Tomorrow's Ergonomics

Abstract

The origin of ergonomics might be sought in the time when prehistoric man started in a conscious way to organize and adapt the surroundings of his life to his own needs, producing weapons and simple tools. It may be assumed that time was a period of unconscious ergonomics or intuitive ergonomics. In turn, the Industrial Revolution, initiated in the late 18th century, has been the historical background for contemporary ergonomics, which may be described as rational ergonomics. The traditional rational ergonomics arose, in the historical sense, from studies on work and up to the present time has mainly been concerned with problems of the safety and protection of the “working man” and excluding the problems of the same man in those surroundings in which he spends the rest of his non-working day. In turn, the computerization of all areas of human life means that the work environment and the rest environment intermingle for example in virtual offices, schools, shops etc. The application of ergonomics in the advancing Information Revolution has lead to an extension of its interests from areas involving man and machine into areas involving the recognition of its interests taking into account not only the relations of the traditional man-technique system, but it has to take into account also the fact that man is a small, but sometimes destructive, element of the ecosystem of nature. In turn, it is joined with the need for extension of the primary accepted system to the relation of the new man-technique-natural environment system which determines simultaneously the area in which the ergonomics of future should be interested. Further because of the changes, both in technique and natural ecosystem, which have a priori dynamic character, the present static ergonomics has to adapt itself to the character and pace of these changes by becoming the dynamic ergonomics which is understood as an antonym of the static ergonomics.