From Digital Twins to Entangled Twins A Phenomenological Model for Industry 5.0
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This article introduces the concept of Entangled Twins (ETs) as an interdisciplinary framework emerging from a sustained dialogue between Human–Computer Interaction (HCI) research and phenomenological philosophy. Building on the Digital Twin (DT) paradigm while critically reworking its representational logic, ETs are conceived as relational configurations in which human users and AI-driven systems become dynamically entangled, with significant implications for agency, responsibility, and human-centered design. The theoretical framework draws on phenomenological analyses of intersubjectivity and embodiment (Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, and Sartre) together with design-oriented concerns in HCI.Within this perspective, human–machine interaction is conceptualized in terms of aWe-subject: a plural and co-constituted configuration of agency. Through this interdisciplinary approach, a prototypical audio-augmented experience is examined as a phenomenologically informed case, elucidating the conditions under which human–machine entanglement can emerge. On this basis, the paper argues that ETs raise distinctive questions concerning responsibility and agency, articulating an ethics of entanglement capable of informing the human-centered aspirations of Industry 5.0.
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