The Economist (March 16)
“The challenge of what engineers call the ‘human-machine interface’ has tragically gained attention after the crash of an Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 max 8 on March 10th.” But the challenge is not confined to flying. The same issues create perils in semi autonomous cars, trains and ships. “Studies have shown that when people have to wrest control from an automated system, it can take them around five seconds to grasp what is happening.”
The Economist (January 18, 2014)
“With a string of deals the internet giant has positioned itself to become a big inventor, and reinventor, of hardware.” Google is becoming “the next GE,” with recent acquisitions spanning Nest Labs, Motorola Mobility and Boston Dynamics even as Google’s in-house engineers are “busy working on driverless cars and wearable gadgets such as Google Glass.”
Tags: Acquisitions, Boston Dynamics, Driverless cars, Engineers, GE, Google, Google Glass, Hardware, Inventor, Motorola Mobility, Nest Labs, Wearable gadgets