Guest Posts

Editor’s note: For The Lawson Trek, journalist Scott Huler is retracing the journey of discovery undertaken by canoe and on foot in 1700-1701 by John Lawson, the first observer to carefully describe and catalogue the flora, fauna, geography and inhabitants of the Carolinas. Posts from Scott’s trek are appearing at the Scientific American Expeditions blog, Scott’s own Lawson Trek blog, and here at the KSJ blog. For all the posts in the series, click here.

We stopped for lunch during the first day of the Lawson Trek on an oyster shoal, an uncharacteristically hot October sun stinging my shoulders, but surprisingly unbothered by four hours of kayak paddling. We had crossed Charleston Harbor against the current — the tide was coming in, whereas we were heading offshore.

Editor’s note: For The Lawson Trek, journalist Scott Huler is retracing the journey of discovery undertaken by canoe and on foot in 1700-1701 by John Lawson, the first observer to carefully describe and catalogue the flora, fauna, geography and inhabitants of the Carolinas. For all the posts in the series, click here.

We cannot get away from ourselves.

Camp in the savanna and look up at the contrails. Hike the trail by GPS. Climb the mountain and get better reception. You probably got there in the first place following the advice of a way-finding system accurate to the capacity of saying, “The OTHER side of the street, you idiot.” Or maybe you referred to a map that you bought in easily obtainable staple-bound book form at any number of places within a five-minute drive from your house. Or, if that wasn’t satisfactory, you went to an office in a state government building and bought a USGS topographical quadrant map that gives you so much detail about your terrain that you know not only every ten-foot change in elevation, but every building on every lot, down to sheds and outhouses.

[Editor’s Note: This is the second in a series of cross-posts from The Lawson Trek, the website where Knight Science Journalism project fellow Scott Huler is chronicling his quest to retrace the journey of English gentleman-explorer John Lawson through the Carolinas in 1700-1701.]

I have the terrible duty today, anniversaries being as they are, to share the story of the death of John Lawson, which occurred 303 years ago, right around today. It wasn’t a super pleasant death.

Lawson’s journey, which we will be retracing beginning October 12 in Charleston, was transformational for him, for North and South Carolina – and for the original inhabitants of those states. The native population had been much transformed in the decades before Lawson arrived, and that transformation included the death by disease of most of the Native Americans and the enslavement of many others. Lawson himself says that “The Small-Pox and Rum have made such a Destruction amongst them, that, on good grounds, I do believe, there is not the sixth Savage living within two hundred Miles of all our Settlements, as there were fifty Years ago. These poor Creatures have so many Enemies to destroy them …

In the four years since The New York Times’ John Markoff broke the story of Google’s self-driving car project, there’s been no shortage of articles extolling the company’s forward-thinking ingenuity and the technology’s alleged safety benefits. “Letting robots take the wheel would save lives,” asserts Vox’s Brad Plumer. Netscape founder and venture investor Marc Andreessen told the Times that within 20 years, “driving your car will be viewed as equivalently immoral as smoking cigarettes around other people is today.”

Yes, the cars seem safe—they’ve driven more than 700,000 miles in California without a serious accident. But what’s discussed far less often is Google’s campaign to constrain the conditions under which its self-driving cars are evaluated by regulators. In Nevada, the company carefully controlled the circumstances of an …

One awesome thing about undertaking a project like retracing the route taken by someone like Lawson is that amazing people almost instantly begin flinging themselves at you out of the ether. Consider Dale Loberger. A geographic information system (GIS) specialist, Loberger works with Bradshaw Consulting in South Carolina, using GIS to improve people’s lives and their understanding of their world – through systems that connect information with maps (it’s not just a fire hydrant; it’s a fire hydrant last painted in 2007 and last maintained in 2012; it’s not just an address, it’s an address with a 17 percent likelihood of generating a 911 call within the next year). That U.S. map showing which NFL team each county prefers? That’s a GIS map.

Anyhow, I’ve known Loberger on email for some time – a mutual friend introduced us when he learned of our mutual interest in old maps and trails. And when I got interested in Lawson, Dale began telling me about his interest in uncovering the old roads in the Charlotte area where he lives: the Great Wagon Road, the Trading Path, and other ancient trails that lead through the area – trails which …