The IEEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Society: historical development, current status, and future perspectives

In the evolution of any professional organization, it is informative and desirable to take stock of what has occurred, and to use this assessment to consider and plan for the future. The IEEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (SMC) Society is considered to be the leading professional society in the transdisciplinary area of systems engineering, cybernetics, and human machine systems, and has an international reputation for our efforts in developing and presenting innovative research results related to this area. In this paper, we - group of five current and former SMC Society presidents - consider the past, present, and future of the IEEE SMC Society; we are also doing this to commemorate the Society's 30th anniversary. In particular, we address our auspicious beginning; our transition from an incubatee to an incubator society; the breadth of our transactions; the international character of our membership; the appropriateness of our name; the move toward an "intelligent" systems-oriented umbrella organization; the evolving array of research areas; and the challenges and opportunities we face in the future.