What are human factors in semantics?

Human factors in semantics has been coined as a paradox; in most cases, semantics is a human factor in and of itself. However when we focus specifically on machine-readable semantics, we recognise these are socio-technical information objects, technologies that mediate interactions and dependencies between humans and implementable knowledge.

Why do we need human factors in semantics?

We draw attention to the human factors because semantics shape our worldview and communication with eachother, and our engagement with technology. (Machine-readable) Semantics must be negotiated, co-designed and owned by the people who use them, to ensure that words and expressions do indeed carry shared meanings, and to give us greater control over the machines that use ontologies and semantics for decision-making that affects our lived human (and more than human) experiences.