Part II: Human computing

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We are not users of computers. We are partners in thinking.

This simple shift in perspective marks computing’s Copernican revolution. For decades, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) defined our relationship with technology through strict separation: humans on one side, computers on the other.

Human-Centered Design (HCD) built on this foundation, teaching us to empathize with users and design for their needs. But both share the same assumption: humans vis-à-vis technology, with design as the bridge between them.

That paradigm is ending. We are entering the age of Human Computing: an era where intelligence is no longer human alone.

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The age of co-intelligence

Traditional HCI assumed a duality: users issued commands, systems responded. The exchange was bounded, transactional. But today, computing is ambient, distributed, and invisible. Smartphones anticipate, writing tools co-create, navigation adapts in real time.

When systems learn, reason, and anticipate, reshaping our patterns and decisions, the question becomes: where does the human end and the computer begin?

What emerges is hybrid intelligence: systems where human imagination and machine computation become coauthors of an evolving thought process. We no longer script machines; we speak to them.

What’s more, AI changes too. It adapts to our creative patterns, learns from our preferences, and evolves alongside us.

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The choice before us

This transformation raises profound questions about agency, control, and responsibility. If we design these systems without care, we risk embedding bias, deepening dependence, and outsourcing the very judgment that defines us.

Yet the promise is just as profound. We can create co-intelligence capable of solving complex problems, creative synthesis that exceeds individual capacity, tools that think with us rather than for us.

When designed with purpose, we unlock something unprecedented: a new way of thinking that is collective, contextual, and deeply human.

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Designing tomorrow

But Human Computing will not shape itself. We must move beyond designing interfaces to designing for intelligence. The designers of tomorrow will craft semantic partnerships, defining not just what people see, but how systems understand and respond to human intent.

This means building systems that preserve human judgment, expose their reasoning, and remain aligned with our values. The question is not whether this shift will take hold, but how we will shape it. Will we design partnerships that amplify our humanity, or drift toward dependencies that erode it?

This is the manifesto for Human Computing: we are not users of computers; we are partners in thinking. Partners in a new form of co-intelligence that is neither human nor machine, but something unprecedented in the history of thought.

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Continue reading the full series on Human Computing

Part 1: From scenic to semantic (The Foundation)

Part 3: Beyond the interface (The Framework)

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