Abstract
On demo-cracy in America. This article presents the findings of a research program designed to develop a historical sociology of forms of demonstration. It is based on a study of the conditions in which, during the 1990s, the NASA developed a sophisticated software program for the preparation of missions into space. Analysis of the research conditions reveals the nature and the stakes of recourse to a specific form of demonstration, demos informatiques. These demos turned out to be one of the main sources of the form taken by the activity and the relations of the researchers in AI and in logic informatique, in San Francisco's Silicon Valley. The study of the conditions of possibility of the demos, and the constraints on their practice and uses leads the author to identify capitalist procedures in the production of demonstrations. The analysis further reveals the establishment of a demo-cratic regime in the US confirming the power in place — not that of the masses — by the right to oversee the closed world of laboratories, which is that of the demos and their privileged users, namely the capitalists of science.
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