NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Interpolation of Meridional Part Table
From: Peter Fogg
Date: 2009 Mar 26, 11:51 +1100
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From: Peter Fogg
Date: 2009 Mar 26, 11:51 +1100
Frank appends:
I did not mean to imply that obsolescence EQUALS error. Rather obsolescence leads to lower quality control. When a subject fades into obsolescence (a process that may take decades), it is not uncommon for errors to creep in and propagate simply because there is a steadily declining market for the information and additionally because there are fewer error-checkers and fewer opportunities to publish revisions and lists of errata.
It sounds like a reasonable argument, but doesn't quite ring true. If the subject is obsolescent then the knowledge base is represented by antique texts and suchlike sources of info, which have no greater reason to contain error due to lack of revision than more recently generated sources. Perhaps less, since they have been relied upon over an extended period, allowing error to be identified and perchance corrected.
And you [meaning me, folks] concluded:
"how can nav that serves an ongoing practical use be considered obsolescent? Its only obsolescent to you because you don't need it."I know a couple of guys who like to use Morse code --because civilization might collapse, or something like that :-). While the case for celestial is not quite as severe as that of Morse code, there's no question that celestial navigation and other methods of traditional navigation are in steep decline. If you don't want to call it "obsolescence," feel free to use another word. Got any ideas?
Sorry (if 'sorries' appeal or are relevant, methinks not) but don't think the example a good one. The usefulness of Morse has apparently quite clearly passed. It no longer serves the useful function it once did. While 'traditional' nav still serves the same useful function it has over ages, in the very probable and quite likely lack of electronic alternatives on a small ocean-going vessel in practice (as proposed previously, and never rebutted, I might add), I find it ludicrous for you or anyone else who obviously has no need of such position finding to decide that it must therefore be obsolescent. Only from your perspective, Frank. Only while alternatives are available.
These electronic alternatives prove to be fragile in practice when used out at sea in a small boat, for the variety of reasons previously proposed, and perhaps a few more as well. You just don't seem able to grasp this. In these conditions the electronic technology is not reliable. 'Traditional' nav, at the very least, is a potentially live-saving alternative. Not obsolescent at all.
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