WRT computer-control : I always wonder what the vision is for Airbus and the European model of automating life. What are human beings, us, supposed to do after the world is computerized? Go shopping and watch TV?
Where is the courage, the skill, the craftmanship that inspired us to want to be part of aviation ?
Actually the human being is already an exceptional computational being, capable of reprogramming itself, of interfacing in multiple channels with other complex sentient and non-sentient systems, healing itself, reproducing itself, and growing itself. It will take man thousands of years to get anything near this level of power. It took Earth about 4 Billion years to create 'man'.
I despair when I hear of novice pilots playing games on their iPads sitting on the control whilst a machine flies the plane. Where is the dignity? Is this living?
It's one thing to die because of the forces of Nature, another when adults act like children.