By Michael Smith (Veshengro)
The more and more I see the use of technology over common sense the more I must conclude that technology has indeed killed off common sense to a great degree.
When it comes to satellite navigation systems, of whichever make, the common excuse for going down the wrong route, such as a private road, when challenged,m is “but the sat nav told me to go this way and I was following that thing and did not look out for any signs.”
In the similar way when they get themselves into trouble by driving into a river – yes, it has indeed happened – with the same excuse of “the sat nav told me to go this way and through the ford.” Fine if and when the river is not running high water but not when it is in flood.
The use or misuse of satellite navigation systems is but one of those examples where it would appear that technology, or better our misuse of it, is supplanting common sense and its use.
Methinks we have gone stupid, at least a great majority of us, for simply relying on technology.
Even worse cases could be mentioned as regards to the inability nowadays of military operations being carried out properly when the GPS systems are down and sat comms are not working properly. It would appear that most soldiers, today, no longer have much of an idea as to how to make use a compass and read a map. Oops, I see trouble ahead.
Ships nowadays, merchant vessels especially, rely entirely for their communications on satellite systems for everything from calling home and base to calling for help. Shortwave radio and with it the maritime radio stations and services disappeared almost altogether.
Morse code went out even before the end of radio telephony for (merchant) ships and it is this that makes me worry about maritime safety and again the lack of common sense.
Any radio operator worth his or her salt does know about the Moebel-Dellinger Effect which can silence radio bands or made voice communications impossible. It is then when code is the only way.
In another way we have also gone daft and no longer use common sense is the way we deal with and believe in everything that is in the “newspapers” (in parenthesis because some do not deserve the “news” part) or in the media, including the Internet. We no longer seem to have any kind of discernment.
Just because it is in the papers or, worse still, on the Internet, on dubious websites, does not make it true.
The adage that common sense is not all that common is becoming more and more true and the word is becoming a bit of a misnomer and one could come to the conclusion that, aside from technology, our education system also has a great to answer for here.
It seems that, because it is not a degree subject at university, common sense is not very common anymore and some people really are being educated beyond their very capacity.
And when it comes to education, in Britain especially, everything is geared to academic achievements, something some people are not actually interested in, and any youngster having different ideas, such as leaving school at sixteen (it was fourteen and before that twelve) and go into training for a trade or such is being discouraged.
It is much for that reason that we have “disaffected” youth who loiter about the streets with nothing to do bar causing havoc.
We must recapture common sense and then we may recapture sanity.
© 2011
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