This is an "Orphan" page. Its core content has not been shared: what you see below is a loose collection of pages and page snippets that mention this page, as well as snippets of this page that were quoted elsewhere.
Three dimensions:
First is communication richness. This is what @Kirkman.Mathieu2005 started. But I believe they saw video chats as the richest. I'd go farther:
Communication richness is everything involved in mimicking real-time in-person communication, via technology. Simple text is simplest, richer text is richer, allowing multiple text conversations to happen simultaneously in the same discussion space is richer still, video chats can be richer still. All true.
But it must go farther. Lag in audio communication, as it approaches the limits of our perception, are richer still. Virtual reality, where people are arranged in space around us, and their facial expressions moved onto avatars, if the technology we must wear on our faces prevents video picking up our own faces; augmented reality or holographic images, where they are arranged on the physical furniture in our own world, richer still. Spatial audio, so that voices come from where people are situated, which allows for multiple people to talk at once and for our well-trained brains to deal with this in XR as it does in real life.
Could be that tactile tech goes in this category, where the point is just to enrich communication. Not sure about this one.
(January 4th, 2021 See thoughts on differentiating between communication richness as between humans, and between human and computer.)
Second is when technology enables new medium for thought, or tools for thought. This one is less of a continuum, since the exact parameters are not clear, and there are many different types of cognitive processes that technology might focus on aiding. But certainly, technologies can be super helpful here or ignore it, or anywhere in between.
Some examples - ranging from early ones we take for granted already, but which did enrich our ability to work, to more complex and some future applications:
Google Docs, allowing for multiple people to work together on the same document. Not possible with paper, or with single-user word processors
(First use of AR for business) - design-type applications, where seeing a physical manifestation of an idea in real-space increases creativity.
Personal wiki softwares, that enable individuals to easily recall previously read information or previously thought-of ideas, and consider how they can apply. The richest examples of such softwares allow for the entry of very micro-level ideas, whether original or quoted, to tag multiple other ideas or projects where such ideas might apply, and to have these micro-level ideas surface automatically whenever the tagged entities are viewed. This offshoring of the remembrance of detail to computers, a capacity which humans are limited in, allows humans to focus on their strength of finding connections and patterns across ideas and contexts.
Need to read more, and come up with more examples.
Computer science articles will be helpful here - the ones beginning with quoting Doug Engelbart's work.
Third, regarding robots and AI, is the ability of computers to make independent contributions to an effort.
Whether the AI or robot has a physical manifestation is not directly relevant to its making independent contributions - that's just a question of whether physical presence makes a robot more or less threatening; or even if the physical presence focuses the attention of humans there, and helps them ignore other areas where a computer might be contributing independently.
Low levels of this dimension might be able to follow instructions coded in the moment, to summarize information. But it must be asked for in the moment, and the parameters set clearly.
High up in the dimension is AI that can proactively contribute information, learning what would be valuable, then seeking the original information, summarizing it and presenting it to humans. Make conclusions about the information - currently, pT7st9JdR
(Where do robots that help with physical tasks come in? Or should I ignore the physical and focus on just knowledge work? )
There is an element, too, where the traditional method has been to assign human and robots to separate functions, but more recent advances have advanced the vision where robots and humans will have a working relationship that mimics that of humans with each other.