Everyone: What do Data Engineers do? Everyone: You mean like a plumber? Data Scientists build models and Data Analysts communicate data to stakeholders. So, what do we need Data Engineers for? Little do they know, without Data Engineers, models won't even exist.

One of the most remarkable details of a fatal collision earlier this month involving a tractor trailer and a Tesla electric car operating in self-driving mode was the fact that the car apparently mistook the side of the truck for the sky. As Tesla explained in a public statement following the accidental death, the car's autopilot was unable to see "the white side of the tractor trailer against a brightly lit sky"--which is to say, it was unable to differentiate the two. The truck was not perceived as a discrete object, in other words, but as something indistinguishable from the larger spatial environment. It was more like an elision, a continuation of the sky by deceptive means. Examples like this are tragic, to be sure, but they are also technologically interesting, in that they give momentary glimpses of where robotic perception has failed.