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The Field Guide to Understanding 'Human Error'Book

by Sidney Dekker

Who uses, recommends or left The Field Guide to Understanding 'Human Error', in their own words: each a verbatim quote with a link to where it was said.

1 person

Terence Eden
British open-standards and open-source technologist, formerly of the UK Government Digital Service and the W3C Advisory Committee; blogs at shkspr.mobi.
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This is such a useful book. It makes the case that there's no such thing as "human error" - instead most catastrophes are caused by system issues, misaligned incentives, and unrealistic processes. You are not the custodian of an otherwise safe system that you need to protect from erratic human beings.

One of his weekly star-rated book reviews; the "Get the book" links on the page carry his Amazon affiliate tag.

2026-08-03·shkspr.mobi ↗

Every entry is a verbatim quote and a link to the public post it came from. Nothing is paraphrased. If it is not on record somewhere public, it is not here.

The verdict is what they actually said: loved and liked are explicit; recommended means they told others to get it; uses means they only say they use it; read is a book on their public shelf with no verdict; mixed and disliked are kept too.

A dashed affiliate link, sponsored or their own label means the post disclosed a relationship. It is shown, never hidden.

The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is for its kind of thing.

The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is, for its kind of thing. Fully green is recent. It drains a quarter at a time as the post gets older, and is empty once it reads as dated.

What counts as old depends on the thing. A laptop praised four years ago has been replaced twice; a book loved twenty years ago is probably still loved. The shading is gone after about:

Stripes mean the post carries no date and the date shown is an estimate. No date at all, no shading.