The title might be an exaggeration but this is a follow up to this thread: Opinion | Ditch the GPS. It’s ruining your brain. - WP This interview of the author goes into a little more depth the WP article : What do we lose when we can’t get lost? Not all navigation cultures use maps for way finding…

The above applies to third mate’s situation on the Exxon Valdez When there is a pilot aboard the pilot navigates by looking out the window and converting what he sees into a mental model which he then uses to navigate. This requires familiarity with the area and experience in making the mental co…

We lose something and gain something with every new technology. Ancient Greeks worried about the invention of writing… writing down the epic poems would destroy people’s ability to memorize them. When I went to college there were no calculators (yes, I’m that old). We solved problems with slide rule…

Well, that we should ditch our maps was not meant seriously. More really that using what John Huth calls “cultures of navigation” as a framework can sometimes be a useful way to understand how people within different cultures navigate. But it’s not just culture in the larger sense such as Western …

That’s a bit patronising. The third mate puts the positions on the chart because that’s his job, not because he’s not clever enough to understand what’s going on. Even if he did possess the brainpower to know where the vessel was merely by looking out of the window, someone would still have to plot …

I don’t see how it’s patronizing but in any case these observations are based on my own experience learning to navigate. I was first taught at the U.S. Navy Quartermaster “A school” and then on to navigate in Alaska on a Coast Guard Cutter. I got a lot of experience there including the Inside Pass…

Ok. Maybe it’s another nationality specific thing then, but in the UK you can’t be 3/O unless you’ve passed chartwork exams and proven you can do running fixes, horizontal sextant angles etc. (As well as the celestial stuff).

[image] OneEighteen: Now comes Google maps, ECDIS and GPS. Resist if you want, but I suspect you’re fighting a losing battle and the issue will soon be as quaint as Greek poets and writing. I can’t wait for Google Earth live stream. Even a 5 or 10 second delay would be OK with me.

This reminds me of that time I learned about inaccurate charts. I put her hard on the rocks in one of the side arms of the Prins Christian passage on Greenland, nowhere near any charted danger, right between two soundings of several hundred meters. I was so sure of myself that I kept looking for t…

It occurs to me that the term orientation in the narrow sense of alignment to north is a key point here. On a modern ship the north-up radar, ECDIS, centerline and wing compass repeaters are all driven by the gyro compass so everything is oriented to true north same as the chart. By contrast on th…

The titile of this thread is a little bit of an inside joke based on a previous thread that used the WP headline “Ditch the GPS it’'s ruining your brain” If you read the interview the author of the book was making the point that with regards the use of GPS the same was also true of maps. It’s just…

Ditch the Map. It's Ruining Your Brain - A General Overview of Human Factors and Navigation - #12 by Kennebec_Captain - Scuttlebutt

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