Edited by Emmanuelle Caccamo and Maude Bonenfant, 1st ed, Presses de l'Université du Québec, 2022, pp. 13-32

The development of IT technologies, such as the connected city, massive data (big data) and artificial intelligence is supported by a series of persuasive discourses. Using a variety of language devices, figures and rhetorical strategies, these arguments aim to legitimise the increasing digitalisation of society. Metaphors play a crucial role here. While they may have an aesthetic or pedagogical function, they can also take on an ideological role, conveying particular moral and political values and distracting us from fundamental issues. The well-known example of the metaphor of the computer 'cloud' conveys a quasi-ideal vision of digital technology and misguidedly helps to persuade us of the 'immaterial' nature of computer networks and systems. The light, airy imagery of the figure conceals the scale of the ecological disaster linked to digital developments.

This book is aimed at an academic readership, but also at an informed public interested in technologies, discourses and society. It presents a number of studies deconstructing the metaphors used to describe new technologies and grasps the ethical importance of scrutinising argumentative discourses on massive data, the smart city, robotics, video games and, more broadly, the digital world.