The Context - Artificial Human Sensors: Science and Applications - page 30

individual to conceptualise and treat in a logical structure suitable for human pre-
requisite.
The principal core point in this existential issue may lay in the following ques-
tion:

Why we, as humans did not perceive the foreseen changes which have been going on
for many decades?

Since the beginning of the industrial era, it has been a sign of success if the
chimneys in factories produced as much smoke as possible. The huge amount of
smoke indicated that production inside the industrial manufacturing plants was at
a very high level and showed the surrounding that production was successful, as
shown in Fig. 2.1. The cost of production, was at that early time of industrialisation
relatively moderate in terms of manpower and energy. The industrial areas were
however, heavily contaminated and as people moved from agricultural areas to
cities and started to work in factories, a new era, the industrial revolution was
born.
The human role in production was during the initial stages of the industrial
era, where conditions were hard, dirty and in many cases affecting their health.
Workers were relatively cheap to employ and the much manpower was used in
the production process, the transportation industry, etc. The system was mainly
built upon the human ability to work in different conditions and interacting con-
tinuously with industrial supportive technology. The technology development can
be illustrated in, for example, the transport sector by giant machines like trucks,
train and ships. The industrial era was in many senses a time period of global

Figure 2.1. The smoke indicates a state of success in the surrounding draw attention to
mark a natural relation between production and chimney output. Photo courtesy and

copyright Peter Wide c 2010.