re: automation
PJ2:
Although I work in the IT industry which has nothing to do
with aviation your comments on automation and blind reliance on the same, struck a chord within me.
I see automation all the time in my industry. We call it the "lights out" environment where most, if not all, the day-to-day functioning of a data center is automated. Management loves it because it allows them to "cut costs" and eliminate positions or, worse, outsource.
Automation is good. When used wisely. It is very bad when blind reliance is enacted. I have all too often seen automation "mask" some very undesirable problems. With very ugly consequences.
To me it is, and always will be, a matter of knowing what lies behind the automation ie, what is the automation doing and how can I ascertain if what being automated is indeed being correctly automated. It's not an easy task by any sense of the imagination. In computer terms I liken it to the differences between MS Windows and operating systems like VMS, Linux and Unix. Windows, as we all know, is more or less a point-n-click world. VMS, Linux, Unix and MVS (IBM) are command line interfaces. Such interfaces allow you to access the very guts of the operating system, should you feel so inclinded. Windows does not for the most part. But, and this is a big but, if you do know what lies behind the point-n-click world then you are in a much better position to control that environment. Most people nowadays in the IT world, have no idea what lies behind their GUI environments. To know what is going on within a given system, at all times, without blind reliance on automation and/or point-n-click, brings one a much better understanding of the environment then one without such knowledge. And allows one to be much more "aware" of what is going on in a given system.
I think some of this can be extrapolated to some aspects of aviation, specifically to the fbw environment. Perhaps I'm incorrect in this as I am not involved in aviation but I think the underlying principles of my assertion are valid.