To start with I would like to provide a short and definition of the concept “technology”.
Technology will, in cases like this and this daily news, refer to any physical target, product, environment, or symbol that has been made by human beings. Another frequently employed concept while using same which means is “artifact” (Simon, 1969). Technology has had a great effect upon the living conditions of people all over the world. Technology has helped us to do many jobs safer, faster, and with higher precision than can be possible without its help. Technology in addition has made all of us stronger, helped us going faster, and made it possible for us to do tasks that otherwise can be impossible to execute.
With the help of technology we can carry out many jobs that are hazardous for people to execute, like employed in a aggressive physical environment, for instance in a contaminated or radioactive environment. Technology features helped all of us to perform monotonous manual duties day and night, every day in the week, even without a coffee brake. Technology made it feasible for us to visit all over the world and reach fresh destinations, faster than ever.
Soon we might possibly travel to other planets inside our Solar system. Introduced of devices, computers and also other technological ruse has improved our mental abilities also. Technology will make us wise (Norman, 1993) by increasing our abilities to remember better, by saving information in different formats, and support the reasoning activities.
Thanks to pcs we can conduct complex calculations quickly, reproduce processes of numerous kind, produce art and music, and so forth. Technology has additionally helped all of us to pick up data that previous was extremely hard to pick up. Microscopes and telescopes, only to point out a few technological devices, make it possible for all of us to consider worlds that individuals otherwise would not have any kind of access to. New intelligent assistive hearing aids have helped people with hearing deficits to grab auditory data better and improved the possibilities to get in touch with other people. Technology can increase our capabilities to control automobiles of different kind, for instance to enhance the ability to drive, brake and shift armor and weapon upgrades in the car.
New technology has been accustomed to create systems that can help individuals to find new destinations, or perhaps find the quickest path to known places. New technology is developed to get helping motorists to avoid crashes and other hazardous situations. Technology has made that possible to adapt autos to individuals with efficient handicap in order to drive (nearly? ) while safely because drivers without these problems.
Technology can help mariners to get around ships through the Atlantic with high precision, to support pilots within their task of flying to selected destinations, avoid accidents in the air, control the aeroplanes, and so on. Procedure industries, production industries, strength producing industries can today be controlled with the help of new advanced technology. Technology has had an effect on the way all of us live, job, enjoy ourselves, and communicate with each other. Thanks to superior transportation devices we can at this point live at a distance from our doing work place, and commute to our job.
Many of us can work from your own home thanks to the laptop and the capability to send digital messages to different destinations. Due to World Wide Web we could communicate with people at extremely distant places and arrange electronic meetings. We also have innovative ways of interesting ourselves.
Technology in the Well being sector has made important input to the treatment of diseases device help of modern technology it is now likely to save hails from a way that was not conceivable only a few years ago. In her essential note, teacher Axelsson has shown how technology can be used in health care. Soon it may be conceivable to replace missing limbs with artifacts which could perform the tasks the absent limb needs to have performed.
Within lifestyle? I believe we can recognize some important changes in our lifestyles which have been, at least partly, caused by the scientific development. With the focus on human being work I think we can identify the following, and many more changes. A shift by physical to mental work load One crucial trend inside our working a lot more a shift from physically demanding tasks to mentally requiring tasks. Individual work features for a long time been more or less dominated by jobs that were challenging.
Some of these tasks are still around, but in many new technology can help us to execute them with significantly less physical effort. A farmer, say 150 years ago, performed various manual jobs. Today there exist machines that can help the farmer to execute many of the responsibilities. A miner used to conduct many hefty manual responsibilities when my dad was functioning as a miner.
Today vans are doing the job, quicker and faster. Rather than performing the physically demanding jobs an user of a machine has to control the machine and supervise the performance, suggesting a change to a mentally demanding task. A task is mentally requiring if it imposes a work load on our abilities to find and pick-up relevant data, store information, use details to make decisions, resolve problems, develop action programs and supervise the performance of actions plans. Many working jobs today have the character penalized more emotionally demanding than physically demanding.
A shift toward supervising operations The condition pertaining to workers offers, in many cases, changed from staying in direct contact with the working task to using some form of technological gadget to perform the job. This has frequently resulted in a new role pertaining to the employee. The new part is more of any supervisor of the process. Illustrations may be identified among aviators who happen to be interacting with a computer, the flight management system, which can be performing part of the flying process. Another case can be found amongst workers in highly automated industrial techniques, where an automated system is managing a large part of the process.
Elevated complexity The development of computers has grown the complexness of many duties. The amount of information we are forced to process in working existence has increased. Therefore is it is now harder to know the way several systems work.
The common sense of many systems is hidden in the computer and not possible to inspect directly. Unfavorable impact of technology There are several psychological consequences of the improvements that has occurred as a result of new technology. In some cases technology can make all of us stupid, mixed up and disoriented. Please let me illustrate this kind of statement by providing a few good examples on how technology can confuse us and make us look ridiculous. Technology that may make us stupid Doors are equipped with some form of device to open and close them.
In some cases it is flawlessly obvious how the device works by looking at this. In other situations it might be confusing. There can be found doors where the device to spread out and close the doors happen to be identical in shape, but works completely different. An excellent design should certainly make this obvious what sort of door ought to be opened as well as the principle of consistency should be used.
In some cases it may be vitally important to be able to open doors quickly and without involving bigger mental procedures. Another sort of a infringement of the rule of regularity is once you have a door with two locks, and also to open the doorway you must change the key in different directions in each secure. Still another case in point can be taken from the medical sector. A number of studies demonstrate that problems are made from this sector, and that errors are likely to occur once patients are given their medicine.
One feasible explanation to this is that diverse medicines might be stored in bottles that appear very much like the other person. An interesting query is the way the container for different medicines ought to be physically designed so that it is not hard to distinguish diverse drugs. The from the vehicle industry is due to the relationship among controls and, in this case, glass windows.
A good principle, stemming via Gestalt psychology, is that you must place a control of a certain system close to that device. This can be called the “proximity principle”. In some cases this may not be done, and controls for the home windows in a car might be located far away from the windows. The design of the physical environment is usually of interest.
Each time a new living area is established and houses and paths are designed, rather to find that people living you will discover not jogging the paths that have been so nicely designed. Instead that they quite often are utilizing the least route across some sensitive area(s). A simple solution below would be to hold out and see exactly where people are strolling, and after that decide the paths should be located.
In certain hotel rooms you must use most of your brain capacity to figure out how the shower functions. The problem on many occasions is that the function is invisible, and it is difficult to straight see how the shower must be operated. Technology can be used to watch over people – Big Brother can easily see you Occasionally technology is used to regulate worker’s performance at places of work. This may increase the stress level of the involved workers, and perhaps increase their pressure level, and make them sick.
On case in point comes from call up centres. The number of call zones has increased quickly in Sweden. A common meaning of a call centre is known as a working place where individuals are engaged in phone communication with customers and therefore are doing that with the help of computer system support. In a call center the operator’s performance can be effectively supervised with the help of computer systems.
It is possible to measure the volume of telephone calls every employee can be performing throughout the working day, and in addition measure the number of breaks that occur throughout a working day. A psychological effect of this sign up is, at times, an increased tension level among the list of workers. Big oil can see you!
Technology can be used to supervise traffic streams, control traffic fields, and identify speeding drivers. Cameras on the highway side are being a lot more common in Sweden. Several drivers don’t like getting supervised simply by “Big Brother” and one solution seems to be the break down of cameras. Technology may also be used to prevent drunken drivers from using their car. Before the car can be started out the driver must exhale (breathe) into a measuring device.
In case the device detects alcohol surrounding this time then the car will not be possible to start. A lot of drivers that have been found doing driving when intoxicated simply by alcohol have, as a part of all their treatment, acknowledged to install this type of device in their car. A follow up research has shown that many of these convicted drivers possess stopped employing this device.
Technology can give a great invitation to “Human Error” Besides producing us experience stupid, improper design of technology can cause incidents, accidents, and in the worst case destroy people. Please let me demonstrate this by making use of some well-known accidents because examples. Three Mile Area, USA. This accident took place in the USA the year of 1971.
A problem occurred in the Nuclear Power Plant and the situation steadily developed into a thing problematic. 1, out of numerous, aspects of this kind of accident would be that the alarm systems in the Engine power were stimulated, and very soon a large number of sensors and alerts were sounding. This almost certainly increased the stress level of the operators who had been trying to understand the problem and what to do with this.
A high level of stress can be not an optimal condition pertaining to solving a fancy problem. A single problem below was that instead of helping the operators to fix the problem the alarm systems made the problem worse. The crash in Gottröra, Sweden. A certain similarity can be found in a major accident with a voyager plane in Sweden, 1991.
A airplane (MD 81) started coming from Arlanda airport terminal (Stockholm) and soon after the start it lost the power of a single engine and shortly thereafter the power of the other engine. The captain’s plan was to fly the airplane without the help of the motors (basic flying) and carry out an emergency obtaining on an vacant field far away from the airport. During the several minutes, as soon as the machines had ceased until the airplane landed safely and securely (! ), the plane was shaking plus the instrument panel were blinking. Auditory warnings were triggered and a female warning tone was talking continuously.
The data from the airplane to the captain was topsy-turvy and would not offer any kind of useful aid to him. In one interview after the accident the captain mentioned that within the wish list was a warning system which could offer help out with situations of this kind. Not a system that distracts and increases the pilots stress level.
In Linköping, Sweden, a number of patients had been treated with the aid of a equipment that should cleanse their bloodstream. A health professional misjudged the data from the equipment and by mistake turned the device off. Many patients perished as a result. The appliance was created by several technicians and once it was operating correctly a number of indicators (lamps) showed along with red. Normally red is a colour that is used for safety measures of different kind.
There are also many accidents that contain occurred resulting from automation. Software of some tasks may solve a few problems, nevertheless can also generate new possibilities for problems (Bainbridge, 1987). It has been discovered that people might have an more than trust in motorisation and assume that an automated program takes care of even more that it in fact can take care of. Automation may also have the effect that an owner becomes less involved in the control of a system and has a issue to take the control back when so required. What can we do in order to avoid the unfavorable sides of technology?
Inside the cases wherever technology is utilized to regulate people which is not totally acknowledged by persons this may be thought to be a politics question and should be cared for as such. This case will not be talked about further with this paper. In cases where the design of technology has caused problems it will be possible to provide tips.
Improper design of technology is common when technology is designed with out consideration from the user’s demands, abilities and limitations. The following advices may be given: Commence the development procedure for new technology simply by investigating the needs in the intended users! Perform a process analysis (see for instance Kirwan and Ainsworth, 1993) and try to understand what the users need happen to be in order to perform the task effectively and safely and securely. Involve the intended users early in the design method! Remember that they have a lot of useful knowledge about the task and exactly how it may be performed.
Respect individual differences! There are sometimes huge individual variants among users of a technical device and the design ought to be flexible enough to take care of this kind of variation. Allow users to understand the technical device. If perhaps users can understand the way a technological device works (if I push this kind of button, then simply that will happen) the risk intended for so called “human error” probably will decrease.
Utilize scientific technique – ensure that you test once again, until you may have eliminated the worst complications. The empirical testing of the technical system should have an increased priority. Style for man error! Persons will, in the end, get fatigued, distracted or anything else and make an problem. This is sometimes called Murphy’s law – if anything can go incorrect then it is going to, sooner or later.
Individuals are not just like machines and that we have to design with that at heart. A technological device ought to be designed to have the ability to escape the error that sooner or later will probably be made. Present feedback (this happened) and feedforward (that will happen). Feedback and feedforward coming from a specialized device ought to be clear and straightforward to understand. This will give the consumer a possibility to comprehend the system.
If possible introduce a great undo function! As mentioned previous people could make errors which is a blunder correcting opportunity. Use a program perspective! Any kind of technological gear will be used in a certain circumstance. Analyse the context and discover whether the fresh artefact can successfully be mixed into the context.
These are generally general guidelines to follow, through following them I firmly believe that we can influence the appearance of technology so that our life styles and health will be superior.
