Social anthropology 4.0

Abstract Human-computer interaction as a coordinating element between human and machine is used in many different ways. Due to their digital processes, countless industries are dependent on an effective intermeshing of humans and machines. This often involves preparatory work or sub-processes being carried out by machines, which humans initiate, take up, continue, finalise or check. Tasks are broken down into sub-steps and completed by humans or machines. Aggregated cooperation conceals the numerous challenges of hybrid cooperation in which communication and coordination must be mastered in favour of joint decision-making. However, research into human-computer interaction can also be thought of differently than a mere aggregation of humans and machines. We want to propose a nature-inspired possibility that has been successfully practising the complex challenges of joint decision-making as proof of successful communication and coordination for millions of years. Collective intelligence and the processes of self-organisation offer biomimetic concepts that can be used to rethink socio-technical systems as a symbiosis in the form of a human-computer organism. For example, the effects of self-organisation such as emergence could be used to exceed the result of an aggregation of humans and machines as a future social anthropology 4.0 many times over.