Knocked for a loop...
Jun. 8th, 2009 10:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexpgpAfter Shiloh woke me up at about 6 am, I wandered around in a kind of daze, though I did get the new stove wired and plugged in (finding out, along the way, that the kitchen countertop installers were 1/8" short in their allowance for the depth of the stove, not to mention that apparently, the installation instructions for the stove call for the edges of the countertop to be "shaved" in certain places where they abut the stove).
Finally, I lay down to take a nap at about 1:30 pm, which turned out to be a mistake, because I apparently triggered my body into going to sleep (the way it did at about 11:30 pm in Moscow last week, which was the time my body evidently "thought" it was during today's nap). As a result, trying to get up at about 3:30 pm local time just did not work, so I went back to sleep until nearly 5:30 pm, but got up groggy anyway.
My current plan is to go to sleep shortly, or at least try to, but in any event, to stay horizontal until tomorrow morning. I have a barrowful of work to catch up on and to start.
* * * I really have not paid any attention, until today, to the crash of Air France 447, because I was aboard a different Air France flight on the same day, flying over the same ocean, which elicited a sort of there-but-for-the-grace-of-Providence kind of emotional reaction that found comfort in not knowing any details of the tragedy. Today, however, in an article published at InformationWeek, I learned the following:
The down side of all technological advances is that they have the unintended effect of basically, relieving humans of the need to do something we used to do "manually" (to use the term quite broadly). I've seen this with the use of calculators, which seem to have created a generation of citizens whose basic innumeracy has now been compounded by not being able to do simple math without electronic assistance. Forget about understanding the difference between simple and compound interest; there are entirely too many people out there who can't calculate 10% of 100 without a calculator.
And it's not as if this is some kind of new phenomenon. The rise of the printing press contributed greatly to the decline of memorization and the availability of processed and, more recently, fast food has left many bereft of the ability to cook a meal from scratch.
Cockpit computerization has contributed to a decline in flying skills (the old idea of "if you don't use it, you lose it" comes into play) and thus, perhaps, to the philosophy that if things go south in flight, it may be better to keep the human out of the loop and to rely instead on the skills of a team of software and hardware developers and testers.
I will hit the ground running tomorrow morning. I will.
Cheers...
Finally, I lay down to take a nap at about 1:30 pm, which turned out to be a mistake, because I apparently triggered my body into going to sleep (the way it did at about 11:30 pm in Moscow last week, which was the time my body evidently "thought" it was during today's nap). As a result, trying to get up at about 3:30 pm local time just did not work, so I went back to sleep until nearly 5:30 pm, but got up groggy anyway.
My current plan is to go to sleep shortly, or at least try to, but in any event, to stay horizontal until tomorrow morning. I have a barrowful of work to catch up on and to start.
But while most reports are focusing on why the sensors gave incorrect information (icing, an electrical fire. etc.), the more substantive issue is that the pilots of Flight 447 never had a fighting chance because their airplane's controls were never in their hands - they were in the hands of the on-board computers made by the likes of Northrup Grumman, Litton and Honeywell.The issue is deeper than that, I think.
Flight 447 was an Airbus, which uses so-called "fly-by-wire" technology that relies entirely on electronic rather than hydraulic and manual systems. Boeing jets also use fly-by-wire, but allow pilots to override computers in an emergency - whereas Airbus systems don't.
A report from 2000 shows that, far from revealing an inadvertent design flaw, the difference highlights a real philosophical divide over whether computers or humans are best left to handle emergencies: It's essentially a question of what do you trust most, a human being's ingenuity or a computer's infinitely faster access and reaction to information.
The down side of all technological advances is that they have the unintended effect of basically, relieving humans of the need to do something we used to do "manually" (to use the term quite broadly). I've seen this with the use of calculators, which seem to have created a generation of citizens whose basic innumeracy has now been compounded by not being able to do simple math without electronic assistance. Forget about understanding the difference between simple and compound interest; there are entirely too many people out there who can't calculate 10% of 100 without a calculator.
And it's not as if this is some kind of new phenomenon. The rise of the printing press contributed greatly to the decline of memorization and the availability of processed and, more recently, fast food has left many bereft of the ability to cook a meal from scratch.
Cockpit computerization has contributed to a decline in flying skills (the old idea of "if you don't use it, you lose it" comes into play) and thus, perhaps, to the philosophy that if things go south in flight, it may be better to keep the human out of the loop and to rely instead on the skills of a team of software and hardware developers and testers.
I will hit the ground running tomorrow morning. I will.
Cheers...
