Automate humans or humanize automation? The “Atque” Design and Communication System to redefine the relationship between knowledge and know-how

Abstract

This paper introduces the research conducted by the “scientia Atque usus” Research Center for Generative Communication ETS (from now on: sAu Research Center) dealing with the relationship between new technologies and the enhancement of human creativity. From 1991, sAu Research Center has been studying the impact of automation in social and creative processes and the research group has conceived and developed the Atque Design and Communication System: a suite of functional tools for carrying out activities of research, analysis, design, development, documentation, monitoring, communication and training. Atque is a system which is constantly transforming itself: based on the people who are using it and on the projects that have to be realized, it changes as a living system.
 It is for this reason that the main characteristic is to be human-centered-design, it enhances human creativity and it fosters the collaboration among people who cooperate in a common project. 
 The current architecture of digital automation systems has pushed organizational communication aimed at creating the product and communication towards the world of users in the direction of an exasperated fragmentation of the work of human beings (Toschi, 2019). This fragmentation corresponds to a dominance of the system by elites and power groups that exercise cultural and economic hegemony over human intelligence, understood as the ability to connect distinct elements according to a systemic vision. To stem this trend, to redefine the relationship between individuals and the socio-economic system, sAu Research Center has designed and has been experimenting Atque as an evolution of previous prototypes. The objective is to build a tool that helps researchers in the definition and management of complex projects, without limiting - with the justification of automation and process efficiency - man's creativity and his right to diverge, make mistakes, take apparently misleading directions but which can nevertheless contribute to the research design. To its uniqueness.