The so called navigators of today rely totally on electronics, GPS and ECDIS for position fixing, Radar for collision Avoidance and all the time fail to recognise that the bridge windows coupled with their eyes and the compass repeater are still the best method of position fixing and collision avoidance. Even as far back as the old QE2, it managed to go aground off the East Coast of the USA due to the bridge officers not realising that the GPS signal had failed and it was giving them positions based on dead reckoning.
Many ships are now sailing without paper charts and there has already been a number of ECDIS generated groundings. A recent case was a ship running aground on the Varne where the track that the "navigator" had generated using the ECDIS took the ship straight across the Varne Bank!!!
When all these modern electronic aids came in, the users had been brought up using sextants, compass bearings and radar only for navigation and were rightly aware of their limitations and tended to distrust the information these instrument's gave us so we used other non electronic means to check them.
By the 70's there were already starting a generation of navigators who were becoming more and more reliant on electronic nav. aids but there was enough old codgers around to still get them to cross check every thing. We are now in an age when even the senior officers on board have been brought up to rely solely on electronic means of navigation and believe implicitly on the information given to them on the computer monitors scattered around the bridge. I say computer monitors as all these Nav. systems are computer based, your ARPA radar has a computer inside working out CPA's, your ECDIS has a computer taking feeds from various sensors and using computer generated maps, displays the ships position yet all the operators of these systems forget the basics of computer programs and systems which is SISO {**** in, **** out} and will happily believe what they see on the monitor above what they can see with their own eyes if only they looked out of the bridge windows.
There is a small but growing body in the industry who are realising this total reliance on electronics and hence the introduction of alternate but still electronic, means of obtaining position fixing information apart from reliance on GPS signals. Another aside to all these electronic systems are that many "navigators" are deliberately inputting false information into certain systems such as AIS in order to protect there ships from piracy yet the IMO recognise that these systems can be a valuable aid to collision avoidance.
Yes the world as we know it has certainly changed enormously since mr. Gates got into bed with IBM and produced the first working and affordable computer and we are now living in a world ruled by them, because after all they are infallible are they not?
Who goes to the library these days to research a new topic, everyone just uses Google and Wikipedia etc. to look up any information you need and hey presto within seconds you have every you would ever need to know about anything.
Who in the Banking system uses their knowledge of the client in front of them to decide the suitability of loaning money to them. A few clicks of the buttons on their computer, a few ticks on yes/no answers provide to them over the phone and hey presto, if the computer says yes, thousands of pounds can be in your account in seconds. It can also be taken out of your account by a snot nosed teenager sitting in his bedroom who has managed to hack into all your bank details.
Computers, love them or hate them but be beware of their fallibilities where ever you use them, be it at sea or at home.
rgds
JA
