Sgeir
Well-known member
Read a very interesting article yesterday about logarithms. (See the full article at http://news.ft.com/cms/s/d609770a-6ab3-11d9-9357-00000e2511c8.html0.
The writer, John Whitfield, makes the observation: "Youngsters can’t understand why their elders find programming a VCR so difficult; the next generation won’t know what a VCR is. Sang’s story is a reminder that intellectual obsolescence is just as prevalent, and powerful. Technology is replacing knowledge and memory".
Because of our increasing reliance on machines, he wonders if "we may have swapped intellectual resourcefulness for convenience".
This got me thinking about the number of things that we used to do quite easily, but now have no need to do because of machines.
For example, square roots. A very basic and important calculation, but in our house, neither of us can remember how to do them - and she's got a diploma in statistics, being dead clever an' 'at! Fortunately Google has pointed us to helpful sites.
Again, I've been tentatively getting into the basics of sextant use. I don't even know if tables for tangents, sines, cosines etc are still published.
Which brings me to the navigation stuff.
A lot of YM, LIBS etc is about electronic navigation. Although the books always say that electronic plotters should be backed up by paper charts etc, but what actually happens? Are people who spend several hundreds of pounds on plotters and software, really going to be inclined to back up on paper? Perhaps many e-Forumites will, but are they typical?
Is there a real danger that electronic dependency and our growing lack of familiarity with manual/mental calculations will make it impossible for us to make sound judgements when the stuff doesn't work properly?
John Whitfield's article appears at http://news.ft.com/cms/s/d609770a-6ab3-11d9-9357-00000e2511c8.html
The writer, John Whitfield, makes the observation: "Youngsters can’t understand why their elders find programming a VCR so difficult; the next generation won’t know what a VCR is. Sang’s story is a reminder that intellectual obsolescence is just as prevalent, and powerful. Technology is replacing knowledge and memory".
Because of our increasing reliance on machines, he wonders if "we may have swapped intellectual resourcefulness for convenience".
This got me thinking about the number of things that we used to do quite easily, but now have no need to do because of machines.
For example, square roots. A very basic and important calculation, but in our house, neither of us can remember how to do them - and she's got a diploma in statistics, being dead clever an' 'at! Fortunately Google has pointed us to helpful sites.
Again, I've been tentatively getting into the basics of sextant use. I don't even know if tables for tangents, sines, cosines etc are still published.
Which brings me to the navigation stuff.
A lot of YM, LIBS etc is about electronic navigation. Although the books always say that electronic plotters should be backed up by paper charts etc, but what actually happens? Are people who spend several hundreds of pounds on plotters and software, really going to be inclined to back up on paper? Perhaps many e-Forumites will, but are they typical?
Is there a real danger that electronic dependency and our growing lack of familiarity with manual/mental calculations will make it impossible for us to make sound judgements when the stuff doesn't work properly?
John Whitfield's article appears at http://news.ft.com/cms/s/d609770a-6ab3-11d9-9357-00000e2511c8.html