Pedro Gilberto Gomes 160 The digital inflection brings three types of communication relationships: communication through the machine, hu- man/machine communication, and machine/machine commu- nication. The first type has been well-developed since the late 1990s and the early 2000s. E-mails have replaced handwritten letters. People have unlearned how to write handwritten texts and letters. The instantaneity of e-mails has triumphed. Why does it depend on the post office if you can talk to people direct- ly, wherever they are? The space/time barrier has been over- come. Any town or village in the interior of the Amazon or the Sahara Desert, provided they have access to satellites, they are as cosmopolitan as São Paulo, London, or New York. The world becomes a Global Village (McLuhan, 1967). Machines are transformed into extensions of man (McLuhan, 1967), a means of bringing people together and socializing. In the second type, the machine ceases to be a communication device and becomes a partner in the conversation. By reacting to voices and commands from people, they carry out mundane tasks that once took time and were a hassle. Within virtual reality, human interlocutors. Companies, especially banks, are creating digital assistants to assist their customers. The primary example is answering machines. Very often, people get annoyed when they call the complaints department of a com- pany and are answered by an answering machine that makes them walk from Seca to Mecca before they can be put in contact with another human being. The third modality is in its early stages, with so-called artificial intelligence on the horizon. Various trials are being conducted, exploring elements of AI. Metaverse is taking its first steps and experiments are being performed with partial ele- ments. It is a universe run by algorithms. The idea is to emancipate the machines, allowing or creating the conditions for them to interact with each other without human input. The crucial question is whether the machine is capable of learning. Even more so, whether, when it learns, it knows that it is learning. In this context, where does this leave the human being? Are they giving up their universal protagonism? What is their future? Will this other ambiance,
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