[Joel]

I wrote an article on this in the early days of Professional Mariner magazine, but the problem goes back a very long way before that. Long before GPS, long before SatNav, long before Transit. The development of black box displays from as far back as when ARPA first came out (we knew it then as NTDS) were the first indication of where human distraction was heading. But it didn’t explode when GPS came out; not even when GPS graduated to DGPS, because we were still plotting on charts. It really exploded when nav plotters came out. People stopped looking out the window and started staring at the pretty lights on computer screens. Dark bridges and pilothouses became insanely bright and night vision essentially went out the window. People even stopped coming up early to let their eyes adjust. Cell phones just made it all go straight to the Nth degree. People walking through busy shopping mall parking lots staring at their phones. The insanity is off the charts now. I’m rather glad I’m retired.