"Caught in the Web" by Sébastien Broca, published by Seuil

This week, we take a look back at the evolution of Gafam, heirs of American counterculture and now close to Donald Trump.

From Internet Utopia to Digital Capitalism is the subtitle of this book, which could be summed up by a question: how did we get here?

What happened in Silicon Valley between the early days of the internet, some 30 years ago, with young people thirsting for freedom in the spirit of the Californian counterculture, and today, when multi-billion dollar digital giants pledge allegiance to Donald Trump and are suspected of monitoring internet users around the world?

This is the question that Sébastien Broca, a teacher-researcher in information and communication sciences, asked himself.

The answer he provides highlights the extraordinary capacity of what are called Gafam, including Google, Amazon, Meta, Apple and Microsoft: these companies know perfectly well how to exploit gaps opened by others.

The Gafam companies notably benefited from the battles led by a surprising figure who has since passed away, John Perry Barlow, a wealthy heir to a Wyoming ranch, lyricist for the rock band Grateful Dead, author in 1996 of a Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace and founder of an NGO dedicated to the absolute defense of freedom of expression online.

His enemy wasn't businesses, it was the state. He did everything he could to ensure the state couldn't intervene on the Internet. And he succeeded, since in the 1990s he obtained the legal framework that still exists today, allowing digital companies to police themselves.

But it is also what allowed Gafam to establish its own power, while claiming to be part of the utopia of the beginnings.

Another utopia inherited from the American counterculture: technology was seen as a means of saving ecosystems.

This is what some very influential entrepreneurs and editorialists were saying in the 1990s: the Internet would allow us to go beyond the limits of matter, it would be an inexhaustible resource from which we could benefit without depriving anyone.

This discourse was quickly relayed by public authorities and seized upon by digital giants to suggest the immateriality of their activity, as if it represented a break with the industrial era. Yet their energy needs are colossal, whether to design their devices or to run their data centers.

A way of advancing in disguise which perhaps explains a misunderstanding about the intentions of these giants, long identified as progressive and who today appear more interested in power than in progress.