Years ago a relative had a new GPS receiver in his car. This was before we owned such a device. They were new to the market. The relative had grown up in an urban setting and was unfamiliar with rural roads and ways. He was visiting a remote ranch property where my cousin lived. I had worked on that ranch as a teen and was familiar with the roads and routes in and out of the river bottom place. Our relative showed us how he could mark the location on his device and it would lead him back wherever he went. Later he was in town and started back to the ranch. For some reason, the machine led him to cross the Missouri River on a bridge and wander through the back roads along the far side of the river from the ranch. Finally, in frustration, he found his way to the Ferry and rode across so he was at least on the right side of the river. He made it back to the ranch after such a delay that we had begun to worry about him.

I was mystified by what had happened. I wondered how he could have crossed something as big and prominent as the Missouri River without realizing that he was on the wrong side of it. He hadn’t crossed the river to get to town, why would he cross it to return to the ranch? The answer, in part, was that he trusted the machine to guide him. It was a long time before I placed such trust in a machine.

However, we have a GPS unit that we move back and forth between our car and our truck. And when I am driving a vehicle without that unit, I frequently have my phone give me directions. We’ve been living in this part of the country for nearly a year and neither of our vehicles have paper maps of the region in them. I drive around the city without a city map, visiting the homes of the members of our church, delivering resources to families, guided by GPS. I happen to think that I’m intelligent enough to avoid getting on the wrong side of a major obstacle such as a river or Interstate highway, but I’ve grown pretty reliant on the machine for guidance.

The machine isn’t perfect. It doesn’t always give the best instructions. In the neighborhood of our rental home, for example, it always directs us to go to a particular exit to get on the Interstate, even when a different exit is clearly closer and more convenient. The machine is programmed for the length, width, and height of our pickup when it is pulling our camping trailer, and sometimes it favors truck routes when a more direct route works better.

We used to tell a joke about a tourist from back east stopping at a remote ranch in Montana and asking for directions. The rancher asks the tourist where they are headed. After pondering for a long time the rancher finally says, “You can’t get there from here.” I’ve never encountered such a situation, but I have received directions from people who aren’t very good at giving directions. Having been misguided by both humans and machines, I now am aware that I frequently discount the instructions given by humans.

Recently, we were going to visit a church member at her home just outside of the city. She had given directions over the phone. Susan had accurately recorded the directions. I entered the address into the GPS also. I headed off fully intending to follow the GPS regardless of what Susan had heard. I know that I was thinking that the machine would be more reliable than directions given by someone who had lived in that home for a long time. Looking back, it seems as if I was placing my trust in the wrong source.

The tendency to trust machines has had some dramatic and tragic results. One famous incident was the crash of Air France Flight 447, from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to Paris, France. On June 1, 2009, the Airbus A330 stalled over the ocean and crashed killing all 228 passengers and crew. When the black box was finally found, the voice recorder revealed the pilot’s last words, “We’re going to crash - this can’t be true. But what’s happening?” Investigators discovered that the crash could have been avoided by switching off the plane’s malfunctioning autopilot. It is not the only tragic accident that stemmed from over-reliance on technology. The more recent crashes of Boeing 737 Max aircraft were linked to problems with the plane’s angle of attack and auto throttle technologies.

Our vehicles are a decade old and are not equipped with some of the advanced technologies available. We don’t have adaptive cruise control. We don’t have auto steer. But those technologies exist. Not long ago I had a conversation with a farmer in which I commented that i could remember when we ran combines that didn’t have cabs. He jokingly replied that he could remember the old days when combines had steering wheels. Contemporary combines, costing upwards of a half a million dollars, are equipped with joysticks and GPS guided auto steering. That may lead to more crop harvested and less waste, but it also makes farmers dependent upon the technology. A computer failure means harvest is shut down. That is one thing when it is a combine in an open field. It is completely different with a car on a busy freeway.

They say that self-driving cars are in our future. I’m not sure I’m ready for that future. On the one hand it would be nice to have a self-driving car when I reach the point where I am no longer capable of driving safely. On the other hand, will we be able to trust the safety of such systems? How many computers will it take to supervise the primary computer and turn it off when it makes a mistake?

I’ve adapted to a lot of different technologies over the span of my life, but I remain a skeptic about self-driving cars. I don’t think I’ll be an early adopter.