The tyranny of real time

The increase in the use of smartphones and digital tablets has helped accentuate two major trends in the ICT market condensed into two acronyms, the ATAWAD ("AnyTime, AnyWhere, AnyDevice") as well as the BYOD ("Bring Your Own Device" sometimes francized under the neologism AVAN, "Apportez Vos Appareils Numériques" [bring your own digital devices]).

The first acronym ATAWAD (trademarked by Xavier Dalloz in 2002) augmented by some authors into ATAWADAC (ATAWAD + Any Content)  refers to the possibility for anyone to access online content, anytime, anywhere and with any nomadic or stationary tool while the second describes the increasingly common use by each employee of his or her own digital tool at work.

These two phenomena undoubtedly work together to increase the porosity between personal and professional boundaries.

The risks of real time

In this context, it is quite clear what benefits companies can gain from these two trends in terms of the reachability and performance of their employees. That said, as the authors of the White Paper entitled What Intelligence Tools for Tomorrow? point out, "receiving information all the time does not allow for in-depth analysis. The trend is more towards hyper-reactivity than reflexion".

In addition, the navigational and documentary traces left by people on digital networks, especially cloud platforms (cloud computing), via ATAWAD and BYOD tools, are also not without serious data security issues for these same companies, as the authors of the White Paper also point out : "the services offered by Google or Dropbox, which allow information to be stored and accessed wherever you are, are detrimental to data protection. Companies no longer have control over their own information and are entirely dependent on third-party companies, which have a say in what data is stored."

The ATAWAD phenomenon can be found in consumer purchasing practices. Jean-François Lemoine and Olivier Badot speak on this subject of "shazamization" of the offer allowing "consumers to satisfy, according to their physical and emotional wanderings, their desires and needs by transforming them into immediate purchases, more or less local" in a difficult socio-economic context. According to the authors, the so-called consumers "would therefore be in search of "adult comforters" to permanently re-enchant their daily lives through a proliferation of small affordable pleasures", comforters that are among the most troubling features of social networks.

These networks are subject to the risks of real time, immediacy, ubiquity or instantaneity, to use Paul Virilio's terms, and this can be seen, for example, in Twitter: Alexandre Serres notes in the microblogging tool various forms of infopollution (informational redundancy, infobesity, a vector of false information) and a certain emptiness of exchanges dominated by the sole phatic dimension.

BYOD in schools?

Jean-Marie Gilliot puts forward on his blog a few avenues for adopting BYOD within schools, for a more positive use of ubiquitous technologies. In an article dedicated to the approach, the author points out a video in English that summarizes the arguments in favor of BYOD:

It is therefore appropriate to be realistic: certainly, access everywhere and all the time to information and production tools freed from the constraints of physical location is potentially an indisputable factor for progress in the intelligent integration of ICT in education. This potential will be operationalized through reasoned behaviors, which will demonstrate a willingness to separate what can still be separated, namely the "affective" and personal use of digital tools, from uses for formal learning purposes. 

Sources

Illustration: Shutterstock - Rafal Olechowski