In Times of Crisis, Serres asks: “Who will speak out” and engage with the destruction of the earth and the abuse of each other? In Thumbelina  he provides a provocative answer: our hope must be a radical shift promoted by young people through their use of advanced information and communication technologies (ICTs). The figure of Thumbelina takes central stage in Serres’ modern fable. Continuously scrolling through and tapping her mobile devices with her thumbs, she thrives in the digital age.

Serres contends that Thumbelina not only inhabits a different time and space she also no longer possesses the same head or body of her parents. New forms of technology have altered her whole being in the way she writes, speaks and comprehends. He traces how historically knowledge has transformed in revolutionary ways, moving from the body of the storyteller to techniques of writing and print until reaching a new form of ‘objectification’ through computers and the internet. Knowledge is today distributed everywhere rather than concentrated in books, libraries, schools and universities. He suggests such institutions are “old concentrations” from an era that no longer exists. Information is now accessible to all.

Serres urges us harness technologies to our imagination and “reinvent everything”. Later he admits that the legend of Thumbelina is rather programmatic and utopian and specifically does not sufficiently clarify the distinction between information, disinformation and knowledge (savoir). However, he insists on upturning popular assumptions about how mobile technology harms young people’s attention to learn. Serres is adamant that the young are no longer passive and obedient receptacles of knowledge. Order and classifications are needed for the practicalities of daily life, but replaying his consistent message, the “ill-sorted or disparate has virtues of its own.”

Young people may well annoy teachers with their chatter and guileful scrolling on their devices during lectures, but Serres interprets such behaviour as revealing the potential of the transformation of power and competence, a disruption that will eventually break up academic hierarchies and disciplinary boundaries, as well as other institutions and authorities. Thumbelina does not just represent the young, her name is for anyone who undermines the political institutions and hierarchies of “presumed competence” and experiments with new approaches released by the different technological space in which we are starting to live.

In this context I put forward Greta Thunberg, the celebrated teenager from Stockholm, as a poignant example of such an emerging quality. The teenager quickly became a global figure after sitting outside the Swedish parliament announcing she would not attend school unless political authorities would act radically to address our climate crisis. She questioned the value of education if it did not address fundamental questions about the future of the world. Greta Thunberg partly explains her remarkable stance and its impact from a single-mindedness and sense of difference produced from her autism, a special cognitive diversity that she says makes her see things directly and differently. Like Thumbelina, Greta Thunberg does not trust the competence of teachers and politicians. She announced through her practice and voice her own competence.

Although the global Friday school strikes diminished through the impact of Covid, the constant exchange of messages, images and videos that galvanised millions of young people revealed the potential of new forms of technology. It demonstrated remarkable features: the global intervention started with a single child, an individual, a  Thumbelina, and not established authorities; the protest spread spectacularly swiftly across the world through ICTs; it was a generational challenge targeted at adults and world political leaders; she  caught the support of scientist; she called for systemic radical change rather than just highlighting lifestyle choices; and she demonstrated how new technologies that children have grown up with and through which they outpace adults can be used for action and change. She captures Serres’ utopia. Hierarchies are noisily upturned; children are teaching and leading adults and have achieved a global reach.More recently, she has also endorsed one of Serres’ central messages. The abuse of the world cannot be separated from the abuse of each other.  Politicians and others in authority may well find subtle ways of denying, ignoring or diluting their demands, but we can only support the Tumbelinas of this world who intervene by inventing the inclusive global thought and tools to outmanoeuvre them.

I finish with words from Greta Thunberg’s:

Genocides, ecocides, famines, wars, colonialism, rising inequalities and an escalating climatecollapse are all interconnected crises that reinforce each other and lead to unimaginable suffering. …. You cannot claim to care about climate justice if you ignore the sufferings of oppressed and colonised people today. We cannot pick and choose whose human rights to care for, and who to leave behind.

Thunberg, Greta. (2024), ‘A Cop of peace? How can authoritarian, human rights-trashing Azerbaijan possibly host that?’, The Guardian, 11 November. Available online:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/11/greta-thunberg-cop29-authoritarian-human-rights-azerbaijan-greenwashing (accessed 11 November 2024).