Francis Jauréguiberry

Mobile telecommunications and the management of time

The logic of action for the “wired” is dominated by cost effectiveness and utilitarianism. They want to live faster, better, more intensely, not only by increasing the density of time (better organization of the execution and order of tasks thanks to flexible telecommunications) but by creating a double time (superimposing media time on physical time). Nevertheless, in the face of random, fleeting experiences leading to the dispersion and sometimes aberrations that can be the outcome of such a logic, we see a reaction emerging which is based on a critical logic aimed at enabling individuals to avoid being dispossessed of time of their own, of their own rhythms and history by generalized acceleration. This logic reintroduces the temporal depth needed for maturation, for reflection and for meditation where the clash of immediacy and urgency all too often demands an impulsive response.

Health professionals who are disconnecting from ICT.

In the last 15 years, there has been rapid growth of information and communications technologies (ICTs) in health care. These new technologies permit better organization of health care, both in terms of improving outcomes, as well as of increasing health-care profitability. These technologies have proven their efficiency in activities such as tele-assistance, telemonitoring, teleexpertise, teleconsultation, computerized health networks, databases and teleteaching. Nonetheless, the question arises: why does a significant part of the medical sector, health care as well as administrative, still remain outside this movement? Researchers dealing with the implementation of ICTs in the health sector who have focused on the problem, quote numerous examples of failure, often caused by ‘resistance’ on the part of those involved. This resistance to change, whether technological or organizational, minor or major, can be seen when a health professional refuses outright to use a particular technology. This refusal, according to Dolan and Lamoureux, can be caused by ‘logical and rational objections’ (e.g. time to adjust, required effort for learning something new), ‘psychological and emotional causes’ (e.g. opposition to group values, norms, rites, stereotypes, a desire to keep existing interpersonal relationships) and/ or ‘structural and conjectural causes’ (e.g. bureaucracy favouring conformity and immobility, organizational climate, management model of change, with or without consultation). Our own research has shown another dimension related to the deliberate non-usage of ICT. This is manifest not as resistance, passivity or postponement, but when the individual voluntarily disconnects from technologies. Many people have begun refusing to use pagers, mobile phones, email or other information and communication systems. Others, after repeatedly using ICTs, break down and become incapable of managing what seems to be too much information. Still other forms of disconnection, albeit extreme, can be observed in psychological accidents, such as depressive implosion, burnout and addictive explosion. We have been able to establish how certain health professionals, very favourable to ICTs and using some of their functions, consciously decide to put aside certain other functions. We have observed that a growing number of health professionals (including those who are parttime or full-time, young or old, doctors or nurses) are bucking the trend and resisting the daily usage of certain ICTs (e.g. mobile phones, email, information and communication systems). Impervious to peer pressure, these individuals refuse to bend to the dictates of progress. Why? How? These are questions which we would like to examine. Our preliminary research indicates a certain number of possibilities. This voluntary refusal to use ICTs seems to us central in society because we hypothesize that it reveals difficulties, tensions and miscomprehensions within health-care professions. As has been shown previously, the techno-economical logic which dominates ICT implementation in the health-care sector remains largely insufficient to conduct successful projects. This logic has led, and still leads to, a conception of ICTs as instruments that rationalize, if not intensify, medical work. Thus, a tension exists between how adequate the technology is, the way it was conceived and implemented, and daily clinical needs. Our project proposes to identify the forms that these behaviours are taking (and we welcome all information on this subject) in order to measure the elements leading to this dysfunction, and to learn how to overcome it.

Inscription territoriale et ubiquité télécommunicationnelle

La generalisation des outils de telecommunication s’est soldee, a partir du debut des annees 80, par une brusque inflation d’etudes prospectives destinees a cerner en quoi et comment l’extension de l’ubiquite mediatique allait agir sur les modalites de production de nos societes. Presque toutes ces etudes ont alors predit le futur remplacement des espaces territoriaux du lien social par une telesocialite non-spatialement definie. Les identifications etablies a partir d’un espace physique de reference devaient disparaitre au profit d’echanges mediatiques noues autour de themes agglutinants. Or, vingt ans plus tard, qu’observe-t-on parmi ceux qui sont desormais au plus proche de la situation d’ubiquite mediatique alors imaginee? Un surprenant appel a ce qui semblait precisement voue a la disparition dans une societe de communication : la proximite physique et le local. Seulement cette proximite change de nature, et c’est sur elle qu’il s’agit desormais de s’interroger. Mot-cles: comunication, sociabilites, culture.