In this Sunday SF Chron op-ed, Cheryll Barron natters around the edges of the spectacularly hare-brained decision of the now late James Kim, an online technology editor who died after he sought in snowy weather to traverse by vehicle rough and isloated mountain backroads between I-5 and a destination near the coastal town of Gold Beach, Oregon. In the post-Thanksgiving tragedy, Bay Area resident Kim perished and his snow-stranded wife and two children were saved in the end not mainly by any of the formidable high-tech gadgets unleashed on their behalf, but by a local who knew the territory.

Baron notes that even analog maps are limited and can be badly misread, and that's true. But to any cognizant navigator the thinner lines are clear to see and carry risks, especially in winter and at elevations. One need not be a Southwest Oregon afficionado to look at a basic road map of the state and see there are precious few "major" two lane state routes bridging the partially mountainous gap of some 60 wild miles or so between the major north-south Interstate (I-5) and the coast. Those that do exist are safe through routes in winter weather, and clear to see on an old-fashioned map - their lines are thicker and go all the way from Point A to Point B with little fuss; whereas the curlique dotted-line mountain roads through the Coast Range are tricky and circuitous enough to warrant avoidance by all but the most hard-core adventurers, even in the summer. In winter? Forget about it. Unless, say, you've got tire chains on your mini-truck, a propane stove, a snowmobile in tow, cases of water and moose jerky, firewood, a rifle and a real hankerin' for chilly solitude. Amidst a lot of poofy theorizing, Barron manages to cut close to the heart of the matter, noting:

Just as a map is not the territory, a computer only deals with the physical world symbolically. We are dimly aware that our disconnection from physical facts is widening as our heads get progressively fuller of e-mail and texting rather than face-to-face encounters, shopping decisions made not by touching things but by staring at clumps of pixels, and scrappy blog posts instead of embodied debate. More and more, we are distracted from our actual environment in driving or crossing a street on foot by the murmurings of earbuds or by chattering into bits of plastic linked by computerized networks.

That is why it is fitting that in Internet postings during the 11 days James Kim was missing, critics of James and Kati Kim's failure to pay enough attention to the deadly combination of terrain and elements on their journey were swiftly slapped down for unjustified moral superiority. The Kims, on that fateful night, were all of us. On his personal Web page, James Kim said his favorite color was "silicon."

That's not like most of us. Kim's last civilized meal was at a Denny's in Roseburg. From where most of us, if heading to Gold Beach, would have consulted the trusty glove-box map and taken good old reliable Oregon State Route 42 west into 42S to Bandon, and then proceeded south on Route 101 to Gold Beach. This SF Chron article states Kim didn't see the I-5 exit to 42, proceeded further south on I-5 to Grants Pass and then made the fatal decision to try a "shortcut" west from there.

Whether he was relying on flawed online mapping advice or blithely disregarding a written map's indications of a perilous winter route, Kim - an otherwise impressive and much-loved man - very sadly proved to be an educated fool, who nearly caused his wife and two young children to also perish due to his feckless disregard for common sense, geography and the Northwest winter.

TECHNORATI TAGS: JAMES KIM, OREGON, STRANDED, MAPS, MAP READING, ROSEBURG, GOLD BEACH, TECHNOLOGY