Fol­low­ing on to the Sem­i­nar on Big Data and Employ­ment — the main chal­lenges and impacts on employ­ment, Jan­u­ary 18–22 at UTC, Prof. Yann Mouli­er-Boutang, Chair of Eco­nom­ics, UTC, Mem­ber of the CRI-COSTECH, gives a syn­thet­ic overview of the ongo­ing dig­i­tal rev­o­lu­tion and employment. 

We have heard and read just about every­thing there is to say about the glob­al­iza­tion phe­nom­e­non that began, in fact, back in the mid-1960s. Pro­duc­tive restruc­tur­ing was imple­ment­ed round the world, in com­pli­ance with the glob­al val­ue chain: the impact of imma­te­r­i­al ingre­di­ents (engi­neer­ing design, aes­thet­ics, logis­tics and pres­sure of sup­pli­ers’ and clients’ net­works, trade-marks brand names) has become a deter­mi­nant fac­tor and indeed has pushed manufacturing/assembly process back-stage. Con­se­quent­ly, delo­cal­i­sa­tion of the pro­duc­tion units became much eas­i­er. Full employ­ment col­lapsed in the cen­tral economies while the weight of indus­try in the GDP fell to the lev­el of 11% in the USA. The mas­sive arrival of com­put­ers every­where, in indus­try, in the ser­vice sec­tors, in our home and per­son­al life-style have not as yet overt­ly pro­duced many pos­i­tive effects. Indeed, as of the ear­ly years 2000, what did become notice­able in terms of indus­tri­al employ­ment posi­tions (with appli­ca­tion of lean pro­duc­tion meth­ods), in ser­vices and in logistics.

But no soon­er had we began to see the light at the end of the tun­nel du to tech­nol­o­gy-induced unem­ploy­ment, with the arrival of a mul­ti­tude of start-ups, “apps” on smart­phones than the 2008 finan­cial cri­sis struck the world’s mar­ket places and economies and the arrival of a sec­ond dig­i­tal wave made pro­duc­tion sec­tors suf­fer a lot. 

In a word (or three to be precise):we now observe a con­ju­gate effect of con­nec­tiv­i­ty, Big Data gen­er­at­ed by the inter­ac­tive Web 2.0 and the arrival of learn­ing machines. Com­plex work is now ‘copied’ and human behav­iour is mim­ic­ked per­fect­ly by recent algorithms 

This year, the UTC inter-semes­ter sem­i­nar was devot­ed to explor­ing this phe­nom­e­non and its impact on the whole glob­al Soci­ety. We ben­e­fit­ted from the con­tri­bu­tions of experts who have analysed the prob­lem in its entire­ty. Our exchanges were mod­er­at­ed use­ful­ly by Bernard Stiegler, author of La Société Automa­tique [An Auto­mat­ed soci­ety], and enriched by Bruno Teboul (Keyrus Uni­ver­si­ty Paris Dauphine), Ariel Kyrou (Uni­ver­si­ty of Ver­sailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yve­lines SACIM Sci­ences, Art, Cul­ture, Inno­va­tions, Mul­ti­mé­dia), François Nemo (Con­sul­tant # Brand­ing), look­ing at the theme of a “uber­iza­tion” of employ­ment and the strate­gies deployed by com­pa­nies to face up to the dig­i­tal chal­lenges. The sem­i­nar in fact coin­cid­ed with the trans­mis­sion to the new French Labour Min­is­ter Ms Myr­i­am El Khom­ri of a Report by the Nation­al Dig­i­tal Coun­cil (CNNum) enti­tled Tra­vail, Emploi, Numérique, Les nou­velles tra­jec­toires [Labour, Employ­ment and new Dig­i­tal Paths]; cf.(in French) — http://www.cnnumerique.fr/travail/. Nathalie Andrieux who, for quite a while, was in charge of dig­i­tal affairs for the tele­phone oper­a­tor Orange and a Mem­ber of the Cnut and respon­si­ble for prepar­ing the Report, as well as Judith Her­zog, Mathilde Bras and François Levin (all chargés de at the CCNUm) pre­sent­ed their 20 Report pro­pos­als. Sophie Pène, like­wise Mem­ber the CNNUm (who works at CRI and Uni­ver­si­ty of Paris I) author her­self of the Report Jules Fer­ry 3.0, Bâtir une école créative et juste dans un monde numérique [Jules Fer­ry 3.0. Build­ing a cre­ative and equi­table school for a dig­i­tal era] , (Octo­ber, 2014); cf. http://www.cnnumerique.fr/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Rapport_CNNum_Education_oct14.pdf rais­es a series of ques­tions about how the edu­ca­tion sys­tem in France should be updat­ed and mod­i­fied. She has been also been invit­ed to present her find­ings and rec­om­men­da­tions for High­er Edu­ca­tion and Research and she talked to the sem­i­nar about this work in progress. She chaired a work­shop look­ing at stu­dents’ pro­pos­als. Pres­i­dent Alan Stor­ck also invit­ed the sem­i­nar atten­dees to make known their pro­pos­als to the Sci­ence Pol­i­cy Com­mit­tee of UTC. Pierre Pezziar­di coor­di­na­tor for State ini­ti­at­ed star­tups at the Government’s Mod­ern Pub­lic Action Agency (SGMAP) explained to the audi­ence the kind of uses of Big Data could help job-seek­ers to find posi­tions. In the after­noon ses­sion — shared with anoth­er sem­i­nar event, DD01 — Gré­goire Big­nier (Ver­sailles School of Archi­tec­ture and Land­scap­ing) exam­ined the ques­tions raised by the intro­duc­tion of bio­mimet­ics in archi­tec­tur­al plan­ning and design, while Pas­cal Jol­livet, UTC, reframed the employ­ment descrip­tors in terms of dig­i­tal sec­ond wave fac­tors, and Jean-Pas­cal Fou­cault defend­ed the idea of human tag sen­sors (not just phys­i­cal devices) in the use made of Big Data with a view to build­ing a smart city environment.

Franck Ghi­tal­la and myself prod­ucts a few ele­ments of an ongo­ing study with Entre­prise et Per­son­nel explor­ing the Web (includ­ing social net­works) to try to iden­ti­fy emerg­ing trends and to write pos­si­ble evo­lu­tion sce­nar­ios for the decade ahead in rela­tion to the strate­gic pol­i­cy ques­tions of enter­prise – the ses­sion ten took the form of a work­shop. Last but not least, Philippe Lemoine, Pres­i­dent of the New Gen­er­a­tion Inter­net Foun­da­tion (FING), author of the Report — La nou­velle gram­maire du suc­cès, La trans­for­ma­tion numérique de l’é­conomie française [A New gram­mar for Suc­cess, Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion of the French Econ­o­my] ; cf. http://www.economie.gouv.fr/files/files/PDF/rapport_TNEF.pdf chaired the final ses­sion of the sem­i­nar. The very valu­able and rich con­tents of the sem­i­nar, its exchanges and pro­pos­als will be embod­ied in 3 Reports, as fol­lows: As con­vened with Pres­i­dent Stor­ck, the sem­i­nar Pro­pos­als will be draft­ed ad pre­sent­ed at UTC.The sem­i­nar videos will be pre­pared, edit­ed and made avail­able on line at UTC’s WebTV.One of the dis­ser­ta­tions (by a UTC stu­dent) will pro­vide a syn­thet­ic overview of the pre­sen­ta­tions and dis­cus­sions. Ren­dezvous soon for these three sem­i­nar prod­ucts. Dig­i­tal tran­si­tion lies at the core of UTC research, teach­ing and the Uni­ver­si­ty board’s for­ward-think­ing policies.

Vidéos et compte-ren­du : https://webtv.utc.fr

Rap­port Les nou­velles trajectoires

http://www.cnnumerique.fr/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Rapport-travail-version-finale-janv2016.pdf