Riding the new Aerotrain at Dulles airport right now and noticed an incredibly dumb communication oversight. Rather than have the announcements for the gates recorded in a nice human voice, the train builders elected to use a robot voice.

It sounds weird and inhuman.

Why not spend a few bucks to record the train stops? Yeah, maybe in a few years they’ll be up to Gate Z and the announcer might be dead, but that can be recorded in advance.

Why not? It would have taken a few minutes of thinking, a proposal to do the right thing instead of the expedient, and a willingness to follow through. Robot voices–a sad way to cap off a multi-billion dollar effort, don’t you think?