Comment by ciconia

I'm not a pilot, but my brother is, and I watched him a bunch of times go through these before takeoff and landing. I think it's about more than automation, these days the aircraft computer "walks" the pilots through the checklists but it's still their responsibility to verify each item. I think it's an interesting approach to automation, keeping humans in the loop and actually promoting responsibility and accountability, as in "who checked off on these?"