Kim J. Vicente - The Human Factor

What form of social change could save lives, boost the economy, and increase health and happiness, all without political wrangling or moralistic finger-pointing? The answer: making our technology work better with human minds and bodies. This delightful and important book explains how we can at last reap the fruits of the recent revolution in technology.

STEVEN PINKER, JOHNSTONE PROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGY,
HARVARD UNIVERSITY, AND AUTHOR OF
The Blank Slate AND How the Mind Works

This book may well be a landmark in changing our view of technology and its place in the world. Kim Vicente is a visionary. He places human needs and values first, rather than technology for the sake of technology. The world today badly needs such people.

ALAN P. LlGHTMAN, AUTHOR OF Einstein's Dreams

Kim Vicente is an engineer who understands how all our lives are being engineered. You will put down this book with a new awareness of the link between devices and those who use them. And you will have been greatly entertained.

JOHN POLANYI, NOBEL LAUREATE

revolutionizing the way people live with technology

ROUTLEDGE
New York & London

2006 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group
Published in arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf Canada, a division of Random House of Canada, Limited.

International Standard Book Number-10: 0-415-97891-2 (Softcover)
International Standard Book Number-13: 978-0-415-97891-0 (Softcover)
Library of Congress Card Number 2003067247

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Your brain may give birth to any technology, but other brains will decide whether the technology thrives. The number of possible technologies is infinite, and only a few pass this test of affinity with human nature.

ROBERT WRIGHT,
Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny

Some of the greatest discoveries consist mainly in the clearing away of psychological roadblocks which obstruct the approach to reality; which is why, post factum, they appear so obvious.

ARTHUR KOESTLER,
The Sleepwalkers

Prediction is difficult, especially of the future.

YOGI BERRA

I realized that my life would never be the same again late one night in the fall of 1983 when I was a third-year undergraduate student in the Department of Industrial Engineering at the University of Toronto. I lived with my parents, and I had taken over their big teak dining-room table to do my homework. My textbooks, papers and class notes were spread out over its entire surface. It was 2:00A.M. and I had been working on a project nonstop since dinner something not uncommon for an undergraduate engineering student, but this time I noticed an important difference. I had been working hard, but the time had passed quickly, and although it was late, I wasn't tired and wanted to continue working. I realized I was staying up not because I had to, but because I wanted to. I was fascinated by what I was doing; I was actually enjoying it! I didn't feel that strongly about any other course differential equations, for instance. There was something different about this course, human factors engineering the unique area of engineering that tailors the design of technology to people, rather than expecting people to adapt to technology. I remember making a mental note to myself this human factors stuff is pretty cool.

Years later, I went on to do a master's and a doctorate, and became a professor of human factors engineering. In retrospect, I can see why the field exerted such a strong attraction: when I was growing up, I did well in science, computer and mathematics courses; I was curious probably annoyingly so always trying to figure out how things worked. But I also did relatively well in English classes, loved to read novels, liked being around people, and had a streak of altruism and dedication to socially relevant issues. So on the one hand, I exhibited the stereotypical geek profile of a budding engineer, but on the other, I also embraced some of the artsy characteristics of an activist and humanist. Human factors engineering, because it deals with people and technology, allowed me to pursue all of my interests to use both sides of my brain, not just half of it.

When I first thought of writing this book, my goal was to explain the social relevance of my discipline to an educated lay audience, because hardly anybody has heard of human factors engineering even though the lack of fit between us and our technologies burdens our lives daily and has even changed the course of human history (I am not exaggerating, as you will see in the pages that follow). But I wound up doing something quite different, and the reasons why are instructive.

About 95 per cent of the work done by human factors engineers is relatively narrow and deals with designing for individual needs: ergonomic office chairs, user-friendly software, and the like. But what I'm going to describe in this book deals with a vastly broader set of problems arising out of the relationship between people and technology, not just at the level of the individual but also at the team level, the organizational and even the political level. I could tell you that this is what human factors engineering is and you'd probably take my word for it because you've never heard of the discipline anyway. But most of the conceptual territory that I'm staking out in this book has