This was painful for me to read, because the author clearly doesn't understand the roles played by different types of avionics in building situational awareness (SA), and the whole analogy he tried to build on top of this misunderstanding was therefore deeply flawed. I think he may be on to something with his dichotomy between "conflation" and "discrimination," but it doesn't really apply to the example case he used to introduce it (avionics), which makes the whole thing give me a headache every time I try to think about it. I wish he had just left out the whole cockpit analogy and this post probably would have been much better.
The fact is that U.S., former-soviet (FSU), and other cockpit designs all include elements that are "dashboards" (instruments, really) and "radars," (sensors, more broadly). The difference betweent he "wall of dials" and the glass cockpit is simply a difference in how this combination of elements is displayed. The glass cockpit, if executed properly, can be far better than even the best steam-gauge cockpit, and either style can be executed so poorly as to become a net drain on SA. The Indian pilot in the story preferred the steam gauges for one reason more than any other: it is what he was used to. It may also be the case that the only glass cockpit he was ever exposed to happened to be an especially bad design.
Glass cockpits are actually better for "management by exception:" you don't have to ignore irrelevant or unimportant information because it simply is not displayed. All of the same gauges exist virtually, with a computer monitoring them constantly in the background. The things you need to see all of the time are shown all of the time, except with more real estate dedicated to them. The things you don't need to see most of the time only pop up when they leave the range of numbers which would have been green on an old-fashioned dial. Not only does this free up more space for the stuff you need to look at frequently, it also is more likely to catch your attention when you do need to look at it.
The fact is that U.S., former-soviet (FSU), and other cockpit designs all include elements that are "dashboards" (instruments, really) and "radars," (sensors, more broadly). The difference betweent he "wall of dials" and the glass cockpit is simply a difference in how this combination of elements is displayed. The glass cockpit, if executed properly, can be far better than even the best steam-gauge cockpit, and either style can be executed so poorly as to become a net drain on SA. The Indian pilot in the story preferred the steam gauges for one reason more than any other: it is what he was used to. It may also be the case that the only glass cockpit he was ever exposed to happened to be an especially bad design.
Glass cockpits are actually better for "management by exception:" you don't have to ignore irrelevant or unimportant information because it simply is not displayed. All of the same gauges exist virtually, with a computer monitoring them constantly in the background. The things you need to see all of the time are shown all of the time, except with more real estate dedicated to them. The things you don't need to see most of the time only pop up when they leave the range of numbers which would have been green on an old-fashioned dial. Not only does this free up more space for the stuff you need to look at frequently, it also is more likely to catch your attention when you do need to look at it.