New year reflections: Happiness, technology, reliable media, and inspiring role models for students

Dear Champiteans,

Best wishes for a happy and successful New Year. In the spirit of fireworks, my January message is a collection of items.

• Discussed at the students' assembly: happiness and pleasure are two different things. Spending money gives pleasure. But it's fleeting, the dopamine level drops rapidly and the need to spend again becomes infinite. Earning money, on the other hand, makes us proud: it builds us up and makes us happy. Giving your money to those who need it also makes us happier: the thought of relieving someone else's pain stays with us for a long time.

• Everything is speeding up, in step with new technologies. By 2025, artificial intelligence will offer us possibilities that were unimaginable just one or two years ago. The school wants a serene relationship with technology: neither demonisation nor anarchic use. Let's learn, experiment, reflect and give ourselves the means to set limits. Time spent in front of a screen poses a problem: we need to distinguish between useful time devoted to learning and entertainment time spent playing games. It's the latter that needs to be regulated, a challenge for every family, in dialogue with the school.

• The press is going through very difficult times, to the point where we can actually contemplate its disappearance. Without intermediaries to verify information, we could fall prey to propaganda and mass manipulation (this is already partly the case). Let's give our children a subscription to reliable and varied sources of information. I believe that universities will also become publishers of rational information that is crucial to life in a democracy.

• Let's salute the new president of EPFL who took up her post on 1 January: Ms Anna Fontcuberta i Morral succeeds 20 gentlemen! This is an important symbol for our girls, who currently represent only a third of Bachelor's students.