Humanoriginating

Humanoriginating is a neologism used to describe phenomena, artifacts, or processes that originate in human activity rather than natural or non-human causes. As a compound formed from "human" and "originating," the term signals an explicit human source or authorship, and is often used in discussions of technology, culture, and the environment to distinguish human-driven origins from natural ones.

Though not widely standardized, humanoriginating appears in contemporary discourse as a coined descriptor in fields such as digital humanities, science and technology studies, and policy analysis. It emphasizes intentionality, design, and decision-making by people, and can help foreground human contribution in analyses that also consider natural processes or autonomous systems.

Applications include categorizing outputs such as manufactured objects, software, datasets, urban environments, cultural artifacts, and environmental modifications that can be traced to human intention, planning, or action. In research, separating humanoriginating signals from natural or autonomous ones helps attribute responsibility, assess impact, or guide governance and ethical deliberation.

The term shares semantic space with "anthropogenic," "man-made," and "artificial," but its emphasis on explicit human authorship can be distinctive. Because it is a nonstandard term, its meaning may vary by author and context, and readers should rely on defined usage within a given text to avoid ambiguity.

See also: anthropogenic, human-made, artificial, design.