IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - December 2020 - 5

EDITORIAL

Jeremy Pitt

No More
" De-Root and Rule "

" To be rooted is perhaps the
most important and least
recognised need of the hu-
man soul. "
o wrote Simone Weil
in The Need for Roots
(L'Enracinement in
the original French)
[1, p. 43]. In this book,
she sets out, firstly, a subjective/
objective contrast between rights
and obligations, and argues that obligations are the more fundamental
concept, on the grounds that these
obligations stem from satisfying the
vital needs of every human being.
After outlining a list of such needs,
Weil secondly identifies the need for
roots, as quoted above, as the most
important and least recognized
need, and then analyzes how people in both towns and countryside
have been " uprooted, " and deprived
of this essential need. Finally, Weil
tries to identify the means by which
people and society can be " inspirited, " have their roots restored, and
their souls' needs met.
Weil wrote this book in 1943, and
her principle concerns were twofold:
firstly, diagnosing the causes of
French collapse (in particular, but
Europe in general) in the early part
of the Second World War; and secondly, recommendations for reconstructing or re-inspiriting a nation
after the war. In diagnosis, she was
aghast at how the simplistic substitution of propaganda for both truth

S

The Need for Digital Roots

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MTS.2020.3031752
Date of current version: 2 December 2020

DECEMBER 2020

the human soul. Then it is instructive to hold her book up as a mirror
to contemporary society, to interpret what she wrote with respect to
the forces and conditions that currently obtain, and to determine the
extent to which it is applicable and
relevant, both in understanding how
technology might be contributing to
uprootedness, and how technology
could be used for the restoration of
roots. Such a brief exegesis is the
aim of this article.

ISTOCK/BLACKBECK

and meaning, and the supposed
march of material " progress, " had
instilled a deep uprootedness at
the core of individuals, and communities, societies, and nations. For
re-inspiration, she proposed to reestablish roots.
Although she was writing at a
time and under conditions very
different from now (late 2020),
suppose that we accept her basic
premise that the possession of
roots is the most important need of

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IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

5



IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - December 2020

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