Of humans and robots – Communication challenges in Industry 4.0

We have long succumbed to the fact that Artificial Intelligent (AI) beats our humble human brains at many kinds of activities – not just in a game of online chess. But we’re still in control, right? While we cannot fight the rise of AI, we need to learn to communicate and interact with our hyper-digital, interconnected environment in a way that goes well beyond human interactions.

Text by Ray Gallon Neus Lorenzo Michael Josefowicz

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Of humans and robots – Communication challenges in Industry 4.0

Image: © asimo.honda.com

As interconnected media platforms became more and more diverse in the early 1990s, a new concept was introduced: "Transmedia", a term first used by Marsha Kinder in 1991, describes a new media supersystem, using intertextuality and diverse sources with different levels of interaction. The concept is open enough to incorporate media that had not been invented then, such as wearables, bionic implants, or Augmented Reality. Industry 4.0, a term coined by the German government, extends this idea beyond media into the realm of hybrid communications in a world of autonomous, interconnected objects mediated by artificial intelligence.

Back in the 1960s, media theorist Marshall McLuhan identified the fragmentation of content as a characteristic of mass media. Four decades later, social media added to its complexity with what has been described as the "transmedia narrative": Content was now ...