Donald A. Norman
As machines become more and more complex, they run the risk of having severe side effects. It all comes down to degrees of control. It is always the unexpected consequences of technology that have the biggest consequences. The bad usually make headlines. Nearly every major technological tragedy was do to unforeseeable consequences. Some people complain that we are becoming slaves to machines and in many ways we are but people do not see it as slavery. Machines make it easier for us to live and people usually aren't willing to give that up. More and more, machines are heading towards full automation. Imagine having cars that drive themselves or appliances that just know what to do based on what you put in or on them. Overautomation can be a problem however. In some situations, your really do need to have a human presence in a machine just to account for unexpected variables. If machines are overautomated, people tend to get to relaxed because they assume that nothing is going to happen. There really is a fine line between automation and overautomation.
I for one would like more automation in machines especially when on the road. It would be much safer if we could take the human's out of control of vehicles. I would wager that 99% of all accidents are human related. If we take out that, car wrecks would be virtually non existent. The only issue with humans being so dependent on machines is that we may not be prepared for life without them. Emp's will pretty much render all machines useless now since almost every machine has a computer in it. So if for some reason we weren't sent back to the stone age because all of our machines were disabled, humans might not have the skills necessary to survive.
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