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Talk Title: The Robots are Here; Now What?: Communication Research and the Problems of Automation

Abstract: Echoing past waves of technological transformation, the public sphere is awash with anxiety about automation now driven by the rise of intelligent machines. Economists and technologists concur that although novel technologies may encompass a wider range of work, automation is less likely to replace work than it is to transform it, arguing that the pressing problem is the disruption that accompanies change. Communication scholarship is distinctively well equipped to address automation today because communication is increasingly itself the focus of automation, because automation is a communicative process, and because societal, professional, and organizational deliberations about automation will shape how we manage those disruptions. Taking a communication as design approach can advance communication scholarship that aims to understand the rhetoric, substance, and practice of automation.

Bio: Joshua Barbour (Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) is an associate professor of Communication Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. He is a faculty affiliate of the Center for Health Communication, a collaboration between the Moody College of Communication and Dell Medical School. He founded the Automation Policy and Research Organizing Network (APRON) and directs the APRON Lab. Dr. Barbour studies how organizations design and discipline communication to solve problems. His research focuses on how macromorphic, societal structures complicate communication, organizing, and how people manage information and make meaning. His current research focuses on understanding the communicative difficulties of data-intensive work.

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