Despite all their differences, the current major social challenges and trends have an important unifying element, which is also at the forefront of the work of Faculty of Media:
Supporting people and their immediate living environment through technology and digital media.
Particularly as a result of advancing digitization, technologies are increasingly penetrating our everyday lives and acting as communication interfaces in society:
The tablet or smartphone offers us a selection of the most important news in the morning, the car becomes a communication center on the way to work, the "smartwatch" monitors our biofunctions and alerts us to healthy lifestyle changes, and voice-controlled devices can be controlled touch-free from the sofa or driver's seat.
Whereas 20 years ago access to digital technologies was only possible for specially trained target groups in special usage situations, today almost all population groups require easy access to digital technologies on an ongoing basis and in every living space.
With the ubiquity of communication tools and continuous access to technologies, the living spaces of users have also changed fundamentally. In working life, after classic office activities, production environments are also gradually being influenced by the digitalization of both processes and machines (Industry 4.0).
Previous classifications distinguish the private domestic sphere from the working and learning world and public space as central elements of interaction between humans and machines.
Due to the megatrends of mobility and digitization, the boundaries of established living spaces are blurring in many areas, and instead of a clear separation, clear overlaps are possible, e.g., nomadic working in public spaces, childcare at work, or maintaining social contacts from home. The aforementioned living spaces are changing particularly as a result of the megatrend of digitization, so that one can speak - orthogonally to the established living spaces - of a fourth digital space that links all areas together.
