Thread: Nexus 7 tablet
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Old 01-24-2013, 02:02 PM   #18
Marin
Scraping Paint
 
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Join Date: Oct 2007
Posts: 13,745
My friend does't enjoy flying the 787 as much as our other models (or his smaller planes) because flying a 787 is all about managing technology, not actually "flying" an airplane. He is not saying the technology is wrong or shouldn't be there, just that its overwhelming presence has removed a lot of the basic enjoyment of flight.

You, Jeff, are obviousy totally captivated by technology. If you can get a piece of electronics to tell you what you can see on a chart and so relieve you of the need to have or use the chart, that's your goal. That's what boating is to you, or a large part of what boating is to you, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

The tools you have developed and are developing are very useful to someone who shares your devotion to technology. We use some of it in the form of Active Captain and it's great.

I don't think we'll be bothering with your Companion, however, because I view it as something we won't ever need. We don't want warnings sqawking out every time the boat gets near this, that or the other thing. Not because it's not a good and clever idea, and not because I think other boaters don't need it, but because sqawking alarms and blinking lights are not something we want as part of our boating experience.

I'm not anti-technology by any means. At work we use technologies that make what you're doing look like two tin cans on the ends of a piece of string. Don't take that as an insult, by the way, it's just the reality of the situation.

And I'm happy to have all that technology at my fingertips and would like even more because it allows me to do a better job with my work. But that's not what I want out of my boating. In fact boating is how we escape all the "flashing lights and talking screens."

So keep doing what you're doing. It's a great service to boaters and when you develop something we feel is useful to us we will certainly take advantage of it. Like the Drag Queen app on our iPad, for example, which we have not had an opportunity to use yet but are looking forward to trying out on our longer cruise later this year when we will be doing a lot of anchoring in places that are new to us.

But we're like our flight test pilot friend. Technology can do great things but it can also take things away. In self-parking cars and self-flying airplanes it can result in activities that to many people are a lot more boring and a lot less fun. Whether or not a person views it this way is totally dependent on the individual and what's important to them.

To me, technology is abslutely essential and critical to what I do for a living. It is not essential or critical to what I do for enjoyment.
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