Monique Dagnaud is Director of Research at CNRS and author of numerous works. She teaches at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. She was also a member of the Conseil Supérieur de l’Audiovisuel, from 1991 to 1999, and a member of the Conseil de Surveillance du Groupe Le Monde from 2005 to 2010. Her books include L’Etat des medias (The State Of the Media), published by Odile Jacob in 2000.

California offers an example of a different kind of political and economic organisation, a concrete example of a new social model.

Lying at the heart of the new world economy and technical innovation, this region of the USA is also the laboratory of a new form of society, of a new political vision, founded upon the principles of sharing, mutual support, cooperation between individuals. It is these people, and not the state, as in France, who manage regulation, communications and the generation of wealth.

Quoting Fernand Braudel, the author demonstrates that what is happening in the San Francisco region is what happened in Venice in the 14th Century: a redistribution of power, a movement of ideas and capital, based around a single city that is a world — and a future — in itself.

Far from being a utopia, according to Monique Dagnaud, this new social order is where the future lies for a western world that is losing hope and in need of a new direction.