Robotics, and/or Automation
Chaps (I'm legal counsel, always wanted to see my name in In the Front Office in Av Week, but that's for a different board - I posted a ton on the comments sections on the Wall St J articles on the 787 battery deal and grounding - & point of this is, I make no claim to "getting" the flight dynamics or piloting dynamics. Yes, I googled CRM & FOQA and the tech discourse on flying approaches could give some atty's FLCH Trap for lawyers (which is when a lawyer stops thinking that she or he knows it all). Anyway.)
Two comments. One, relative to dissemination of info, by NTSB chair. Agree that advent of www & social media as primary communication format(s) has greatly, make that very greatly, accelerated matters. Evidence: when NTSB released the prelim factual report on the JAL 787 batt incident at BOS, the report had links to everything- right down to the interviews of the cleaning crew who alarmed the batt burning. Imagine that level of info accessibility to the public, everywhere where there's a www connection, in the equivalent length of time after a Dutch pilot drove a '47 down the runway a bit too soon at Tenerife (yes, I read the entire report, back then, in "sole private sponsorship and independent funding status"). Sometimes a look out the info dissemination window is a good slope check too.
Second, I could not bear to read Holman Jenkins column in the Journal today. He's the cat who wants robots to fly planes, you know? Is there a thread dedicated just to his analysis?