For years we found out information from signs and books.
I sometimes joke that the best way to get information around the Emerald Isle and Swansboro area is to hang a hand lettered bed sheet at the intersection of highways 24 and 58.
Yet I know from my experience with lots of clients that almost everyone has a cell phone, and that an amazing number of people have smart phones.
Still we recently had an experience that made we wonder how in an age of instant communication, some folks felt compelled to make a really bad decision way too early. On February 10 we were supposed to wake up with a chance of an inch of snow.
The afternoon before we heard on television that Camp Lejeune was closing the next morning in anticipation of this “storm.” Only essential personnel were to report to the base. It just seemed odd to me that a base full of young men who likely all have cell phones had to make an early decision based on what turned out to be a real miss on the forecast.
Somehow I expect our Marines to be a little harder to slow down in their home element. With a forecast of “one inch and less near the beaches,” it is a surprise so many places made a decision to close early.
Technology which could have easily let the Marine delay their weather closing to the last moment can also make for bad decisions.
I have had such good luck using my Droid smart phone for driving directions that I did not take the time to make a phone call or two before making a trip from Murrells Inlet, South Carolina to Cornelius, North Carolina. I had asked a couple of locals in South Carolina and gotten the evasive answer that they “used a lot of back roads.” That should have been a clue to me that I might be heading in a direction which required a little more research than Google maps on my smart phone.
The drive turned out to be an unpleasant one. and prompted me to write a post that people should consider how their retirement home fits in the scheme of trips they might need to make on a regular basis.
A little more use of technology could have made the Marines look a little less hasty when it comes to snow. Just picking up the phone and calling someone that I knew in the Charlotte area could have saved me a lot of grief on my recent trip.
We have to make the best of instant communications and supplement them as needed with real conversations if we want to maximize the benefit of technology without throwing out common sense.
Our technological infirmity 