Pudeur furiosa

Tuesday evening on Earth. The past two weeks have been wild: from opening a seminar for the French administration, to a VivaTech roundtable titled “What should we teach our children?” around AI organized by NewKid , and taking part in various radio shows... At the heart of all these recent conversations: the need for ‘pudeur’.

I love the word pudeur, a French word defined as a “discretion, restraint that prevents one from saying or doing something that might offend modesty or delicacy”. It is not only about covering up; it is about choosing the conditions under which something intimate may appear. It is often approached from the perspective of sexuality. And while the question of whether or not to send nudes is indeed important in our online relationships, it hides a much more interesting groundswell: users taking back control over access to their intimate lives. Pudeur could be one of the great social skills of the digital age: knowing when to reveal oneself, mastering when to produce silen…