Ergonomics and the Global Problems of the Twenty-First Century
Although it’s been almost 15 years since Neville Moray’s article “Ergonomics and the Global Problems of the Twenty-First Century” was published in Ergonomics, the commentary and questions put forth are as relevant today as then.
According to Moray (p. 1695), some of the major ecological and social problems humanity will face in the 21st century, and which the discipline of human factors and ergonomics should be prepared to contribute solutions, include:
- Population
- Water
- Food
- Energy
- Pollution
- Health and medicine
- Waste
- Urbanization
- Violence and terrorism
- Migration
- Clash of cultures
Throughout the article, Moray asks the reader many fundamental questions – the answers to which will guide the future of the discipline. They include:
- What does the future hold for ergonomics? (p. 1692)
- What does ergonomics offer the future? (p. 1692)
- Can we design constraints that are perceived as freedom? (p. 1691)
- How can ergonomics contribute to water conservation? (p. 1695)
- What is the role of ergonomics in agriculture and related technologies for reducing consumption and increasing productivity of food? (p. 1696)
- Can ergonomics help to design systems that cannot pollute, even when people are careless? (p. 1696)
- Can a domestic environment be devised that literally forces people to recycle? (p. 1696)
- What can ergonomics contribute to the design of megalopolis? (p. 1697)
- Can there be a metaphysics of ergonomics in which we can find ethical value for design which transcend cultural bases? (p. 1691)
- How can we work to help countries with completely different cultures to solve problems that affect us all? (p. 1705)
- Can there be any generalization from typical western advanced ergonomics research to those of developing countries with different cultures? (p. 1705)
- Who is to choose the solutions towards which we should marshal the forces of ergonomics? (p. 1704)
The article also includes several noteworthy comments, including:
- …the solutions to the problems of the twenty-first century absolutely require the redesign of society to change human behaviour. That is the mission for the ergonomics of the future. (p. 1693)
- …what ergonomics has to contribute to the problems listed above is essentially a technology for changing behaviour to that which offsets the problems. (p. 1699)
- The need to help countries caught in the trap of rising population and falling natural and economic resources is surely a challenge that should attract ergonomists rather than the development of technical solutions suitable for a capital intensive society typical of what may be called the over-developed countries. (p. 1692)
- To confront the immense problems that are approaching new methods, a new agenda, and a different sense of purpose are required. Technology, the application of scientific skills to the solutions of problems, has come to be regarded as a source of problems rather than of solutions in our time. Let us replace it, as I have suggested elsewhere (Moray 1992) with technosophy, the coupling of wisdom to applied science for the solution of human problems, and the betterment of the world in which our children and our children’s children will have to live. (p. 1706)
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