Norbert Streitz
Smart Future Initiative, Germany
Lecture. Human-Technology Symbiosis in Smart Environments Empowered by Participatory Design and Co-Creation
Abstract.
Our working and living spheres are increasingly determined by technology being ubiquitously integrated in our environments. This development can be attributed to what I call the 'Smart-Everything' Paradigm, where every artifact and service must now be “smart”: smart phones, smart cars, smart homes, smart cities, etc. Unfortunately, these developments are mainly technology-driven and do not take users' needs, preferences, and their rights sufficiently into account.
Cities are an important application domain. They are complex systems with a large number of networked entities, communicating and interacting with each other. The complexity results from the fundamental diversity of these entities: living organisms like humans, animals, and plants; 'bricks and mortar' constituting the physical environment like buildings, bridges, streets, etc.; active artificial artefacts with embedded IoT components controlled by software increasingly based on machine learning. Thus, we are also confronted with “other-than-human” interaction. Furthermore, the real world is augmented by virtual counterparts or 'digital shadows' of basically all organisms and artefacts (depending on appropriate models) constituting hybrid environments, e.g., digital twins. At another layer, we must address networks of people with their social relationships in the real world as well as in the virtual world. Speaking of hybrid environments, we must also look at the design trade-offs of Seamless vs. Seamful Human-Technology Interaction as they are triggered, e.g., by the 'Disappearing Computer' approach.
People are confronted with new challenges when interacting with technology in smart environments. At the same time, it raises fundamental questions about smart services exploiting data, e.g., collected by sensors via an IoT infrastructure. One can observe an increase in importunate automation, lack of transparency and privacy infringements. Humans are increasingly removed from being the 'operator' and thus not any more in full control of their environments and decisions. A conceptual framework to address these challenges, e.g., achieving collaborative intelligence and balanced automation, is provided by 'Human-Technology Symbiosis'.
Our goal is to move beyond 'smart-only' cities towards Humane, Sociable, Cooperative, Self-aware Hybrid Cities fostering human-technology symbiosis and urban sustainability guided by the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We need to redefine the 'Smart-Everything' Paradigm via a citizen-centered and participatory design approach considering relevant design trade-offs enabling human control and empowerment and privacy by design. Keeping Citizens in the Loop by fostering co-provision, co-creation, and co-exploitation, using an open data model, is the basis of a Self-Aware City and win-win situations. An important cornerstone of our proposal is to establish a 'Citizen ↔ Cooperative City Contract (CCCC)' realized, e.g., as 'smart contracts'.
Bio. Dr. Dr. Norbert Streitz (Ph.D. in physics, Ph.D. in cognitive science) is a Senior Scientist and Strategic Advisor with more than 35 years of experience in ICT. Founder and Scientific Director of the Smart Future Initiative launched in 2009. Norbert held positions as Deputy Director and Division Manager at the Fraunhofer Institute IPSI in Darmstadt, Germany, for more than 20 years and was a Lecturer at the Computer Science Department at Technical University Darmstadt. Before, he was an Assistant Professor at the Technical University Aachen (RWTH). Norbert was a post-doc at the University of California, Berkeley, a visiting scholar at Xerox PARC, Palo Alto, and at the Intelligent Systems Lab, MITI, Tsukuba Science City, Japan. He published or co-edited 38 books/ proceedings and authored/ co-authored more than 170 papers. His activities cover a wide range: Cognitive Science, Human-Computer Interaction, Experience Design, Hypertext/Hypermedia, CSCW, Ubiquitous Computing, Ambient Intelligence, Human-Centered AI, Privacy, Industry 4.0, Automated Driving, Hybrid Smart Cities, Smart Airports, Smart Islands. Norbert was a PI of many projects funded by the European Commission as well as industry. Norbert is an elected member of the ACM CHI Academy. https://www.smart-future.net/norbert-streitz.
