What is the digital revolution the revolution of ? What is turned upside down and disturbed, reformed and transformed, in the so-called ‘digital revolution’ ? To answer this, digital revolution is approached here from the point of view of a philosophy of technology which assumes that our being-in-the-world is fundamentally conditioned by technique and always has been. The first level of this approach focuses on the historical structure of the digital revolution. The hypothesis is that the digital revolution is an event in history that is part of the long process of mechanization in the West and consists in the advent of a ‘digital technical system’. The second level concerns the phenomenological structure of the digital revolution. The hypothesis is that a technical revolution is always ontophanic, that is to say a shaking of the structures of perception and of the process through which the being appears to us. This results in phenomenological constructivism, based on the notion of phenomenotechnique, which ultimately condemns the notion of ‘virtual’. The third and final level of analysis focuses on the ontophanic structure of the digital revolution. The hypothesis is that digital ontophany consists of eleven fundamental characteristics : noumenality, ideality, interactivity, virtuality, versatility, reticularity, instant reproducibility, reversibility, destructibility, fluidity and ludogeneity. The role of design as a phenomenotechnical activity that shapes the world is therefore essential in the creative development of the digital ontophany.
