Atrophy

Early reports suggested that the pilots on Asiana flight 214 didn't check their air speed on their final approach because they thought the that plane's automated systems were taking care of that. (Is it still astonishing that only three people out of over three hundred on board perished in this terrible accident).



In the discussions following the crash, several experts have noted the issue of pilots losing their touch as electronics do more and more of the flying. While this is clearly of concern to air travelers, it is possibly the thin end of the wedge of a bigger problem that will affect a lot more people; I'm thinking here about Google's driver-less car.

I'd love to have a car that drove itself (and me) to the office. I could get a lot of work done in those two and a half hours (each way).  But software isn't, and those who create it aren't, perfect, and there will be situations in which a pilot or a driver may have to take back control from the auto-pilot.

There are to issues here. First, if pilots and drivers don't get the hours under their belts they may not become sufficiently skilled to act decisively and appropriately to avoid an accident.

Second, we need to thing carefully about designing machines that are too complex and unstable that they can only be operated with a computer intermediary. Modern fly-by-wire jet fighters, the F-117 in particular, are like this; they are so aerodynamically unstable that without computers to continually monitor plane's motion and apply minute but critical adjustment to the the control services, it would fall out of the sky; human pilots simply couldn't response fast enough and in the right way to keep the machine aloft. Imagine if we started building cars that we couldn't drive without technological assistance to control them.

In fact we probably we have already. From power assisted brakes and the simple end of the spectrum, to the Prius' fly-by-wire throttle at the other, we're already moving determinedly down that path. Remember all the kerfuffle about the Prius' throttle jamming open? That doesn't augur well for a fully automated, self-driving car.  Do we want the most efficient (high value, low cost) possible system that works 99.9% of the time, while risking calamity in the 0.1% of the time it fails?

Returning to a related theme, that's exactly what we've done with our food supply and our manufacturing supply chain. So the answer is probably "yes".