Thursday 27 October // 14:15 // Drawing Studio

Questions about the relationship and interactions between humans and technology have also been discussed and investigated in computer science for decades, especially in the subfields of human-computer interaction and artificial intelligence. On the one hand, this concerns the individual level of users with questions such as “Who is able to do what (better)?“. On the other hand, challenges for society (e.g., sustainability) are also addressed by weighing up what is technically possible and what is socially desirable. In public discussions, extreme positions are often overemphasized that either negate the importance of human actors in many areas of life or ignore the technical potential in the sense that “it cannot be what must not be”. In contrast, research in the aforementioned disciplines is increasingly focusing on how cooperation between humans and technology can succeed to enable individual participation in a digitalized environment on the one hand and to find solutions for the urgent challenges of our time on the other.

Based on a historical overview of milestones in research and development (e.g., Fitts’ MABA-MABA list, Hollnagel’s Joint Cognitive Systems approach), this contribution first discusses how the paradigm shift from human-technology interaction to human-technology cooperation can be achieved. Subsequently, these findings are considered from a computer science perspective in the context of art and design. Therefore, a contribution to bridge-building between design disciplines and computer science shall also be made, because, without (interdisciplinary) cooperation of humans, the cooperation between humans and technology cannot succeed.