Wild times on the Big Island.
Our lives, each, are inextricably tied to technology. We either embrace all the gizmos and gadgets, the smart appliances and next-gen Apple priority recognizing watches, we don’t and plant flags on Mt. Luddite or fall somewhere in between. I am solidly in the hypocritical camp when it comes to computers, phones and their various applications. I know they are all making me dumber and I hate Big Brother peeking at everything I do but also want to know how much traffic I’ll be stuck in, say, so Google Map my brain into mush.
Have you read the studies that relying on GPS is actively destroying our sense of where we are in the world? It is true and, perhaps, truest of all on Hawaii’s Big Island where tourists in rental cars continue driving into the water whilst blindly staring at their digital maps.
The second such incident in under a month occurred days ago at the Honokohau Small Boat Harbor near Kailua-Kona. A fisherman, Drew Solmonson and his son captured the automobile as it sinks, its driver attempting to turn off the windshield wipers with the two screaming at her to save herself.
“We were trying to land the boat and screaming the whole time to get her attention but her GPS had told her to go there so she drove right in,” Solmonson explained.
The world’s greatest surfer, Kelly Slater, preparing to not go the Olympics via El Salvador, commented “So many questions,” on the Instagram clip leaving fans confused as “How did the woman drive into the water?” had just been answered with “We were trying to land the boat and screaming the whole time to get her attention but her GPS had told her to go there so she drove right in.”
Studies on avid social media users and their declining reading comprehension certainly in need.
In any case, Ryan Aguilar, spokesperson with the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources, told SFGATE that there are no plans to add signage to the harbor. “It’s really clear that it is a ramp and it leads directly into the water,” he said.
More questions, I suppose.
