ABSTRACT
Ergonomics concerns the laws of work. Therefore, to understand the role of ergonomics in the design of technology we must be very sure that we know what work is. But isn’t this obvious? I believe that the answer is that it is not really as obvious as it first seems and that our conception of what work is now, and what work can or will be in the future, has itself to evolve. Ergonomics has been overwhelmed by references to the change in the composition of work from a largely physical to a largely cognitive pursuit. Hence, we have seen in more recent years that growth and dissemination of terms such as ‘cognitive ergonomics’. However, this transition represents a change in the form of the demand imposed upon the worker, not in the fundamental conception of work itself as a form of demand. I want here to propose that in the near future that the division between what we now think of as work and what we now think of as leisure will dissolve. Further, I want to propose that this dissolution should be an explicit aim of technological design. As a consequence, future human-machine interaction that is not intrinsically enjoyable will, by definition, be poorly designed. How, and in what fashion, the dissolution of our concept of work will occur depends upon both future innovation but also societal attitudes predicated upon these emerging designs.
