Michel Chevalet, An incarnation of French Science Journalism (II)

Michel Chevalet is a french science journalist who joined the ORTF at the end of 1971, and the beginning of 1972,  replacing Robert Clark for 2-3 episodes of a scientific program called L’avenir du futur, and later on recruited for general news, in Jean-Pierre Chapel’s department. 

(First part of the interview)

Michel Chevalet: Because it’s French, you know, we are a country of Descartes, we forget that sometimes, but it doesn’t seem serious, that’s all. I’ve said, there’s Roland Lehoucq who does remarkable popularization work in this sense. But look, Asimov did a wonderful job. In the field of space, who predicted the big space stations? It’s also The War of the Worlds. It’s Aldous Huxley. So I maintain, I say, and I’m not a science fiction fanatic, but I say, it’s a means, and like all other means, everything is good to allow an opening in the scientific world. Spielberg, Star Wars, maybe that did the most good, I dare say, for interest in space. It’s Star Wars that made people dream and did a remarkably good job, relying on serious work. Attention, Spielberg does his research, it’s very good.

Michel Chevalet: To extend what you’re saying, and it’s always been my position, I would say my role as a journalist has been to create desire, not to teach the public something, but to create desire. That’s what Bertrand Piccard, the famous Bertrand Piccard, says in the preface of my book. And Bertrand Piccard wrote, said, to change society, you need to change people. And to change people, you need to create desire. I would have created desire, and I often get feedback in letters, it’s nice, I walk around Airbus, and an engineer comes up to me, says, listen, it’s very nice, and then says, listen, if I’m here at Airbus, it’s because I watched your shows, you made me want to be interested in science and pursue studies for it. For me, the greatest reward is having inspired people, sparking their curiosity, and making them want to be interested. So, everything contributes to social culture. When I was doing the weather magazine, there was a lot of science in the atmosphere—cloud formation, hail, etc. So, it was a way for me to help them develop scientific culture. When I worked on the programs about the TGV world record, to drive it, I reached nearly 600 kilometers per hour. Believe me, there is a lot of… For you, it’s a train with wheels, a catenary, etc. We were pushing the limits of what technology can do.

Michel Chevalet: Yes, that’s it. How do you explain this? Because the achievements, because, be careful, discoveries, for example, in space, it’s technology, space, but the commissioning of new instruments causes leaps every time. For example, this is the case with telescopes. Telescopes that were on Earth, we sent one into space, and the first space telescope, the Hubble, meant that from the first photos, you had to tear up all your astronomy books and throw them in the trash. It was revolutionary. And so today, the wonderful discoveries we are making, and the questioning of certain fundamental principles of physics, means that this time, science has overtaken science fiction. It’s fascinating, what we are learning from the James Webb discoveries about galaxies, black holes. So, I would say that today, on the contrary, it is science, with its new lives, that is going further than science fiction, which at the moment seems to lack a bit of imagination.

Michel Chevalet: No, for me, the masterpiece was Star Wars. I saw Gravity. Gravity is very good for the first 20 minutes. Then, it’s madness. Because there, it’s a shame. After, I think it went wrong. It’s nonsense afterward. But the beginning, the beginning is terrifying. And bravo, bravo!

But movies like Top Gun, or Dune, or Tron, you don’t watch those?

Michel Chevalet: Top Gun, if there hadn’t been Top Gun, it’s a masterpiece. I admit, it has all the ingredients for success. I’ll reconnect, excuse me. But it’s true that science fiction is in disarray. Cinema, in general, is doing very poorly.

Michel Chevalet: No, but she’s right. She’s right, Christine. I lived through it. It started in ’73. In ’73, we began to have doubts about technology and science. Because there was the first oil crisis. And then we went through a number of crises. And we need to make people understand that the way out right now is through science and research. Of course, it will be the politicians who choose. And not to denigrate and engage in catastrophism. It’s fashionable today. We must engage in catastrophism. It’s even covered in the news, that when not a train arrives on time, but when a train is about to derail, or airplanes. Look at the Boeing saga. It’s true that Boeing messed up badly. But incidents are happening all the time with all yours. We never talked about them. And now it has taken on enormous proportions because of the issue. Look at the soap opera now of the two guys, the American crew aboard the space station who are stranded. And immediately, it’s talked about better than Spielberg, better than a science fiction novel, about these two people up there, even though they are safe. Simply, they need to be occupied. The time will be a bit long. But that’s all. There is no danger. We will bring them back to Earth. So, it’s very positive. The verses we have in the major press and for the bosses of the news channels, they are the ones who decide, the presenters, who have no scientific culture, that’s where the problem lies. For them, it’s good, so they’re going to die up there.  They made a headline, the “space castaways.” And there, you intervene on the air. But if you say, how are we going to solve the problem? No, I’m not interested.

Michel Chevalet: And we’re still there. It’s extraordinary. And ITER is taking a lot of delays. And we might even wonder if we didn’t aim too high with this industrial prototype. And whether we went off course.

Did you feel the influence of the anti-science movement in the early ’70s, driven by French Theory and postmodernity, and denounced by Noam Chomsky, which dismissed areas like genetics and space?

Michel Chevalet: I felt something rising slowly. That was rising in power. It started in ’73, with the Club of Rome, the doubts that arose. Science, which was supposed to solve all our problems, all our ills, was not there. And even, it was the source, through the degradation of living conditions and the environment, it was a source of problems. And so, we witnessed. It’s in bursts, if you will. There are surges. Like a fever, there are surges. And currently, we are in a period of skepticism again, doubt, because of Covid. Science couldn’t respond as it wanted because it was too confronted with it. You have all the problems we discover about the environment, the problem of climatology, with warming. Modification of the general climate of the planet. And it’s moving very fast. What astonishes scientists is not that there is a change, but the speed at which it is happening. And we don’t understand. We don’t understand why atmospheric circulations are different. We don’t understand why oceanic circulation is changing. So, there is a doubt that is setting in and which does not bode well for the development of scientific culture.

Michel Chevalet: Yes. And today, this is all the progress in genetics, but today, you see, the big question marks and criticisms raise the powers of computation; we call it artificial intelligence. It’s the same thing since the 70s; we called it automation, we called it, you remember, cybernetics, and now we call it artificial intelligence. Look, skepticism, concerns, which is normal by the way, that politicians are questioning, and also questioning the power that some big corporations have, which are becoming the gatekeepers of knowledge. You have to go through Google, through Starlink, which will have enormous power. You can see it now, it’s starting to shape up with… But this ideology, precisely, of cybernetics in the 70s, this concept coming from André-Marie Ampère, and from Norbert Wiener, which becomes the term of anti-science, it’s Heidegger who says that, who says that cybernetics is the enemy of technique, it’s the nodal point. It was the best of worlds, it was robots, it was automata, but because we didn’t have computing, there was no microelectronics, and you don’t remember Albert Ducrot, who was a popularizer, and Albert Ducrocq, who came, and Albert, who was robot number one, who fascinated people, what he did on space, Albert Ducrot had done work on his fox and his turtle, who would walk around by themselves in a room, who were able to find the power outlet to recharge with the batteries, of course, alkaline that we had at the time. So you see, it was the first cement beasts, but we had to wait for the development of software and computers that we have today to now talk about the power that is establishing itself, it’s wonderful, I’m fascinated, but it raises questions, which is normal. But we also forget that cybernetics, Guy Debord, the situationist, had made leaflets at the University of Strasbourg to denounce cyberneticians.

Michel Chevalet: I’m not going to say the Yellow Vests, because it’s too quick a shortcut, but… Well, you say these people won, in what sense? Well, let’s say that…  I don’t know if you agree with me, but this way of denouncing cybernetics as the ultimate stage of the spectacle, it’s a bit of the situationist discourse. We’ll find that with people on the far left today who perpetuate that tradition a bit. It’s… It’s… Don’t you see that too much? Cybernetics of the time, artificial intelligence has nothing to do anymore with those possibilities so powerful in processing information, of crying out information and seeking information with what there was in the 70s. The processor dates back to 71. The first processor, the Intel 4004, is from 71. We were landing on the Moon, almost, we didn’t have a microcomputer, we landed on the Moon with industrial calculators, and there were, I don’t remember how many, 3 or 4 cases of memory. And in a phone today, you see the possibilities you have on… And it’s not over, on your phone. And above all, there is the computing power, but above all, the great strength is the networks of information circulation, access to information. Before, if you were in archives, you had to go to a library, you had to leaf through a book, remember that in your books, in your works, go back over. Today, now, on the latest programs, you say, find me who is into cybernetics. The machine responds to you. Whereas before, you were incapable, because we didn’t have access, it was done in writing. I say, more than the power of machines, the size of their memory, of course, it’s especially the ability to sort, to find information. That’s the great power.

My father created Volume. His name was Marc Gilbert.

Michel Chevalet:  Your father? Marc Gilbert? Yes, he was the host of Volume and Italiques. Oh yes, Italiques. Yes, I remember.