Burnt all my notebooks, what good are notebooks?
They won't help me survive.
(Life During Wartime, Talking Heads)
Actually this is surely a case of using technology appropriately. While
not quite from the same venerable tradition of Alan, I was brought up
to value not only the collection of data in the field but more
especially to interpret and hypothesise on "on the hoof". This involves
the substantial use of a field notebook, to capture geometric ideas and
to instantly archive them in the chronological order in which they
arise. Making a field sketch forces the observer to actually look and
interrogate field relationships. In my experience, the more technology
is involved (in a teaching environment) the more students tend to rely
on it to the exclusion of actual thought. Call me old fashioned but I'd
rather have them visualise the real world first by being embedded in
it, rather than through some in-the-field software. There's nothing
better for "taking ownership" of the geometry. I'm deeply worried that
if we as a community give the impression that geologists can make maps
like some kind of Star Trek landing crew wandering around with whatever
those hand-held devices were then we'll kill the subject, along with
any remaining common sense in the practioners. Don't get me wrong -
digital approaches can be fantastic (incidentally - has everyone
discovered Google Earth - and tried a real-time flythrough the Zagros
for example) but I'm convinced that my ability to use these tools, the
range of displays, view angles etc. is greatly enhanced by my low-tech
field experiences. So let's not have any over-selling.
On the other hand the skill of visualising the 3D geometry (and
evolution) of geological structures through collecting information on a
random 2D surface carved through it (field mapping) is very much at the
top end of our activities. If the task is routine, the workflow
established, then obviously it's a straightforward to set up the
digital protocols and kit to carry it out. But please carry a notebook
for when you run into the unexpected....
Finally there's a heritage issue. Maintaining your digital data in
appropriate formats for future use isn't easy - indeed it tends to be
forgotten entirely (hands up everyone who has a bunch of stuff on old
floppy disks but no hardware/software readily to hand to read them....
sure, you say you can live without it.... but...). Science heritage is
not very fashionable but can be very informative. Having looked at some
of the old field notebooks from the NW Highlands from the 1880s for
example it's clear that Peach, Horne, Cadell and others had much the
same understanding of how thrust systems work as we do today! (some are
on the Assynt Geology website). Discovering this certainly helps keep
one's feet on the ground, especially given the temptation these days to
feel we're all doing front-line pioneering research and generating new
ideas! And of course notebooks and other hardcopy materials don't need
technology to be rediscovered - just the desire/resources to archive
them (potentially a big "just").
Keyword: balance. Fieldwork is about ideas and data being acquired
together (oh - I even use a notebook to sketch from when interpreting
3D seismic, satellite imagery etc).
Sorry for a random stream of consciousness - just thought I should
share it with someone.
Rob
|