Whenever a plane crashes, we all get obsessed by the black box. Where is the black box? Did it survive the crash? The black box will tell us everything. The black box will explain why 300 people died.

The black box contains the flight data recorder. It also contains a cockpit voice recorder. The flight data recorder tells us if an engine blew up, or the fuel tanks were empty, or whatever, and the voice recorder tells us if the pilot and co-pilot were arguing over whose turn it was to steer.

People love the black box. An airplane crashes. Three hundred people are dead. Thousands of people are stricken with grief. How could it happen? Who did this? Why? The black box will tell us. The black box will save us. The black box knows everything.

You’ll have to excuse my cynicism, but in order to understand human affairs accurately, you have to understand that most people and institutions are self-interested. It’s sad but true. But really it’s not so sad. We don’t mind the self-interest of the gas station attendant who fills our gas tank, or the waitress who smiles when she brings you your meal, or the masseuse who is attentive and sympathetic. We think—yes, they’re doing it for money, but they’re doing a good job. I’m getting good value for my dollar.

But large corporations don’t feel bad if you don’t like them. They don’t care. They just want the money.

So when a plane goes down, the big corporations, the airline company, the manufacturer of the plane, the pilot’s association, and the government, all want to make sure that they don’t get blamed for the catastrophe. That’s why, if you listen carefully to the news, you will understand that the only people who get to see what's in the black box are the representatives of the airline, the airplane manufacturer, the government, and the airline safety regulators. The pilots are kept out of this equation. None of these other people want the black box to show that that it was their fault that the plane crashed. Their ideal plane crash is caused by a mistake made by the dead pilot. The public is reassured that the technology is sound, that there is adequate safety measures, and that the airlines really care about passenger safety.

.The black boxes, by the way, use a fairly dated technology. They store their information on tapes, not disks, and they don’t take any pictures of the cockpit—something that should be relatively easy to do nowadays with CCD cameras and computers. It would also gives us some rather spectacular footage of these crashes. If I were CNN, I’d offer to pay for the cameras for all the airlines, in exchange for exclusive footage. If I were CNN, of course, I’d have the ethics of an alley cat .

Gamil al-Batouti was the relief pilot of the Egypt Air Flight 990, a Boeing 767 that recently crashed. The cockpit voice recorder seems to show that he asked the pilot if he could fly the plane for a while, and then he deliberately crashed it while mumbling "Allah is Great" or something.

Now, I have a few questions. How often does a respected pilot travelling as a passenger on a major world airline put up his hand and say, "I want to steer, I want to steer"? And how often does the regular pilot say, "Well, all right, but just this once."

It’s interesting to consider that they never found an explanation for the crash of that airplane off the coast of New York a couple of years ago, that led to so much initial speculation about a bomb or missile. Why not? Possibly it was a computer error. It is odd that, given the absence of any evidence of a bomb, missile, or suicidal pilot, they haven’t come to the logical conclusion they should have come to: mechanical failure or computer bug.