“Trust Janet,” he said. “Janet won’t steer us wrong. Janet knows what she’s doing. Janet knows the way.”
“Harumph,” I mumbled, arms crossed as I threw myself back into the seat. “Janet’s going to drive us to Kansas … through a lake.”
Janet is the GPS navigation system that sits on the dash of my wife’s cousin’s husband’s SUV. I don’t know if Janet is her real name or just the name they gave her, but she speaks in a very soft, sophisticated and (frankly) uppity voice as she politely dishes out directions to here and there.
“You are approaching the intersection. Turn right.”
We were leaving Sea World and hundreds of my wife’s family members were packed into the automobile. It was already dark, but Janet had it all figured out, even though she’s from Long Island and I’ve driven from Orlando to St. Augustine hundreds of times. I was dubious, especially as she told us to turn right. As we did, I looked over to see a sign for the Interstate on the road we just left.
“Um … I think Janet might be drunk,” I said.
“Just TRUST her,” I was told.
But I don’t trust her. Not that I have anything against her. She seems like a perfectly nice satellite navigation system — polite, eager to please, very colorful. But I don’t think she knows beans about the best way to get from point A to point B.
To prove my point, I told the tale about the couple in Oregon who spent three nights — over Christmas, no less — stuck in their car, surrounded by snow and with an 11-month-old, all because their GPS found a shortcut through the forest that wasn’t passable. Rescuers had to get them out. In its defense, a satellite navigation system is not a weatherman and doesn’t really know if an unused service road is snowed in. But on the other hand, it also told them they were in sunny Jamaica.
Honestly, I don’t blame the technology — I love technology. I’m a child of technology. My mother was an automatic can opener and my father a microwave. But it’s the people who follow these things blindly that I don’t understand. As if a machine — a blasted hunk of plastic, transistors and microchips — can better understand the lay of the land without a single eyeball or an ounce of common sense.
Take the gent in England last March who followed his GPS’ directions, drove his car down a footpath and nearly careened off a cliff. Who do you blame in that situation? First off, he did ask for the quickest route down the mountain (computers are like dogs … all too happy to make their owners happy) and he probably shouldn’t have been in the backseat playing pinochle instead of driving. A GPS system doesn’t understand a little concept called gravity. And in a court of law it would rightly argue that the driver should have paid more attention. “Sure, I told him to go drive off a cliff, but doesn’t he have freewill? And you can’t blame me for those bum stock tips either.”
Maybe it’s the sultry, seductive and tantalizing voices they fit these GPS systems with. Maybe it does people in. I’ll admit: Janet did have a way about her. “Hey honeybun,” she would say.
“Why don’t YOU turn left up here on this deserted logging road. You see it … with the pit bulls and the guy out sharpening his ax. That would make me SOOOO happy.”
Most guys can’t help it.
“Yeah, Janet. Anything for you. I’d fly to the moon for you, doll. Say, did you mean the road with all the decapitated chickens strewn around?”
Personally I would rather have someone more grumbly and gruff giving me directions, like a trucker named Leroy, or maybe Lenny the Fist. “Look here, you SOB,” it would say. “I told you to turn left. Now do it or I’ll kick your teeth in.”
I’d turn.
But what’s wrong with a good ole’ map. For centuries we’ve gotten lost perfectly fine with a big, awkward sheet of paper obstructing our view of the road.
What do we need the poor judgment of a computer for when we’re perfectly capable of screwing things up all on our own.