Dominique Boullier is a sociologist, anthropologist and associate lecturer at the Institut Palladio. He is also Professor at the École Polytechnique de Lausanne and at Sciences Po. A specialist in cognitive technologies and the sociology of digital technology, he analyses the impact of digital technology on human relationships.
Dominique Boullier
As a sociologist, how would you define the new relationship with others (and the world) brought about by the digital revolution?
We are entering the era of multimodality. History shows that a new means of communication does not replace the older ones. They add up. Today, we communicate by email, telephone, face-to-face, via Slack or Messenger... All of this is intermingling and becoming more complex, with a number of very concrete consequences:
- This generates multiactivity (multitasking): the time available for each person is reduced, but above all, relationships are managed differently. The personal is invading the professional. We are entering an era of generalised demands on our time. our overall level of commitment and presence is declining in human terms.
- This defines new standards of sociability: depending on the communication channel used, people will not respond with the same delay. A text message or a message on WhatsApp will be answered within a second. An e-mail can wait several hours.
Location dictates efficiency.
Paradoxically, telecommunications don't reduce face-to-face relationships, they encourage them. The more digital relationships there are between the elements of a value chain, the more people need to see each other and come together. So the physical workplace still has a bright future ahead of it.
Could you come back to the notion of "cognitive saturation syndrome" that you developed and its impact on employees?
Cognitive saturation syndrome is linked to digital overload. The frantic pace of work creates chaotic days, with no downtime. This means that employees are constantly on the go, having to be available all the time. In the short term, it's harder to concentrate and you lose efficiency (especially for younger people). In the long term, it wears down the employee and contributes to the risk of burn-out.
The explosion in the number of channels has also disrupted the rhythm of exchanges. We mix personal and professional matters, we are less present to the world, and therefore less engaged. The best remedy is still to be able to impose moments when you are fully there, when your mind is not thinking about the latest email/message that needs answering. This is true in both private and professional life. For companies, this means, for example, banning mobile phones from meetings. Attention management should be introduced to create a calmer, more liveable climate, less pressurised.
We need to introduce attention management to create a more liveable, less pressurised (...) climate.
The study shows that the explosion in the number of relationships is generating a new form of isolation. How do you analyse this phenomenon?
If you increase the volume or pace of interactions too much, it's no longer manageable. You can have a withdrawal phenomenon, because people no longer want to be constantly disturbed. That's what's happening with the younger generations, who are calling less and less: a call is an injunction to respond immediately, it's an intrusion. By using messaging services, they feel they have more control over their time.
At the opposite extreme, exchanges are reduced to signals without substance ("OK", "Hi", etc.). You no longer have time for depth, and that's just as bad. Any collective (and the company in particular) needs feedback to improve and to be aware of itself. A team is based on exchanges, not on simple relays in a circuit.
In an interview with La Dépêche, you said: "Users are aware that social networks are stressful and time-consuming, and they end up getting bored. Are we moving towards a form of public maturity in relation to digital technology?
All this is 12 years old. We went through a phase of effervescence: a frenzy of discovery, trying out new uses, testing, etc. Today, we've reached a moment of "wisdom". We have identified the counterproductive effects on well-being and professional life (see the debate on disconnection).
The major problem for companies is that they are no longer the masters of relationship management. It is the conditions of use, in the psychological sense, of social networks that are the law. Companies are presented with a fait accompli. On the other hand, if they cannot act on the container, they can still act on the container: how, by organising the space, can I create a 'good' climate? How do I make the space viable and allow people to isolate and protect themselves if they don't want to be interrupted, or on the contrary to interact?
