IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2019 - 67

James Surowiecki has strongly influenced the design
of crowdfunding platforms, some of which have gone
beyond their core financial targets to become real tools
of governance. As such, these platforms offer an interesting point of comparison for DC. Some crowdfunding platforms, for instance, aim to play a more effective role than
commissions formed of art specialists in determining the
policies of cultural institutions [32]. This is the case with
Kickstarter, to give just one example, which by virtue of
both its financial power (where projects go viral, the popular dollar can far exceed the resources of institutions)
and its symbolic power (since funded projects are also
those that "the people" want to see fulfilled) has come to
replace the curating commission of the Philadelphia Art
Museum in deciding of its artistic orientation [24]. But if
this modus operandi is more popular, should it be considered more democratic? It all depends on what is
meant by democracy. If this is purely a matter of broadening the base of participation, Kickstarter is indeed a
more legitimate reflection of the artistic tastes of a majority of the population than a small group of experts would
be. On the other hand, if democracy is based on an ideal
of deliberation, specialists qualified by their skills are better able to argue about what constitutes an innovative
artistic proposal and, through their choice, contribute to
the formation of esthetic taste.
In this example, esthetic matters could easily be
replaced by scientific matters and the argument applicable to biobanks. Be that as it may, it is wrong to
think that an assembly of participants and an assembly of experts will achieve the same ends by different
means. Depending on whether the decision-making
power is given to crowds or institutions, the result may
differ. There are two pitfalls that can be anticipated if
the power to determine cultural or scientific policies
falls to connected crowds via platforms rather than to
qualified mediators:
■ The risk of losing diversity: in a purely quantified
system, it would be up to the majority to determine
the benefit of all cultural or scientific proposals without taking the interests of minorities into account.
■ The risk of lower quality: associated with the previous risk but on an even broader scale, this threat is
that the proposals accepted would be those best
presented, most accessible and probably, since we
are in the context of ICT, most likely to be subject to
viral campaigns. It is easy to see how the form of
proposals could quickly take on more importance
than their content.
Even if all ethical reviews and checks (especially from
research ethics boards) would not be removed, the
replacement of broad consent by DC could, in the end,
lead to a scenario in which a group of ICT users ends up
replacing biobanks' ethical committees, to the detriment
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of the quality of the biobank's governance and even,
potentially, engendering risks to the participants themselves. Since modern biobank research may have important political consequences - for instance in terms of
community engagement with science [8], [10], [39],
national, regional or local genomic sovereignty [9], [27],
[31], or in the future of bioeconomy [18], [23], [35], -
downplaying the role of ethics committees and ethical
review is especially perilous.

Addressing a Collective of Users:
Audience versus Public
Sociological studies on the uses of ICT make it possible to relativize the ideals of a democracy mediated by
network technologies by shedding light on the logic of
manipulation adapted to large-scale means of communication. While our understanding of the dynamics of
communication in social networks is improving, certain phenomena such as "virality" should, for
instance, no longer be systematically perceived as the
fruit of spontaneous communion between members
of a network but rather as the effect of communication
strategies perfectly adapted to the format of the tools
used and the taste of the intended audience [51,
p.  21]. Virality can be defined as the promotion of
information through the recommendation one user to
another, but not all viral content emerges naturally
from the networks: some is designed to appeal to connected crowds.
In the context of biobanking infrastructures, it is easy
to imagine how, by studying the history of the consent
granted by biobank participants, the proposals could be
adapted to participants, by presenting projects in such a
way that they are more likely to appeal to them. This
logic, consisting of the tendency to assess audience
readiness, may be effective in increasing research participation. However, such a communication strategy has a
political cost, as the participants would be treated as
audiences to be seduced and not as a rational public to
be convinced. This would, no doubt, rally the crowds,
but it nonetheless constitutes a diversion of the democratic ideal of governance in research.

Assessing a Collective's Opinion:
Consent versus Vote
Governance through dynamic consent may seem a real
opportunity to democratize science and empower
research participants. But we should be wary of a system that, under the guise of technological neutrality,
would eventually confiscate power from people and subject them to manipulation. The illusion consists here in
thinking that technology is neutral and can provide the
means for a collective to express its own will when, in
the absence of a clearly expressed common interest, it

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