Trust Your Eyes, People: They're Better Than Gadgets

As I reported Monday, the crew of the USS Guardian minesweeper ran aground on a reef in the Philippines because they relied on an erroneous digital chart and a sole source of navigation – GPS.

If they had used their eyeballs – far more advanced than any gadget – they would have heeded the flashing five-second beam from a lighthouse on the reef and avoided the collision.

This is just another example of turning over the most basic functions handled extraordinarily well by the human brain to technology – with over-reliance on GPS and the digital maps that go along with it topping the list.

Last month Katie Barnett returned to her McArthur, Ohio, home to find her house emptied of all her wordly goods because a repossession team dispatched by a bank emptied her place, instead of the house across the street,  due to a really bum GPS steer.

Bad GPS system maps resulted in more than 1,000 trucks colliding with bridges in New York State between 2005 and 2011, and this June a hapless driver blindly followed GPS maps into the path of an oncoming train in Belmont, Mass.

All of the above could have been avoided by reliance on the Mark I eyeball.