Slashdot Mirror
Is Sat-Nav Destroying Local Knowledge?
Hugh Pickens writes "Joe Moran writes in the BBC News Magazine that Sat-Nav clearly suits an era in which 'map-reading may be going the way of obsolete skills like calligraphy and roof-thatching.' Sat-Nav 'speaks to our contemporary anxieties and preoccupations about the road,' writes Moran. 'More roads and better cars mean we can travel further, and so the risk of getting lost is all the greater.' But do real men use sat-nav? Moran says that men seem to recoil from being given digital instructions by a woman, and read the satnav woman's pregnant pauses, or her curt phrases like 'make a legal U-turn' and 'recalculating the route', as stubborn or bossy. Still we don't quite trust the electronic voice to get us where we want to go. 'Since before even the arrival of the car, people have worried that maps sever us from real places, render the world untouchable, reduce it to a bare outline of Cartesian lines and intersections,' writes Moran. 'Sat-nav feeds into this long-held fear that the cold-blooded modern world is destroying local knowledge, that roads no longer lead to real places but around and through them.'"
"so you can both take the souls of the natives _and_ conveniently avoid their local culture at the same time!"
Traveling South of Mason-Dixon, are we?
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
A sat nav is a crutch for people who can't or won't navigate. GPS on the other hand is quite useful. I use google maps on my phone, and it comes in very handy for the times when I get close to my destination, but can't quite find it. GPS shows you where you are in relation to your destination, not where to go. I also have TomTom on the phone, and it is crap for what I need. I usually need to use google maps as well as TomTom to get an accurate fix on the destination. So why use TomTom at all ?
I've driven across the states 3 times east to west and back, and most of the way around Australia, and the worst that ever happened was I had to back track 5 miles. I never had a sat nav or gps then. I have a box full of maps for each county in the UK. The best method is to plan the journey ahead of actually leaving. Work out the main route, motorway or whatever, then find where that road meets the large scale map of the town, and then locate your destination. All you have to do when you reach the town is have a quick look at the map to find the turning before yours and you are all set. You can easily do that while sat at the lights.
I drive a truck, so sat nav is right out anyway. Even the ones that claim to know about low bridges and restrictions don't get it right. A lot of firms have banned their use completely, due to idiots doing what they're told instead of making an informed choice. A sat nav doesn't differentiate between a normal size road and a tiny country lane. A map, and a visual inspection, does.
About the only saving grace for a sat nav is the ETA function. That's useful on occasions, but for navigation, forget it.