique, 1934.

(6) Loraine Daston et Peter Galison, L’objectivité, Les presses du réel, 2012.

(7) Grégoire Chamayou, Théorie du Drone, La fabrique, 2013.

(8) C. Thi Nguyen & Bekka Williams, « Moral outrage Porn », 2020.

(9) Grégoire Chamayou also challenges the thesis of drone‑pilot traumatic stress, op. cit., ch. 4, p. 153.

(10) See “Collateral Murder,” WikiLeaks, 2010.

(11) Matthieu Triclot, Philosophie des jeux vidéo, La découverte, 2011.

(12) To these visible interfaces must be added the quasi‑invisible ones of surveillance cameras, RFID chips, sensors, and connected objects.

(13) Herbert Marcuse, L’homme unidimensionnel, Minuit, 1964.

(14) According to Michel Freitag, cybernetic society has fragmented society into multiple sects (Le naufrage de l’université, La Découverte, 1996). More precisely, he argues that expansion of communication technologies creates a tension between their unidimensionality and plurality of cultures. It may seem contradictory to claim both that: (a) cybernetic society produces a one‑dimensional individual, shaped and standardized by a common norm, and (b) cybernetic society fragments into multiple tribes. However, one must not confuse normalization generated by operational mechanisms with cultural structures. Cybernetics makes it possible to control the proper functioning of economic actions while allowing the proliferation of particularisms that divide groups and individuals according to tastes and values.

In our view, however, these particularisms —when mediated by technological interfaces— are not truly local particularisms, as those of traditional societies, since they are all equipped and connected through interfaces. They are delocalized particularisms, compatible with connection to apparatuses that control and normalize thought at a certain level. These particularisms can therefore be understood as variations within a spectrum of normalization. According to this hypothesis, what presents itself as personalization is merely adherence to pre‑established scenarios. There is a niche for everyone, depending on periods, profiles, and moods. What appears as personalization is in fact only a surface effect—a pre‑formed shell covering a uniform core. Genuine know-how, ways of living, and modes of being fade behind various forms of reactivity to interfaces. One must adjust oneself to connections when they do not automatically hook onto you. Human being embedded in machine ultimately become part of its automatism.

A further clarification can be made by distinguishing two forms of insertion into the socio‑economic system, differentiating between “equipment” (Michel Clouscard, Néofascisme et idéologie du désir, 1972) and “consumption” (Jean Baudrillard, La société de consommation, 1970). In “consumption,” what dominates is the apparently playful and free use of objects whose esteem value is significant. In society of “equipment,” which concerns less privileged social classes, there is a necessary link between use and production: one equips oneself in order to produce, and produces in order to equip oneself. For example, car is used to go to work, and one works in order to pay for car. In both cases, imperative is to adapt and adopt a certain way of life—either to follow fashion or to remain operational.

(15) Umberto Eco, La structure absente, Mercure de France, 1984.

                (16) Jean Baudrillard, La société de consommation, 1970.

(17) Pierre Bourdieu, Sur la télévision, 1996.

(18) Anselm Jappe, Les Aventures de la marchandise, pour une nouvelle critique de la valeur, Éditions Denoël, 2003.

(19) As we have seen, spread of communicative interfaces immerses us in a world in which symbol takes precedence over the real. A comparable phenomenon can be observed with money. As Georg Simmel notes, money has neither intrinsic content nor final purpose. He assimilates it to a tool, defining a tool as a means that persists beyond its use. A tool therefore has polyvalent value, and money is the tool with the highest value in this respect. Capitalists thus seek to maximize possession of money, since it increases their power to acquire whatever they desire, whenever they desire it (La philosophie de l’argent, 1900, p. 72). Money therefore has a value independent of content—like work of art, according to Simmel, and like any interface. Insatiable desire for money as a pure means lacks concreteness and is therefore limitless. Miser, for example, unlike thrifty person, is indifferent to things, much as one may be when living through interfaces weakly connected to the real world. A similar parallel can be drawn with conspicuous consumption, which is likewise indifferent to real utility. In this case, interface becomes a status symbol rather than a tool. Greedy individual thus enjoys a possible and unlimited pleasure rather than a real one. Fascination exerted by monetary interface stems from temptation of unlimited purchasing power, says Simmel (p. 175). Cynics and greedy share an indifference to real value of things (p. 180). Power to buy anything one wants leads to disenchantment. Love of money arises from the fact that excitement of possessing means to buy replaces what should, in reality, be an end in itself. In other words, when monetary interface becomes more important than reality, it becomes object of idolatry bordering on madness.

Thomas Aquinas offers a critique of money that can also help us relate critique of money to that of interfaces. Normally, money, through price, represents utility of a good or service (Étienne Gilson, Le thomisme, Vrin, 1919, p. 447). Price represents the seller’s sacrifice (for Marx, that of the producer). However, buyer’s level of need should not authorize seller to raise price — just as, for Marx, worker’s vital need for wages should not justify employer lowering them. The role of a court is to sanction such fraud when it occurs. Above all, commerce must not control exchanges necessary for life. While commerce may operate on private goods, it must not govern what belongs to public service. Aquinas criticizes desire to maximize profit at the expense of fundamental rights, and more generally fixation of profit‑seeking as an end in itself (p. 450). In this respect, he condemns usury as follows: it consists in selling the same thing twice. One must not sell both bottle of wine and its use. Therefore, when lending money, one should expect only the identical sum in return—just as the price of wine corresponds to its consumption. As for the money lender might have earned by not lending it, this is not a valid justification: one does not sell a possible gain, since one does not possess it. We thus see that any misuse of use of money implies a distance from reality, as is also the case with the misuse of interfaces.

Michael Sandel has recently analyzed, in the ultra‑liberal American context, consequences of a social model in which everything can be bought (Ce que l’argent ne saurait acheter, Seuil, 2014). He cites examples of preferential treatment, access tolls, financial incentives for students to read, and so on. He shows that this logic transforms the ethics of societies. If parents are fined for arriving late at daycare, for example, this may have a de‑guilt‑inducing effect: parents eventually come to view fine as the price of a service. Similarly, financial penalties imposed on polluting industries are perceived as a paid right to pollute. When paying for lateness is seen as a service, and paying students to read as a remunerated chore, commodification alters perception of values. Expansion of market value leads to erasure of non‑market value. According to Sandel, market rationality is favored by refusal, in liberal societies, to debate conditions of good life and non‑market values. Acceptance of market’s amoral values promotes managerial and technocratic logics, whereas morally limiting market values would instead foster common good. What ultimately unites critique of money, numbers, and interfaces is disproportionate importance that can be granted to these representations of reality. While they have their usefulness when employed in moderation, they become a threat when they attempt to substitute themselves for reality.

(20) Gilbert Simondon, Du mode d’existence des objets techniques, 1958, p 10-12.

(21) Automatism is common both to interfaces as media and to messages they convey. Not only are signs autonomous from reality, but their development through media is also independent of human intentions and beyond our control. Of course, individual actors bear responsibility for dissemination of messages. Yet cumulative effect of all actors, regardless of their degree of involvement, escapes collective control. System becomes autonomous through spontaneous interplay of forces and ill will of certain actors. We thus lose control over system of interfaces. While automation may initially appear as a form of technical perfection, it ultimately contributes to emergence of machine as a hostile alter ego that deprives us of initiative (Baudrillard, Le système des objets, 1968).

Although automation and autonomization of machines encourage anthropomorphism and personalization, critique must nevertheless target an involuntary process—even if responsible authorities become attached to it. When a machine malfunctions and escapes our predictions, it may resemble a rebellious slave. Yet this superstition is comparable to mythological image of divine wrath invoked to explain natural disasters. Behind anthropomorphization of machines, there is generally a threshold effect. Like traffic congestion, proliferation of interfaces produces perverse effects of social paralysis and dysfunction.

It is worth noting that some philosophers have emphasized invulnerability rather than fallibility of robots in comparison with humans, and threat this represents (Ayn Rand, Günther Anders). In fact, both obsolescence and robustness of machines pose risks—either through unreliability or through excessive power. What applies to machines obviously applies to interfaces as well, since they are peripheral components through which we interact with machines. If a lock jams and traps us inside, the problem lies as much in fragility of the lock as in solidity of the door. There is therefore within machines a potential for automation and autonomization that constitutes more a drawback than a virtue. This uncontrollable aspect contributes to emergence of anthropomorphic imaginary projected onto machines.

(22) For example, living human memory establishes a formal continuity between different temporal moments, whereas mechanical memory accumulates discontinuous pieces of information. Human memory enables recognition and perception of phenomena and their meaning, while mechanical memory allows for archiving of data. If time permitted, we could analyze other forms of complementarity and cooperation—for instance, combination of human qualia with mechanical disinterestedness, or human embodied intelligence with mechanical “combinatorial intelligence,” and so on.

(23) Michel De Certeau, L’invention du quotidien, 1980

            (24) Michel Foucault, Surveiller et punir, 1975

            (25) Stuart Hall, Identité et cultures, Amsterdam, 2017

(26) For transhumanists in particular, the aim is to preserve a given social model, prevent its questioning, and adapt human beings to that model. For example, in response to the problem of obesity, rather than questioning our dietary practices, transhumanists would seek to modify human metabolism in order to adapt individuals to existing conditions. The objective is thus to preserve economic system and optimize individuals in relation to it. The principle of biopower is therefore to maximize individual productivity through science. In a sense, paradoxically, the most technologically enhanced individuals are also the most subjected to the system, while the least enhanced are the most spared (Nicolas Le Dévédec, Le transhumanisme, PUF, 2024). If we consider proliferation of screens and interfaces in everyday life as a form of human enhancement, then those who manage to protect themselves from it are in the most favorable position—provided, of course, that this does not lead to social exclusion.

Reappropriation of uses must make it possible to counter effects of domination by elites who organize our technological environment. We are currently witnessing a retreat of democracy and rule of law, and even a fascization of certain political and economic leaders. For example, the phenomenon of “neo‑reaction” (Curtis Yarvin, Nick Land) has been the subject of several recent publications (Nastasia Hadjadji et Olivier Tesquet, Apocalypse Nerds, Divergences, 2025 ; Arnaud Miranda, Les lumières sombres, NRF, 2026). This represents an updated version of authoritarian neoliberalism, particularly within tech world, combining anti‑egalitarian and anti‑statist libertarian dimensions. Transhumanist tendencies of tech leaders likewise reflect an anti‑democratic stance—either by seeking to constitute a wealthy elite of superhumans, or by adapting individuals to demands of the market.

There are still other problematic aspects of current framework within which interfaces are developing. First, on ecological level, tech leaders tend to promote techno‑solutionist and survivalist options aligned with their own interests, rather than democratic regulation and a rebalancing of industrial activities in relation to the environment. Second, although neo‑reactionary thinkers primarily address elites rather than public, fascist ideas are simultaneously spreading within popular online culture. Third, a significant portion of new technologies market is devoted to military, policing, surveillance, migrant control, or alternatively to marketing and propaganda. There are therefore genuine reasons for concern—not merely about development of interfaces as such, but about conditions under which this development takes place, particularly in light of the threats it poses to democracy and environment. One could also add risks of rising unemployment due to automation, or decline in educational standards resulting from excessive use of screens among young people.

It is therefore necessary to agree on how we should think about technologies and their interfaces, and to clearly distinguish between different types of problems. For the sake of simplicity, we distinguish between the use of technologies and their environment. Evaluation of technology cannot be reduced to unconditional acceptance or rejection. Certain technical environments or certain uses are beneficial, while others are harmful. For example, what may be dangerous is not only driver of a car, but also road, vehicles and their number, prevailing mindset, laws and their enforcement, and so on.

Here is another example showing that perverse effects of technology do not depend on technology alone, but on its environment. If a machine increases productivity while amount of labor remains stable, workers will have more free time. But if amount of labor decreases, they will have the same or less free time, and unemployment will increase. We thus see that effects of mechanical productivity depend on an external factor —quantity of labor— rather than on machine itself. Challenge, therefore, is not merely to limit or eliminate problematic technologies, but rather to build a social environment in which technology can have beneficial effects.

(27) Andrew Feenberg, Repenser la technique, La découverte, 2004 ; Audrey Laurin-Lamothe, Frederic Legault & Simon Tremblay-Pépin, Construire l'économie postcapitaliste, Lux, 2023 ; Alice Le Goff, Pragmatisme et démocratie radicale, CNRS Edition, 2019 ; Anne Catherine Wagner, Coopérer, CNRS édition, 2022 ; Axel Honneth, Le souverain laborieux, Gallimard, 2024 ; Bruno Latour, Changer de société, La découverte, 2007.

 

RAPHAEL EDELMAN NANTES MARS 2026