PRACTICAL BOATER
ELECTRONICS
GET THE MOST FROM YOUR GEAR by LEnny rudow
MAN VERSUS MACHINE
It’s not HAL 9000 against David Bowman, but the results are just as epic
“ExcusE mE,” said a bossy and annoying cybEr-voicE ...
That voice was dripping with the innate overconfidence of a Tom Tom. “This is your electronics talking. Did you know I can do that now? And talking isn’t all. I can choose my own settings and sensitivities, see miles farther into the distance than you can. I even find fish faster than you. Sorry meat-bag, your days as captain
are numbered. I’m now smarter than you, and don’t need you anymore.”
The “brains” behind modern fishfinders and ra- dar units have gotten exponentially better in the past few years. can a human mind compete?
I sit bolt upright in my berth, heart pounding. Wow, what a crazy dream — my own marine
electronics were trying to pull a “Terminator” on me. On the other hand, maybe the idea of
a seagoing Singularity isn’t so crazy after all. From some of the conversations I’ve had with
industry insiders, you’d think that we humans are no longer the most intelligent entities
on a boat. Take the words of Greg Konig, a vice president and product manager for Navico,
for example: “The hardware and software we designed for the Broadband radar is so good,
so advanced, that it can outthink even experienced boaters. Take the unit off the automatic
settings, and see for yourself. I’ll bet you can’t tune it better than it can tune itself, in most
normal situations.”
How dare he insinuate that some dumb dome was smarter than I am! On my boat
I’m still the captain, the master, the decider-in-chief, and most certainly the smartest entity
(unless my wife is aboard). The gauntlet had been thrown down. I decided right then and
88 | boatu.s. magazine
in short range, the machine wins;
note the target separation between
the two crab pot floats (blue arrow)
and the visible feeder creek (yellow
arrow).
PHOTO: JASON ARNOLD
JUNE | JULY 2012
