Guidelines for Humanizing Computerized Information Systems: A Report from Stanley House.

This article presents guidelines for humanizing computerized information systems. Information systems will not become humanized on their own. Required is a conscious effort by concerned citizens including a combination of humanists, intellectuals, professionals and scientists. There has been a rise in the consciousness level of the purpose of computerization of the technological society. Serious investigations need to be undertaken to discover the procedures to be incorporated in information systems or in information parts of systems that would help avoid dehumanizing or would add humanizing qualities to them. Conditions need to be clarified under which humanization, as a discernible dimension, is included systematically as a design attribute to computer-based systems. Especially as systems involved range from information systems in the technical sense to the vague entity of management information systems, which include not only all bureaucratic procedures but perhaps all systems components that enter into the production and distribution of goods and services and into the economic, political and social management of society.