From STEVEN CUSHING
I would like to thank Tony Jones for his very nice review (6 August) of my
book Fatal Words: Communication Clashes and Aircraft Crashes. However, by
focusing entirely on my description of the problem and my suggestions for
short and long-term technological solutions, he misses the main scientific
point of the book.
Language is an individual cognitive capacity that is typically exercised in
a social interactive setting. This dual nature inevitably brings about the
sorts of problems I describe, when the social and cognitive requirements that
are inherent in how language works fail to match as they are supposed to,
quite aside from whether people are being lax or irresponsible. It is this
inevitability that necessitates the development of automated tools such as
those I suggest.
People need to use machines as tools precisely because they are not
machines themselves. My main suggestion for the present is to enhance pilot
and controller training by providing them with a deeper understanding of the
nature of language and of the consequent need to use it more mindfully.
