- In 1580, Sir Francis Drake completed a circumnavigation of the globe without maps using nothing more than a compass, sextant, and his wits.
- For centuries, Vikings navigated the North Atlantic as far west as Canada without the aid of a compass. They had only the sun and stars to guide them.
- At the same time, Polynesian explorers were traveling the far vaster Pacific Ocean without even being able to see the North Star.
- In 1928, Charles Kingsford Smith, Charles Ulm, and their crew flew from Oakland, California to Brisbane, Australia with stops on tiny specks of land called Hawaii and Fiji. This first transpacific flight navigated by dead reckoning.
- In 1969, Neal Armstrong, Buzz Aldren, and Michael Collins crossed the 240,000 miles of space, landed on the moon, and returned safely to Earth using computers less powerful than a modern $12 pocket calculator.
It isn't that our machines are getting smarter than we are. They are not. It is that, with each passing generation, we as a race are getting dumber. Things humans could do a thousand years ago are beyond us now. Even with our machines, we stand flummoxed by tasks our forefathers could do with ease. Think about this the next time you can't find your car in a shopping mall parking lot.
My thanks to His Frogness at Blognonymous for finding this.
3 comments:
remember in "Lucifer's Hammer" the best resource is the "American Boy's Handbook" from 1930
how it used to be:
"Everything counted--and there was always another way."
"how a sailor who takes a bearing on a mountain and then sails a known distance--as could be measured using the ship's log line--directly away from the mountain, could then take another bearing and determine the height of the mountain as well as, once that was determined, the ship's total distance from it. It's simple use of the trigonometry now taught in hght shcool or college, but--it's the use of that trigonomtery. Beaufort's world was aplace where people could figure things out, and they used tools like math to do it."
from Defining the Wind by Scott Ruler
Hey...many thanks for referencing my post.
But...there is a difference isn't there? Ten, maybe twelve, knots vs. about 1200 mph.
I don't disagree with the general direction of your post, but when you're moving that fast, a human simply cannot navigate fast enough to keep "on course". Apollo 11 had the exact same problem even given the exacting nature of orbital mechanics--but their computers worked, even if underpowered by today's standards. Unlike those in the F-22s.
We're not getting dumber. We're getting too specialized.
Not getting dumber? Have you noticed how many people have problems with simple math (especially in their head)? The problem with getting dumber is that you don't now you're dumber.
On the other hand, complex (or, even relatively simple) computer software is devilishly hard to make perfect. Such errors are humorous when they are not hazardous.
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