Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Technology can be great. It is, however, made by people who are known to make mistakes. Don’t believe everything the sales people tell you about technology.

I make my living from technology. I have done so for 30 years and going. So now I am going to write something that may seem peculiar:

Stop trusting in technology (so much)

Here is an example of being gullible regarding technology – death by GPS. People are venturing into desolate areas of America with their GPS and their maps and are going down the wrong roads. Instead of connecting with another road on the map and finding a gas station, they are running their gas tanks empty and dying.

Folks, civilian GPS is accurate to within a half mile, maybe a quarter mile. It is pretty good and quite useful. It is not, however, good enough to bet your life, especially when you only have a quarter tank of gas and are in a potentially deadly setting. Last summer I was riding with a young lady who was trying to find someone’s home in the dark. She was listening to her GPS tell her to “turn right” and “turn left” when the unit told her, “you are here.” She stopped in the middle of a narrow, dark, country road and looked about for the house. She was quite disappointed to learn that the GPS was not accurate to within two or three feet. It was fortunate that this was not a life-or-death situation.

There is an old saying that goes something like,

When the terrain and the map disagree, trust the terrain

This means, believe what you see in front of you, not what the map or book or GPS tells you.

Technology is neat; it can be great. It has given me a good living. It is not, however, infallible. It is made by fallible people and it carries that trait with it.