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Over
the summer we took took a driving trip. Most of it we use the GPS. When
we got into the less populated states it often failed. The first time
it happened, we were unprepared. It was a bright sunny day, there
wasn't a cloud in the sky, suddenly it turned dark and started to storm
so we turned the GPS and asked where the next motel was it told us it
was over 200 miles away. It got darker and darker it was so dark it was
like midnight he'll started to stall so we turned back and went to the
nearest city which was only 30 miles behind us there we got a room the
next day we started out we found that there was a motel only 5 miles
from where we turned around.
Things went fairly well from there,
so we figured that either the database for that part of the country was
not good or the storm had effected it. In either case, we went on. We
drove through Glacier National Park we drove through Mount Rainier and
out to Olympia and everything seemed to be going fine.
And then
we turned back towards Michigan we went through Oregon the first
indications that the database was not quite right was that the GPS
showed us about 500 feet off the road. We drove through small cities
and it showed no roads other than the one we were on.
The
routing was good. The lack of detail and it's showing the map us off
the road was amusing. so we went on for a while we even try picking up
a new GPS, from a different company. The second GPS had a database that
seemed better but had other flaws and it was so annoying we returned it.
As
we neared the end of the trip. We looked at the GPS one night and told
it that we wanted to go home. It told us that there were over 50 hours
of driving time. That would push us beyond what we wanted to drive in
the day. So we decided to not make any intermediate stops. That night
we took a map and took a look at it said it looks like only 2 to 3 days
of driving. The GPS told us to take a turn that would've taken us back
out west. We decided to route ourselves using the map. As we drove that
day the GPS told us that they were 51 hours of drive time left. As we
passed through a small city it suddenly changed and said that there was
only 16 hours of drive time left. For awhile it switched between over
40 hours and about 10 hours of driving.
Many of us put our trust
in technology. It often works very well. People start to think that the
technology is always right. Technology does fail. We need to understand
when the it is working and when it was not. It does not matter what
type of technology we are talking about. Whether it is something
simple, like a GPS, or something that is often more obscure and
life-threatening like medical technology. We need to know. We need to
think. We need to understand. We need to feel. And we need to make our
own decisions. Like us on the trip. When things don't look right, we
need to seek an alternate source and decide which is correct. Like with
the GPS some of the older methods such as maps yield a better result.
One does not preclude the use of the other. When used together you get
a better safer and more reliable results.
Often technologists
try to make us believe that the old solutions do not work at all. In
most cases, like with the GPS, the old methods are the technology that
has been used as its foundation. The old paper maps have been digitized
and form the foundation of all the GPS navigation systems. Most
medications come from traditional herbs that have been used for many
centuries. Even some of the most steadfast of these, like aspirin, or
derived from the American Indian headache remedy, willow tea.
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