Weiner's Laws
As far back as 1980, renowned aviation human factors guru Earl Wiener was asking the question – Has automation gone too far? Wiener in the early 1980s began researching what happens when humans and computers attempt to coexist on a flight deck. In a 1980 paper he co-wrote with NASA’s Renwick Curry, “Flight-deck automation: promises and problems”, Wiener wrote, “It is highly questionable whether total system safety is always enhanced by allocating functions to automatic devices rather than human operators, and there is some reason to believe that flight-deck automation may have already passed its optimum point.” Compilations of scholarly papers by Wiener and his colleagues resulted in two key human factors books, one of which – Human Factors in Aviation – is still in publication today, albeit as a new edition with new editors.
WIENER’S LAWS
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17. Every device creates its own opportunity for human error.
18. Exotic devices create exotic problems.
19. Digital devices tune out small errors while creating opportunities for large errors.
20. Complacency? Don’t worry about it.
21. In aviation, there is no problem so great or so complex that it cannot be blamed on the pilot.
22. There is no simple solution out there waiting to be discovered, so don’t waste your time searching for it.
23. Invention is the mother of necessity.
24. If at first you don’t succeed… try a new system or a different approach.
25. Some problems have no solution. If you encounter one of these, you can always convene a committee to revise some checklist.
26. In God we trust. Everything else must be brought into your scan.
27. It takes an airplane to bring out the worst in a pilot.
28. Any pilot who can be replaced by a computer should be.
29. Whenever you solve a problem you usually create one. You can only hope that the one you created is less critical than the one you eliminated.
30. You can never be too rich or too thin (Duchess of Windsor) or too careful what you put into a digital flight guidance system (Wiener).
31. Today’s nifty, voluntary system is tomorrow’s F.A.R.