Almost all of us agree on this point: through its digitization, our world has changed, despite an indisputable continuity. While relying on a capitalist model, it has changed in its way of functioning, but also of thinking and thinking on itself. Despite this consensus on the facts, it remains difficult to designate a unifying concept that would not be trapped in power struggles, especially commercial. The concept of « big data », originating from the technological world, is probably the most dominant one in current-days, but it has never been neutral or scientific and will never be.

Big data, digital humanities, knowledge society, Internet revolution, digital revolution, digital disruption, information capitalism, cognitive capitalism, surveillance society … with what concept can social scientists work? During this presentation followed by a discussion with the faculty members of the STS studies department of the Cornell university, I tried to imagined what Michel Foucault could have said about the epistemology of that could have been seen a the emergence of a digital episteme.