ABSTRACT
This chapter is an opportunity to further push the intimate, ordinary, at shoulders’ height exploration of New York and the United States in the context of the industrial mobilization. It is also a way to make what was at stake in the great encounter between management and digitality in the middle of the war more visible and sensible. In a French restaurant of Manhattan, on the evening of a quiet day, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, James Burnham and Norbert Wiener meet at La Grenouille. Their encounter is organized by Frank Fremont-Smith, the executive director of the Macy foundation. They will soon be joined by a mystery guest … In contrast to the other chapters, all archives and history grounded, this fourth chapter is more fictional. These four characters, although obviously close and co-present several times, never really met on the street and avenues of Manhattan. Their encounter, although plausible, is a non-event used here to propose something: a discussion – in context – of the encounter between management and digitality by privileged observers of that time. This imaginary dialogue ends with a surprising walk with Wiener and Saint-Exupéry in Central Park.
