While our growing reliance on artificial intelligence and technology may help in some aspects of our lives, editor Lyndon Keane says it has crippled the application of common sense when it comes to basic skills like navigation. Photo: Cape York Weekly.
I hate to admit it, but it looks like the machines have won.
Worse still, it wasn’t the result of some futuristic apocalyptic showdown between us and a global legion of robots that suddenly became self-aware and reduced humanity to a pile of smouldering ashes.
There were no weapons involved with our demise, just a GPS navigation system.
The installation of the new directional signage for Palmerville Station last week is undoubtedly a win for tourists bereft of an internal compass, and while there’s probably a case for more signage around Cape York to highlight some of our lesser known destinations and attractions, it got me thinking about how we’ve seemingly abandoned common sense and gut instinct when it comes to finding our way from A to B.
There are stories about budding prospectors from down south taking six or more hours to get from Mareeba to their campsite on the 134,000-hectare property – a journey that should take about half that time – because they put their future in the hands of Google Maps and ended up travelling from A to B via F.
Unfortunately, tales like this are becoming increasingly frequent as we forget everything we know about navigating in favour of relying entirely on mapping applications powered by algorithms and allegedly artificial intelligence.
In February 2024, German tourists Marcel Schoene and Philipp Maier spent seven days stuck in the bush near Coen after Google Maps saw the Archer River crossing on the Peninsula Developmental Road was flooded and decided to send them on what turned out to be an impassable alternative route through Oyala Thumotang National Park.
It could have ended in disaster had the men not managed to trek about 100 kilometres through muddy scrub, and across swollen waterways, back to civilisation.
We’ve seen plenty of examples of people becoming mindless sheep and following every direction their sat nav gives, even if it means they plough their vehicle into a dam, fence or tree. Did they at any stage consider the machine may have it wrong and revert to old fashioned navigation and decision making to avoid imminent disaster? No? What, not even when the cattle in the paddock were fleeing in all directions to avoid their rental car? How about when they were ascending the dam bank at 80 kilometres per hour? I’m not an expert, but I don’t think they normally put random bodies of water in the middle of somewhere you’re meant to be driving.
William Bligh managed to navigate across the open ocean for more than 3,600 nautical miles after the mutiny on the Bounty using little more than a sextant, compass and his knowledge of working out how to get where you need to be. 236 years later, we plonk our car into someone’s backyard pool because technology suggests leaving the bitumen and cutting through a residential estate is the preferred way to reach our destination.
How did we go from navigating by the stars and country around us for tens of thousands of years, and undertaking incredible treks of exploration across the length and breadth of the globe to a civilisation that can’t find its way out of a shopping centre car park without engaging technological guidance?
It’s time to rediscover our sense of direction and common sense when it comes to navigating our way around this adventure called life. If we don’t, the next instalment in the Terminator franchise is likely to be titled The Sat Nav Made Me Do It.
