I spent about 12 years in the Canadian oilpatch, from 1980 to 2002. One of the important skills needed were to give and follow directions to the various drilling and service rigs, which were always on the move. There was a whole art to this “communication”, especially with the radio-phones. Eventually one even develops an intuition for directions that don’t sound right or aren’t received right, which should lead to a confirmation conversation of some kind.

I’ve been away for 17 years. I understand that these days, only the surveys co-ordinates are given out, the GPS figures out the way to the rig.

We could argue that this is a loss of cognition skills of some kind. But I suspect workers are directing that mental energy formerly used in directions into better safety techniques or more complex wellsite procedures.