Intelligent Control and Automation Systems: Mike Cooley's Vision of Socially Responsible, Human-Centered Technology

Michael Cooley was a founding member of the Human Centred Systems movement, which argued for a symbiosis in which the complementary strengths of machine and human were balanced in the development of automation and control systems. Cooley’s pioneering work and the research that followed, placed social effects and human factors at the heart of intelligent human-machine systems development and profoundly influenced the CC9 group of IFAC technical committees. In this paper we concentrate on his vision of human-machine symbiotics, applying it to web-based intelligent systems engineering. Following a survey of the literature the paper concludes that human-machine systems engineering praxis, as embodied in contemporary ontology engineering methodologies, overlooks critical aspects of human knowledge and craftmanship. Some basic principles are established by which to enhance and reframe systems development methodologies, and human-machine control and automation systems engineering research trajectories are offered to address the gaps.