inherent in their professional activity: from mediated interactions between colleagues (remote offices, being away from the workplace) to remote meetings, from information management (research, archiving) to training (e-learning) and even for moments of relaxation and social breaks (surfing on the web and social networks) (Debrosses 2019). It should be noted that this sedentary lifestyle has a major health cost since, according to epidemiological studies, it causes various major organic and physical disorders and causes mortality greater than that caused by cigarette consumption (Wen and Wu 2012). A study by the American Cancer Society indicated that the mortality rate of a person sitting more than six hours a day is 20% higher than that of a person sitting only three hours a day (Patel et al. 2010).
1.3.5. Detachment from activity vs proximity of work
A final contradiction is the tension between distancing ourselves from work, on the one hand, and being very/too close or even experiencing a lack of privacy, on the other hand.
Indeed, in parallel with the multiplication of interfaces between a human and their work, we are witnessing a distancing between humans and the object of their activity (Dodier 1995). The individual no longer acts directly on the product of their work (object to be transformed) or interacts with the person to be supported (client to be satisfied), but goes through a technical mediator (e-mail, collaborative or robotic tool) which will act on their behalf. However, this technical artifact requires other ways of representing ourselves, organizing and implementing our work (Norman 1994; Rabardel 1995). It is also a dematerialized work that becomes more abstract, more symbolic, less tangible, because it is represented by curves, signs, values, codifications, etc. The professional must then base himself/herself on these new indices of the activity to enable him/her to understand the process in progress and to adjust his/her interventions accordingly.
In this activity mediated by technologies, the reference points are no longer sensory (linked to noise, to a characteristic smell in the activity), and no longer rest on interactional and/or physical/haptic material bases (such as irregularity spotted in a work process, a distrustful attitude identified during customer negotiations). These indicators are now signified by matrices, which the professional must interpret to give them a meaning, a value (Baril 1999). He/she thus loses the intimate knowledge of the product of the activity: its specificities, its properties, its reactions, etc. Consequently, this loss of meaning – through media detachment – is accompanied by a loss of meaning (Baudin 2017), that is, one no longer recognizes oneself in the product/service being made.
Another consequence of this remoteness concerns the maintenance of competence and of the professional gesture which, when they are no longer maintained, withers, weakens and deteriorates. There is thus a risk of losing the acuity of analysis (based on information taken from the field), the dexterity and assurance of conduct, and the skill and finesse of movement. Beyond the decline of the gesture, the confidence itself in the gesture can also be dulled. This refers to Bendura’s (2007) sense of personal efficacy (SPE), which is reflected in the fact that one no longer feels capable and confident to be able to ensure the required professional conduct. We can give the example of those surgeons who, by dint of using mechanized extensions (interfaces and robotic arms), no longer have the same knowledge of the body and the patient’s reactions (through sensory and physical cues) and no longer develop the same motor skills that require the manipulation of the scalpel (Wannenmacher 2019). It is other skills and abilities (perceptive, motor, collective) that are mobilized to use alongside the technological system (Seppänen et al. 2017).
This physical and sensory detachment from the object of one’s activity is paradoxically accompanied by greater promiscuity with work. Indeed, work has never been so present, pressing and oppressive through the use of technology. Clients, colleagues, managers and work procedures are becoming omnipresent and overflow from the professional sphere to invade domestic, personal and third party areas (El-Wafi et al. 2017). Messages, digital solicitations and warnings arise at any time and in any place, promoting intrusion, the hybridization of personal and professional spaces and fostering the feeling of excess and over-connection (Morand et al. 2018). This feeling is also known as telepressure (Dose et al. 2019).
1.4. Conclusion
Emerging technologies, by promising new and almost infinite computational capacities, reasoning possibilities and modes of action, induce an all-powerful imagination: they are then perceived or presented as omnipotent, because they are omniscient (reasoning power of AI) and omnipresent (supervision of activities by smart data and connected objects). They formulate an almost superhuman injunction to be able to control them. And the individual, a mere mortal, can only be, at best, the discreet substitute or the passive auxiliary of these systems, and at worst, they’ll be totally eradicated from the socio-technical equation that is unfolding.
What is also particular with these emerging technologies is to consider the omnipotence of these tools as determining and structuring the organization’s project: factory/hospital of the future, collaborative work platform, smart home, teleworking, collective intelligence, organizational agility, work tuberization, etc. We are in what could be called a “technological absolutism” or an essentialist vision of technology: first and foremost, one considers what it “is” and “must do”, instead of what it is capable of “doing” or “undoing”, “bringing or removing”, that is, its value, the meaning it takes on in the activity. It is the only one that holds the truth, the knowledge, the expertise about the work. Seen as performative systems, these tools are the Alpha and Omega of organizational efficiency and individual and collective innovation.
However, despite the innovations and sophistication that characterize these technologies, it should be remembered that the vast majority of these devices remain disconnected from the socio-professional realities that employees experience. They are more oriented towards the search for technological performance, profitability and socio-economic efficiency, which disqualify from the outset any subjective commitment and deny any human initiative that could be detrimental to the organizational project. For companies, these human practices thwart their action plans and/or threaten the quality standards promoted by technological environments. In this system of activity-mediated human–machine, it is the individual who is the variable of adjustment and it is up to him/her to find an acceptable compromise of functioning, with the rules of action imposed by the device. Moreover, as we have also seen, the deployment of such environments is also accompanied by tensions and contradictions in the very way of living and acting with these tools, of building our practice and developing our profession.
Ultimately, in this human–machine collaboration to be constructed, it is a question of moving from “incantatory technologies”, which aim to provoke quasi-automatic, even magical effects, by their mere presence; to “embodied” technologies which have meaning for employees and which give meaning to the activity that is being done. They aim not only to satisfy the needs of professionals, but also to support their initiatives, sustain their activity and encourage the development of their skills and autonomy. It is under these conditions that these technologies will become acceptable (Bobillier Chaumon 2016, and see Chapter 18 in this work) by being instruments at the service of professions and acting as occupational health operators.
1.5. References
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Andonova, Y. and Vacher, B. (2013). Nouvelles formes de visibilité
