Pierre-Antoine Chardel. Communication and its disparities: reflections on the limits of technological idealism. At the End of the World research program, Lund University, Nov 2025, Lund, Sweden.

We are liable to experience misunderstandings, uncertainty, or ambiguity whenever we speak to others. This is where the hard fact of otherness arises. This otherness constitutes a complex, exhilarating challenge, both for human experience and social reality. It cannot be overcome by the technological tools that today are nearly always at our disposal. This is because information and communication technologies (ICTs) divide us just as much as they unite us. The impression of being in close virtual contact with one another does not address the distance that always separates us from the Other. The search for transparency in communication only accentuates serious contradictions that may bring about situations of a-communication. Recognizing these tensions should encourage us to work toward establishing the conditions of good telecommunicational action by separating the communicational impulse from the need for recognition that is inherent in the act of speech.