Wednesday 31 July 2013

A Brain Ramble

I Was Stuck Here From Just After Six Til Just Before Ten, So I Didn't Get Home In Time To Upload Yesterday. by foundimagination
My brain started mumbling to itself after I glanced at an article this weekend that said this expert and his team " had taken over the sophisticated navigation system on a super-yacht in the Mediterranean Sea." (This is not the original article I read, but the one that showed up when I googled trying to find it) So, basically, they hacked the ship, and steered it.

My brain mumbled to itself even more when I was driving on Monday to a new place I hadn't been to before and my GPS wouldn't pick up a satellite and I started thinking how there are some people who have maybe never driven using a map.

Like, at least I have done that and know how to do it so that when the ... whatever ... happens (zombie apocalypse, massive electronic data wipeout, I don't know) and I don't have internet or GPS, I still can pull out the map in my car and find how to get somewhere.

But, I wouldn't be able to roll down my car windows, because my car is all automated.

Which made me think about what would happen to people who own those cars that are super automated.  The ones that park themselves, or have back up cameras, or who knows what else.

Might there be a lot of people who will not know how to do things if things go weirdly wrong in some way?  Or, might there be some cars that break in some way that means the auto, this that or the other malfunctions and does something bad?

Like, I hate parallel parking.  I avoid it.  And if my car could do it automatically, I'd never ever do it.  But at least I could maybe try it myself if I had to.  Or, just drive around the block and walk a little further.

I don't know.  I just wonder about all the automation.  All the reliance on technology.

I mean, I was in a store the other day and their tills were down.  In fact, all the tills in all the stores of that particular company on the entire island were down for a good half hour.

They could do no business.

At all.

They were stopping us at the door.  "Sorry, we have no functioning way of taking your money so please go away."

I love me my technology, but I also didn't grow up with it at my beck and call, so I feel like I'd cope were it to stop working.

I feel like there might be some, maybe an entire generation who would not do so well.

And it's kind of a disconcerting thought.

2 comments:

Elliott said...

A couple of weekends ago we were driving around in north country (read Canadian shield with tons of granite and other technology barriers) with no cell and no GPS. We had to get the trusty map out and the kids were like...what's that? Then they laughed and send pass the map back and they navigated us to the correction location on first try using a paper map. So all hope isn't lost on the young generation...

I have a back up camera in the Avalanche. It is only used to judge distance to car behind when parking cuz you can't see the car behind the large truck. Even the kids (who have only had their license for a few years) only use it for reference...we can all park without it.

Victoria said...

Yay! You've given me hope! ;)