Architecture

Green IT series — Article 4/4 Two years ago, as part of a CSRD compliance programme, I was handed a non-functional requirement. It came down to a single sentence: the solution must make it possible to have indicators for assessing its environmental impact during operation. An environmental requirement, written in black and white, in a document that binds design. On paper, that is a win. In short Three words are enough to empty an environmental requirement of its force: during operation excludes manufacturing, which is to say the heaviest item of all. What is already manufactured is already paid for. The only remaining variable is lifespan, reuse and decommissioning — which is where the circular economy of IT becomes an architecture subject. Regulatory pressure has receded; the footprint has not. An organisation that has not prepared the ground will find itself at exactly the same point when the demand returns. ⎙ Imprimer / Télécharger en PDF Three words that empty a requirement Let us read it again, because everything turns on how it is worded. ...

Green IT series — Article 3/4 I have a weather station at home. It gives me temperature, pressure, humidity and the variations of the last few hours. With that, I have a fair idea of tomorrow’s weather — and if I am unsure, a dozen outlets publish the forecast for free. And yet the question of tomorrow’s weather is put to generative AI thousands of times a day. Systems which must analyse everything before answering. ...

Green IT series — Article 2/4 One day, an IT department is asked to measure the carbon footprint of its application portfolio. The request is legitimate, the sponsor is solid, the deadline is regulatory. And that is when it emerges that the number is out of reach. Not because the method is missing — because the data it would have to be applied to was bulk-updated some years ago, according to a rule nobody remembers the content of. ...

Green IT series — Article 1/4 A perfectly cooled datacentre, running workloads no one consults any more, will post an excellent PUE. That is the whole problem. And it is only the visible version of a much wider paradox. In short PUE measures the efficiency of the envelope, never the usefulness of the computation — and the same illusion plays out at organisational scale, where a green programme coexists with projects that have no reason to ever cross its path. Enterprise architecture is not there to constrain choices or arbitrate between visions. It is there to make the whole coherent — provided it sits in the right place, with the right levers. Sobriety and the circular economy of IT are not programmes running alongside the value stream. They are quality attributes within the value stream. ⎙ Imprimer / Télécharger en PDF A flawless indicator for an absurd system Let us start with the tool, since the tool is what gets brandished. ...

In short Pushing AI to its limits is not a sign of audacity: it is often a lack of judgment disguised as courage. True audacity lies in deliberate frugality—choosing where AI creates value, and where it does not. Pragmatism is not lukewarmness: it is the most demanding form of technological discernment. ⎙ Imprimer / Télécharger en PDF There’s a reflex I see resurface in almost every engagement I work on, in different guises but with the same root: the conviction that AI is needed, everywhere, right now, or you’ll fall behind. This reflex has a name, and I won’t shy away from it: it’s maximalism. And like every form of maximalism, it dresses itself up as strategic necessity to dodge the only question that matters: do we actually need this? ...

Yes, VivaTech was ten days ago. No, I didn’t write in the heat of the moment. Everyone else did. The LinkedIn posts went up on Thursday evening — rocket emojis, selfies with robots, “game changer,” “mind blown,” and the traditional blurry photo of a screen displaying something impressive. I chose not to do that. Not out of snobbery. Out of intellectual honesty. Because a show like VivaTech is designed to dazzle you. That’s its function. It’s even its virtue — it makes visible what is still invisible in most organizations. But between what you see and what it means, there is work to be done. Work of distillation, of putting things in tension, of connecting what you observe with what you see elsewhere, in the organizations you support. ...

In short AI doomerism has the structure of a religious movement — but what matters isn’t the discourse, it’s the capture it performs. The very actors brandishing existential risk are building the AI and concentrating decision-making power in a few private hands. The real fault line isn’t fear versus optimism, but power versus democratic governance. ⎙ Imprimer / Télécharger en PDF In response to Nirit Weiss-Blatt’s article, “First They Built a Secular Apocalypse Belief System. Now They Want Religious Authority.” ...

In short On one side, the promise of a “humanist superintelligence”; on the other, delusions fed by chatbots — the same technical object seen from two opposite floors. Between declared intent and lived reality lies execution debt — and here it’s paid in mental health. The real question isn’t “will AI be humanist?” but “who holds the gap between intent and its real effects?”. ⎙ Imprimer / Télécharger en PDF There are two discourses about AI that, right now, aren’t speaking to each other. ...