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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of this remoteness concerns the maintenance of competence and of the professional gesture which, when they are no longer maintained, withers, weakens and deteriorates.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).