ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author examines the reverberations that technology change produces along several different dimensions. The very characteristics of computer-based devices that have been shown empirically to complicate practitioners' cognitive activities and contribute to errors and failures are generally justified and marketed on the grounds that they reduce human workload and improve human performance. New automated systems are flexible in the sense that they provide a large number of functions and options for carrying out a given task under different circumstances. For example, the computers on commercial jet flight decks provide at least five different mechanisms at different levels of automation for changing altitude. Technological change is transforming the workplace through the introduction and spread of new computer-based systems. Computerization and automation couple more closely together different parts of the system. Automation and computerization increase the degree of coupling among parts of a system.
