The technology we have today is amazing.\u00a0 Each day I grow older, I marvel at the new inventions, which someone perfected yesterday or this morning. All of their efforts go to making this evening more wonderful.<\/p>\n
Often I tell my students I am too old, and I am too young.\u00a0 I would have enjoyed being a part of The Greatest Generation; I think they had the most fun of all when it comes to flying, even though they got the shortest end of the stick possible with world situations in the 1940s.\u00a0 I would also like to be young enough, or maybe sufficiently cognitive in my old age to see the wonderful new technologies of the future 50 or so years from now.\u00a0 I always felt I was born too late, or too early.\u00a0 That\u2019s my story and I\u2019m sticking with it.<\/p>\n
In both my fields, writing and flying, the technological advancements over the last 40 years has been absolutely amazing.\u00a0 In 1975, yes, 1975, one of the professors at the School of Journalism at the University of Florida, stood before us and said, \u201cNewspapers are dead.\u201d\u00a0 Not the thing to say to a bunch of aspiring news reporters.<\/p>\n
He went on to say the news of the future was going to come into every household through a device.\u00a0 \u201cNot quite a television set, but something similar,\u201d he said.\u00a0 Those of us in the classroom did not have kind things to say about this professor; many of us thought he was an idiot and wondered where he could have ever garnered such information.\u00a0 There was no way the newspapers of America could possibly die \u2013 they were the backbone of our journalistic system.\u00a0 Everyone knew television reporting only gave the audience the slightest details of an event and if one wanted to get to the heart of an incident, only a newspaper delivered the necessary information.<\/p>\n
In aviation, when I started training for my instrument rating, I flew airplanes woefully inadequate for instrument flight by today\u2019s standards.\u00a0 And I did this \u201cin the soup,\u201d in bad weather.\u00a0 In the clouds!\u00a0 Where I could not see where I was going more than half the time I was flying.<\/p>\n
In those early days, our primary means of navigation included the VHF omnidirectional system, or VOR.\u00a0 Most airplanes used in training at the time only had one VOR receiver.\u00a0 This meant navigating along your course, momentarily switching frequency to another station, identifying that station, and then determining the radial you were crossing.\u00a0 Then you would go back to the original frequency and continue along your way.<\/p>\n
By the 1980s, many airplanes were equipped with high quality,\u00a0 redundant radios. \u00a0And then we began to see other systems coming on line.\u00a0 Area navigation (RNAV) was brilliant!\u00a0 Distance measuring equipment (DME) was wonderful.\u00a0 Radios became more reliable and pilots did not have to rely on that 7700 for one minute, 7600 for the next 14, and fly the last of the \u201cassigned, expected, or filed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now we have GPS \u2013 and almost every little kid and his or her grandmother knows it is Global Positioning System, or \u201cGSP\u201d as my mother-in-law refers to it.\u00a0 Not only is this technology amazing in the airplane, I can\u2019t believe I can take a portable unit to my car and ask it where the nearest gas station might be, or the nearest movie theater \u2013 and it knows!\u00a0 For every location in the United States!<\/p>\n
How is this possible?\u00a0 And how did we ever live without it before?<\/p>\n
Thank goodness for the space program.<\/p>\n
-30-<\/p>\n
\u00a9 2010 J. Clark<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The technology we have today is amazing.\u00a0 Each day I grow older, I marvel at the new inventions, which someone perfected yesterday or this morning. All of their efforts go to making this evening more wonderful. Often I tell my … Continue reading