Did you ever think about the path of a bug? Why it alters its path? It crawls along its straight path then, suddenly without reason or provocation alters its course. Is it perhaps that he has traveled outside his environment? Entomologists will tell you that when the bug grows weak they find it harder to exert energy to the path. When they are too weak they are stuck and frequently die shortly afterwards so they alter a course to return to familiar avenues of nourishment, not unlike the surveyors attitude with understanding how new technology can enhance their services. We all have our comfort zone that keeps us bound with limitations. The educator has tenure, the union member has solidarity and the surveyor has the training to retrace others footsteps by analysis of evidence.
It is this guided path by the surveyor that makes us turn like the bug when faced with new technology. We saw it with the introduction of the total station and again with the advancements of GPS. Surveying is supposed to be the retracement of another surveyors work not a technology or math competition where a tenth of a foot is challenged. New technology is the focus going toward the challenge of whose math is better instead of embracing it by outing the principals and the art of surveying into play.
When I first started surveying we would evaluate found evidence right there in the field. We would make a decision as to which set of found monuments we would use to best trace the previous surveyors path. With GPS and Total Stations today’s surveyors can collect coordinate values and suddenly you are in a virtual world. Now you are not boots on the ground evaluating the evidence right there right now but in a virtual world back at the office or in the truck which also enables multiple eyes to evaluate the field at the desktop. Terrestrial Mobile LiDAR Scanning (TMLS) is doing this to the topographic data collection routines in much the same way. It is taking the evaluation of the terrain shapes and break lines out of the field and into the office and into a virtual environment.
So, like a bug as we alter our course let’s not do it because we have become weak, lets embrace it to forge ahead new paths that make us stronger. When the bug eventually rolls over is it to die?
