Lõpetasin äsja Bill Brysoni “A Walk in the Woods” lugemise ja leidsin sealt lõigu, mis nõuab jagamist. Autor retkleb Apalatši (vist ka praegu maailma pikimal) matkarajal:
Eight or nine other people were scattered around the summit,
including one youngish, rather pudgy man on his own in a very new and
expensive-looking windcheater. He had some kind of handheld electronic
device with which he was taking mysterious readings of the sky or
landscape.
He noticed me watching and said, in a tone that
suggested he was hoping someone would take an interest, "It's an Enviro
Monitor."
"Oh, yes?" I responded politely.
"Measures eighty
values-temperature, UV index, dew point, you name it." He tilted the
screen so I could see it. "That's heat stress." It was some meaningless
number that ended in two decimal places. "It does solar radiation," he
went on, "barometric pressure, wind chill, rainfall, humidity-ambient
and active-even estimated burn time adjusted for skin type."
"Does it bake cookies?" I asked.
He
didn't like this. "There are times when it could save your life,
believe me," he said, a little stoutly. I tried to imagine a situation
in which I might find myself dangerously imperiled by a rising dew point
and could not. But I didn't want to upset the man, so I said: "What's
that?" and pointed at a blinking figure in the upper lefthand corner of
the screen.
"Ah, I'm not sure what that is. But this-"he stabbed
the console of buttons-"now this is solar radiation." It was another
meaningless figure, to three decimal places. "It's very low today," he
said, and angled the machine to take another reading. "Yeah, very low
today." Somehow I knew this already. In fact, although I couldn't attest
any of it to three decimal places, I had a pretty good notion of the
weather conditions generally, on account of I was out in them. The
interesting thing about the man was that he had no pack, and so no
waterproofs, and was wearing shorts and sneakers. If the weather did
swiftly deteriorate, and in New England it most assuredly can, he would
probably die, but at least he had a machine that would tell him when and
let him know his final dew point.
I hate all this technology on
the trail. Some AT hikers, I had read, now carry laptop computers and
modems, so that they can file daily reports to their family and friends.
And now increasingly you find people with electronic gizmos like the
Enviro Monitor or wearing sensors attached by wires to their pulse
points so that they look as if they've come to the trail straight from
some sleep clinic.
In 1996 the Wall Street Journal ran a
splendid article on the nuisance of satellite navigation devices,
cellphones, and other such appliances in the wilderness. All this
high-tech equipment, it appears, is drawing up into the mountains people
who perhaps shouldn't be there. At Baxter State Park in Maine, the Journal
reported, one hiker called up a National Guard Unit and asked them to
send a helicopter to airlift him off Mount Katahdin because he was
tired. On Mount Washington, meanwhile, "two very demanding women,"
according to an official there, called the mountain patrol HQ and said
they couldn't manage the last mile and a half to the summit even though
there were still four hours of daylight left. They asked for a rescue
team to come and carry them back to their car. The request was refused. A
few minutes later, they called again and demanded in that case that a
rescue team bring them some flashlights. That request was refused also. A
few days later, another hiker called and requested a helicopter because
he was a day behind schedule and was afraid he would miss an important
business meeting. The article also described several people who had got
lost with satellite navigation devices. They were able to report their
positions as 36.2 degrees north by 17.48 degrees west or whatever but
unfortunately didn't have the faintest idea what that meant, as they
hadn't brought maps or compasses or, evidently, brains. My new friend on
Stratton, I believe, could have joined their club. I asked him whether
he felt it was safe for me to make a descent with solar radiation
showing 18.574.
"Oh, yeah," he said quite earnestly. "Solar radiationwise, today is very low risk."
"Thank goodness," I said, quite earnestly, too, and took my leave of him and the mountain.
Tähendab, ma ei arva, et igasugu matkatehnoloogia on kurjast, kindlasti on igal asjal oma aeg ja koht olemas, meie eurotripilgi oleks GPS kindlasti abiks olnud, aga häda on selles, et inimesed on tehnikaga nii ära poputatud, et juba nüüd on külluses inimesi, kes ainult sellele loodavad ning eeldavad, et ekraaniga masinavärk teeb nende eest kõik ära ja nad ise ei peagi millelegi mõtlema. Ja nii satuvadki metsa inimesed, kes poleks sinna muidu tihanud tikkuda. Mis veel siis juhtuma hakkab, kui TI praegustest sipupükstest välja kasvab? Matrix?
