Human Factors of a Global Society

Book excerpt: During the last 60 years the discipline of human factors (HF) has evolved alongside progress in engineering, technology, and business. Contemporary HF is clearly shifting towards addressing the human-centered design paradigm for much larger and complex societal systems, the effectiveness of which is affected by recent advances in engineering, science, and education. Human Factors of a Global Society: A System of Systems Perspective explores the future challenges and potential contributions of the human factors discipline in the Conceptual Age of human creativity and social responsibility. Written by a team of experts and pioneers, this book examines the human aspects related to contemporary societal developments in science, engineering, and higher education in the context of unprecedented progress in those areas. It also discusses new paradigms for higher education, including education delivery, and administration from a systems of systems perspective. It then examines the future challenges and potential contributions of the human factors discipline. While there are other books that focus on systems engineering or on a specific area of human factors, this book unifies these different perspectives into a holistic point of view. It gives you an understanding of human factors as it relates to the global enterprise system and its newly emerging characteristics such as quality, system complexity, evolving management system and its role in social and behavioral changes. By exploring the human aspects related to actual societal developments in science, the book opens a new horizon for the HF community.