FREE-FLOATING: STACKOGRAPHIC INQUIRY ON THE FREE-FLOATING E-SCOOTER
Research-creation PhD thesis defended by Matthieu Raffard and accompagnied by Marion Laval-Jeantet
Between July 2020 and April 2023, three free-floating e-scooter companies were authorized to operate in Paris. Quickly, this new mode of micro-mobility became an exciting subject of controversy. Are free-floating e-scooters an ecological means of transport? Are the employees who work for these digital platforms sufficiently well protected socially? Will this new means of transport transform our cities into a vast space dedicated to consumption?
During this period, we have tried to understand the functioning and the deep nature of this technological object. For this, we relied on the theory of Stack developed by the American researcher Benjamin Bratton and we imagined a new way of investigating this type of highly problematic digital objects.
In a research-creation approach, we propose seven stackographic operations to get to know free-floating e-scooters. Each of the research operations is an opportunity to understand better the digital geography in which we now live, and to consider the contours of a new type of field of investigation: stackography.
