Read the 6th CNNum dossier about interactions at work between Humans & Machines

Created in 2011, the Conseil national du numérique (CNNum) is responsible for questioning the relationship between humans and digital technology. This independent commission is made up of 4 parliamentarians and 15 members, including, since February 2021, Olga Kokshagina, associate professor at EDHEC. In December 2022, she published - with her co-authors Justine Cassell, a researcher at Inria, Dominique Pasquier, a sociologist at CNRS and Éric Salobir, President of the Human Technology Foundation - the 6th dossier of the CNNum entitled "Humains & Machines. Quelles interactions au travail ?". Other contributors to the report were Joséphine Hurstel, head of studies, and Leila Amanar, rapporteur, as well as the other members of the general secretariat of the Conseil national du numérique.

Starting from the observation that "from robots to exoskeletons, from teleworking to virtual reality, the place of the machine at work conveys as many realities as projections, between liberation and alienation of workers", the authors propose 10 levers to enable us to be full-fledged actors in our relationship to digital tools at work.

Ce rapport est organisé en 4 parties :

• Corps et interactions entre humains et machines : de l’importance du langage non verbal.
• Machine, travail et corps : la révolution industrielle se prolonge à l’ère numérique.
• La machine entre dans les bureaux : révolution numérique, travailleurs intermédiaires et cadres.
• La machine comme extension du corps : vers d'autres façons d'être au travail ?

This report is organised in 4 parts:

• Bodies and human-machine interactions: the importance of non-verbal language.
• Machine, work and body: the industrial revolution continues into the digital age.
• The machine enters the office: the digital revolution, intermediate workers and managers.
• The machine as an extension of the body: towards other ways of being at work?

Olga Kokshagina (EDHEC)

« The pandemic has greatly accelerated the changes and new issues have emerged for managers, from their relationship to the body to their interactions mediated by digital tools. Having a strong agentivity at work does not mean that digital technologies do not have an impact on the worker, his psyche and social links. From the design of the tools to their implementation, they need support more than ever and the role of managers is key. This implies, in parallel, providing the means for research to study and anticipate. »

Justine Cassell (HCII)

« The body is the first contact with others and non-verbal language is essential in our human interactions, both at work and in our personal lives. Through this analysis of our machine-mediated, machine-associated or machine-represented interactions, the aim is to understand what knowledge we have to ensure a meaningful coexistence. Whether technologies are human is less important than how they allow us to maintain our humanity. The goal is that the human always retains the upper hand over the machine. »

Learn more about this report

• See the dedicated webpage: https://cnnumerique.fr/humains-machines-quelles-interactions-au-travail
• Download the complete report (in French): https://cnnumerique.fr/files/uploads/2022/HumainsMachines/CNNum_Humains_machines_Quelles_interactions_au_travail_2022.pdf
• Read the synthesis (in French): https://cnnumerique.fr/files/uploads/2023/CNNum_Humains_machines_Synth%C3%A8se.pdf
• Browse the press release (Dec. 6, 2022 - in French): https://cnnumerique.fr/files/uploads/2022/HumainsMachines/CP_Humain_Machines_quelles_interactions_au_travail_decembre22.pdf
• Write to the Conseil national du Numérique : [email protected]