How will Microsoft cope with no ATC in perhaps 20 years?

[Guest cliff]

An article in this morning's UK "Sunday Telegraph" tells of an automatic system of air traffic control already successfully tested. VERY interesting. You can read it by clicking on:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/connected/main..../27/ixconn.htmlCliff

[Guest racartron]

That's easy. Just re-issue FS2000 :(Racartronit means something, but I just can't remember what

[ErnieAlston 33]

The article seems to really overstate the actual amount of instruction a flight is recieving from a controller with the term "second-by-second instruction".There are all sorts of standard routings and procedures that require only a minimum of instructions from the controllers needed.Should we ever rely on technology as much as this system wants us to I wouldn't want to be in the air the day the system fails and we are lacking in trained human Controllers to step in and deal with the mess.Regards.Ernie.

[Guest]

WorryingHow long will it be before Pilots are surplus to requirements? Hopefully never...

[Guest BGercke]

And I thought the American media was a pile of horse dung....Good grief. I will tell you here and now that this will NEVER happen. To go completely automated in an unautomated world is entirely un-realistic. No matter how big, how smart, how great, complex, or dynamic a computer is, the ability to react to an "unprogrammed situaiton" is out of the abilities of a computer. You must remember about ten years ago how all of the techies at the time were saying that the internet was going to "replace the modern shopping mall as we know it." Other claims such as, "You will be able to stream TV in seamless pictures through the interent." Have these things happened? No, the interent just ADDED to the capabilites that we have. The interent has not replaced ANY form of modern technology that we have. Much the same as this system will never fully replace the Air Traffic Controller as we know it, it will merely add to it.I also must ask the question, how much Aviation experience does Ms. Elizabeth Day have? How credible is she? Has she spent more than one day in the world of ATC? By looking at the article, I would have to say no, resoundingly. She comes off as some reporter assigned to write an article about some system she was given some informaiton on the day before. One thing that really sticks out to me here is the headline..." Computer system 'can land aircraft without air traffic controllers'. Um, yes, Ms. Day, we already HAVE THAT SYSTEM!!! It's called ILS!! That would be Instrument Landing System for the uninformed. There is NO replacement for the human's rational thought process.Regards, BGercke

[Guest cwright]

>There is NO replacement for the human's rational thought process. That's an interesting philosophical point! Today that's probably true - though it's worth pointing out that often human thought processes are entirely irrational, with catastrophic consequences. But we're not talking about today. We're talking about the future. Computers have been with us for barely half a century, a mere blink of the eye in terms of human history. Already computers can override human operators, for example in the Airbus the pilot can be overridden by the computer if he tries to do something stupid such as stalling the plane. I'm fairly confident that computers - or rather, machine intelligences - will evolve to a point where they could be mistaken for a human in many areas and where they would be quite capable of handling emergencies. The nineties saw the explosive growth of the Personal Computer - I really wish I had bought shares in Dell a few years earlier! I think the equivalent in this century will be the explosive growth of the Personal Machine Intelligence. Maybe it won't be this decade, but quite possibly the next one. I'll be looking out for a suitable PMI company to invest in! (could it be Dell a second time around?) To come back to the original topic. I'm fairly confident that in a decade or so air traffic control will be almost completely automated, with a small number of human operators overseeing the machine intelligences. The aircraft, too, will be piloted by MI's, though possibly with a human sitting in the cockpit to reassure the passengers. This will be technically feasible in the lifetimes of our children. But is it desirable? If we hand over everything to the MI's, what would be the *point* of humanity? These are questions that will become very important in the next decades. Best regards, Chris