In a quite interesting boating technology-related post, Brian Lam of Gizmodo gets the lowdown from Philippe Kahn in the midst of his double-handed Transpac record attempt. This is an especially nice remark:
The Sextant is a super handy Gizmo. Yes, you can get a $99.95 GPS and think that you know where you are, but you wouldn’t know about the stars, the planets, the moon and the sun as you do if you are proficient at finding your position anywhere in the world with a sextant. And that is really where we are, in the midst of the stars and the planets. That’s where we live…
I combine my Tamaya sextant with their celestial calculator so that I don’t need to carry all the site reduction tables. I tell you, at a party with smart hip people, you get more attention with a sextant than you got attention with an iPhone a month ago. Kids love it. Sophie, our 10 year old, is always eager to go and take a planet or a star site. It’s really fascinating to her.
Philippe Kahn is one of the fathers of the personal computer revolution, standing shoulder to shoulder with Wozniak, Gates, and Jobs. He was founder of Borland, which was a key early software company. While remaining a technology entrepreneur, he has also become quite an accomplished sailor.
It’s refreshing to hear a real tech guru tell it like it is, and talk about the electronics on the boat crapping out at the same time he enjoys the capabilities.
