General

Introducing Mindful Automation

We have been doing automation wrong for many years; first it was just Big Data, failures and unintended consequences of which continue to fill books. Then came AI, and all the problems proliferated and got amplified further. To help organizations do better, Ethical AI frameworks were developed. A lot of […]

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Learning to Learn from Close Calls

Five-point summary: Flying is incredibly safe; why it is so safe is something few people pay attention to. It’s safe because of a combination of many factors, one of which are the supporting structures and practices that enable broad-based, global learning. Enabled by a foundation of an appropriate culture, one […]

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Still a human, but it's getting harder to tell

Beware of the Automation Point of No Return

Summary in seven points: Everything is becoming more automated. We tend to cede control to automation before it is actually ready to take over. In the process of ceding control, our skills degrade; in the first stages of this process, our past hands-on experience protects us from disasters, allowing over-reliance on automation to […]

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On thermals and colliding cultures

The aviation industry is, after a disastrous 2020, finally showing some signs of life. While the ramp-up is still slow on the normal operations side, the speculative future side is experiencing a downright boom. Or should I say Boom, because one of the threads is the renewed push into making […]

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Melbourne Airport could self-power all its flights with renewables

The leading disclaimer: I do not believe that technology in and of itself is the solution to pretty much anything – especially when the technologies discussed don’t even exist at scale yet. Having said that, some back-of-the-envelope math can inform us of the art of the possible and, as such, be […]

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Calling for nuanced views

Can you be an advocate and a critic of the same thing? I believe you can. In some ways, we live in a very black-and-white era. I’m sure you have noticed the divides; there are entire countries that appear sharply divided across political lines, and people elsewhere may pick other […]

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Opinion: For the good of the industry, let’s cool down the hype on eVTOLs

[Originally published on World of Aviation on March 19th, 2021] New technologies are undoubtably exciting. Sometimes, however, the excitement shared in the concept of new technologies does not translate well into reality, and the idea of what is possible can far outpace that which is actually probable. In today’s aviation […]

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