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How Does GPS Change Us?
ATKeiper writes "People have talked for a while about the effects of GPS on our driving ability and our sense of direction; one researcher at McGill has even been developing an exercise regimen to compensate for our supposedly atrophying navigational ability. But is GPS reshaping our lives in a more fundamental sense? The author of this new essay draws on science, sociology, and literature to argue that GPS is transforming how we think about travel and exploration. How can we discover 'the new' in an age when everything around us is mapped?" My own experience is that GPS has made me much more aware of location, by showing me the bird's-eye view, and letting me instantly compare alternate routes.
thing around us is mapped?"
How is this a GPS problem? Maps existed before GPS...
Also, isn't it like asking "How can I discover new restaurants (or products) when everything is already reviewed?"
If you want to pioneer, go to the bottom of the ocean or into space. You know, the edges of human knowledge. Don't stay safely within the confines of society and then complain that your "exploration" is already known.
at least to me.
I've broadened by navigational horizons. First, by turning on "Avoid Highways," which exposes you to side roads. Secondly, I've found that GPS can show you shorter routes you might never have found/taken because you chose the simple/easy route.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
1) Smart people who know how to take GPS information and couple it with some commonsense / a genuine interest in being a little self sufficient and a little clever about navigation.
2) People who don't care to know any better, and will simply treat them as a tool that prevents them from having to think. These are the kinds of people who will follow their GPS into a river / off a cliff / the wrong way on a one way street / etc.
When navigating in a foreign country or in a city i'm utterly unfamiliar with, the GPS is golden. But having only had a personal one for the last few months i'm working hard not to let it dilute my head-for-direction, by continuing to look at flat maps, find points of reference, and continue to let the 'relationships' between geographic locations build in my conciousness, particularly in my home city.
I've also found that GPS's don't always make smart navigation decisions; for example I don't believe that adding an additional 40% in distance for a theoretical 10% saving in time is actually smart driving, esp when that time saving is based on projected speed limits and doesn't deal to traffic, traffic lights, road works...
-.-. --.-
Maps and street signs don't need batteries.
At least a few people every year die because they go out into the boonies with a GPS and no map. The GPS puts them on some kind of goat trail, they get stuck, and then found a month later, dead.
To the contrary, GPS and live maps are an amazing tool for discovery. Not only can you see potentially interesting things around you, but you feel more at ease going to see them because you know it's easy enough to find your way back to the main path...
That said, I wish makers of navigation software would make it easier to define many possible side paths you were interested in ahead of time.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Seriously. While I admit that discovering things for yourself can sometimes be really cool. In a lot of cases, you'll see that people discovering things tend to be in LOTS of trouble (Shackleton anyone?). Like breaking down in a one-horse town after the horse has been stabled for the night.
On the flip side, I think the fact that you CAN find your way out of an area with GPS makes people more WILLING to go places they don't know.
Paper maps KINDA filled this niche, but static route plans tend to not survive interruptions. If you come across a construction area on a highway somewhere and want to detour around, paper route plans leave you screwed. With GPS, it updates as your route changes.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Well I don't usually use GPS much when I'm on holiday, or when I'm in my home country, since I know most of it pretty well after 30 years. But for me the biggest benefit of ubiquitous GPS (first on separate GPS devices, then on phones) is on BUSINESS trips.
The boss sends you to some random city/country you've never been to before. You land there at 8pm and the taxi takes you to a hotel somewhere. You have a meeting first thing tomorrow morning - how far away is the place you're going? Walking distance or will I need to get a taxi? Is there a train line near the hotel?
I'm feeling a bit hungry, I wonder if there's a convenience store nearby where I can buy a snack. It's 11pm, most things are shut and I'm in a strange city. I could wander around aimlessly until I find something or I could type in "7/11" or whatever on my phone and see all the nearby locations on the map in relation to me.
Even more importantly: argh - I'm out of cash, and this stupid shop doesn't accept card payments under . Where's the nearest ATM in this bloody city? Previously, a pain in the ass. Now, no problem at all.
Basically having GPS in my pocket at all times has made my business trips far less stressful!
Doing a bit of rogaining was he best thing I ever did to improve my ability to navigate. "Rogaining" is also the name of a classic book on how to navigate off the landscape, observing things like the lie of the land, how it fits together and the keeping in mind that the global landscape must be consistent with what you observe locally as you pass through the landscape.
I boldly go where I haven't been before, but I have learned my lesson of not at least looking over the route the old fashion way after a GPS unit sent me off into the hills in Ireland looking for a bed and breakfast. Instead it took me to a cell tower about 20 miles away which was technically on the same road.
I move often being in the military and go even more places for temporary duty, the first week or so I'm pretty dependent on the GPS, each week after that I use it less and less. By the time the first month has gone by I'm down to simply using it to tell me the names of the cross streets before I get to them or being able to tell at a glance if a side street goes through to another main road.
By the end of the year I just use to tell my ETA in order to find more efficient routes or when I need to call and tell work I'm going to be late when stuck in traffic.
As far as using it out in the middle of no where I use it more to tell where I am rather than where I am going, or for back tracking, usually the maps for your typical car GPS are incomplete when out in the wilderness and aren't much use.
We must GPS space!
breaking down in a one-horse town after the horse has been stabled for the night
I read this as breaking down in a one-horse town after the horse has been stabbed for the night, which probably says a lot about some of the one-horse towns in I've seen in Scotland.
There still are places, believe it or not, in the world where humans have never (or very rarely) trodden. Even in those places where humans have trodden, there are many that are poorly documented, explored, or studied. I don't think that GPS changes us very much at all. The majority of people still stay at home or close to areas that they know. There are people who rely on GPS to tell them where to go, and what streets to follow. Then there are other people, probably a minority, who go where they need to go to find out something interesting, or research something where there probably aren't any streets; in those cases GPS coordinates are merely extra metadata. I, personally, don't care about the people in cities who need a GPS to find a post office or whatever. For those people doing real work, a GPS is merely a more accurate and modern system of identifying (and recording) coordinates of interesting things.
Me and my friend are in the car, just got out of Target. We type in Staples on the GPS to look for it. *BEEP* 0.1 miles. The Staples was the building adjacent to Target. X(
We must GPS space!
Wouldn't that make it UPS - Universal Positioning System?
Its a lot harder to be ignorant of the world and of your place in it when you can find just about anything, anywhere, anytime.
The religious leaders don't like an informed populace.
They just want them to memorize the Bible/Qran/Torah and do as they're told.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
I'm afraid that long term GPS usage would lead to a loss or lessening of my natural DR abilities.
I'm pretty sure I'm GOING to get marked as a troll, but I found it ODD that you used caps a lot to emphasize your sentences. Do you realize how MUCH you actually do this?
[Title asks:] "How Does GPS Change Us?"
Dependency, stupid.
Timothy is likely no more "aware of location" now when he isn't tethered to a satellite than when those satellites never existed at all. The technology hasn't really changed him at all, he's just dependent upon it.
An example is the Wollemi. Adjacent to a city of 4.5 million people, yet it is so isolated that in 1994 a 40 metre high species of tree was found there, that had only even been seen in fossil records.
I used to have to ask someone where the nearest this or that could be found. I used to have to ask how to get from A to B. Local landmarks used to be paramount in navigation and route finding. Now we can haplessly ignore the locals and find our own way straight to the restaurant we chose based on Yelp reviews. Word of mouth is not very useful anymore, at least not in the traditional sense. What I'm getting at, is that smaller cities/towns lose control of their identity. It's the internet that decides which restaurants and hotels are the best, and how to get around town. I'm not trying to commend on whether or not this is better or worse, but it's hard to find one piece of technology which has contributed so much to this trend.
GPS has removed the need to "memorize" local street patterns or common routes. Why bother to remember how to get to your favorite vacation spot when GPS will "always" be there to guide you? (Again, this is stripping local landmarks of their significance)
In another sense, GPS (GNSS for those of you modern enough to embrace foreign constellations) has really complicated the idea of "location." The instability of consumer-grade GPSr observations and the steep price curve for more accurate instruments has created a rather cluttered mess. Everyone seems to think that their coordinates are better than the other guy. I'm in the land surveying/geomatics field, and even at that level GPS is rarely brought up in legal disputes because it's just not an acceptable replacement for good old fashioned direct measurements (or acceptable substitutions, like EDMs).
In my opinion, GPS/GNSS has not solved *any* issues in the civilian world. It has (over)simplified and depersonalized navigation (non GNSS alternatives exist and have worked wonderfully for centuries), created clutter and confusion, and in conjunction with the internet helped to strip local societies of their identity.
The GPS may have hurt exploration, but it was already put on life support by by the cell phone (which greatly reduces the danger associated with exploration) and Flickr & YouTube & Street View. With physical exploration dead, youth now instead explore societal bounds (to the detriment of society).
Many GPS units do not have adequate filtering against RF interference from adjacent spectrum. LightSquared owns 1500Mhz spectrum that it wants to use for terrestial LTE networks. Currently it interferes with GPS, but it is really the GPS's industry's fault, not LightSquared. The implication is that we may have to re-buy much of the GPS units we now own, because current units will be worthless when LTE turns on their LTE network. The FCC is trying to figure out how to solve this problem, but it seems inescapable that at least partial blame is with the GPS industry.
http://www.lightsquared.com/press-room/press-releases/gps-industrys-failure-to-comply-with-department-of-defense/
In short, LightSquared claims that the GPS industry is ignoring the Department of Defense's recommended filtering standards, as well as ignoring the International Telecommunications Union's international standard for GPS receivers and transmitters. According to the DoD recommendations, GPS systems are supposed to employ filters to make sure GPS signals don't interfere with adjacent spectrum. The ITU's standard calls for a 4MHz guard band between GPS and the nearest spectrum.
A few points:
Q. How do we discover the 'new'?
A: We are more likely to discover the new BECAUSE of GPS. Without GPS you are much more likely to stick with major routes to your destination. With our (perhaps over-) confidence in the guidance of GPS, we are more prone to take out of the way routes as suggested by the GPS. This is how we can discover the 'new'. Additionally with confidence in GPS, I know that I am a lot more willing to try to even go to new places that I haven't been before. I can tell you from personal experience that just going with printed Mapquest directions and a map or two does not lead to marital bliss and made me not want to go to new places nearly as much. It's far better going to new places now that we have GPS.
Q. Is it damaging our navigational ability?
A: Does the use of a compass also damage our navigational ability? You could argue that the GPS in fact can help our navigational ability by showing us how distorted our own viewpoint can be. You find the same thing though with a compass.
Q. Is it changing how we think about travel and explorations?
They point to the need for more multi-tasking skills, etc. This may be a change for Baby Boomers, but I would argue that it's actually moving navigation into sync for the younger generation. We are used to multi-tasking. Additionally, when I first got a GPS, it felt EXTREMELY comfortable. Suspiciously so. Then I realized that it was a real-life mini-map! I was tremendously used to navigating in less familiar (albeit virtual) environs with the help of a minimap, while keeping most of my attention on the new environs, after all, if I didn't pay attention to where I was going in the world before, I could run into some nasty dragon, etc. The younger generation is already thinking about travel and exploration in the way that GPS pushes us, due to video games.
i was starving to death because of the worst drought in sevral decades, a government that doesnt exist, etc etc.
thank goodness i had GPS. i was able to mark exactly where i died, so that i will not become a ghost, wandering the desert - someone in my clan will find me and give me a proper burial.
From the summary:
My own experience is that GPS has made me much more aware of location, by showing me the bird's-eye view, and letting me instantly compare alternate routes.
You apparently don't know what GPS actually is, because GPS has nothing to do with bird-eye views nor comparing alternate routes. All GPS does is tell you the time and where on the planet you are.
Routing and mapping are not exclusive to GPS.
About 5 years ago I ditched my car and replaced it with a bicycle. What hit me pretty quickly (especially since I wasn't in great shape) was that I didn't want to ride around for hours on end finding things. In a car, if you make a mistake or simply want to try a new route somewhere, going an extra couple of km is nothing. On the bike it was frustrating, tiring and at the end of it I was always worried if I would remember how to get home again (without adding an extra 5 km to my trip). The GPS made a huge difference to me and enabled me to get a better handle on if the distance was too far, etc, etc. I remember always jumping through hoops to take buses to the train station and one day I punched it into the GPS and realised that it was only 20K. After that I never took the bus again.
On the down side, the GPS always gives me the shortest route to my goal. As I live near mountains, this translates to always giving me the steepest route to my goal. It took me a while to jam that into my head. It would be nice if the GPS had a feature to avoid gradients of over 7% or so...
Seriously, when I finally broke down and purchased a GPS I felt like I'd developed a sixth sense overnight.
"When I clear this curve, there will be a road to the left. It is 'Spence Lane'. I know this even though the sign is long gone."
"There is a large body of water on the other side of those trees."
"It looks as if I'm in the middle of nowhere but I know that there is a small town within walking distance to the East."
And so on, and so on...
GPS can't change those who don't use it -- and I expect there are a lot more who don't than do. Sounds like something to worry about later, if at all...
I use GPS quite heavily, but most of my usage is moving map apps, which do not try to route for me. They show me a map, where I am, and where I am headed, Its upto me to chose the route and explore.
Now maybe 5 years ago, when I did not have any GPS, I would have never dared to explore a 200km long salt flat.
But today, I can leave the main road, drive in the flat laying down my GPS track. If I am unable to find an exit point, all I do is retrace my track.
I has also helped me explore some high altitude himalayan deserts. No roads are marked, just a black space showing me my "track". By looking at the compass, and having a town on the other end as my "destination" I can plan my route by hit and trial.
For example, I recently went to a lake system called Kyun Tso in the himalayas.
As I left the last village, the track bifurcated into multiples. I took the vehicle up the wrong track and ended up on a 4700m high flat plain.
But no panic, we took some pics, admired the view, and then followed our track back to the fork, and then took the other one.
So we could actually "explore" without fear of getting lose 5000m above sea level.
Considering, some locals do this once a week or even less, if you get lost up there, help can be days away.
But GPS allows you the freedom to be an explorer.
I quickly have mapped all that on openstreetmap, and future offroaders can follow my tracks easily.
Then there is the dark side.
When I am in US, I am tempted to let the navigation app to do my routing, and often I end up on roads I do not want to be on. For example, a freeway 20kms long can be cut short by a 5km path within the town, the app chooses that, and I end up spending 1 hour in traffic jams.
So yes, its good, and bad.
Last but not the least, there was a story some time back "Death by GPS".
This is what you get for blindly trusting your navigation app.
So best way is to use your GPS as an informer, or a walking stick, not as your crutch.
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
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The other side is "how does it NEED to change everyone else?" That is still a huge issue that affects third world countries: there is an absolute lack of a "map culture". Guess how that affects people who do have GPS...
Google Earth / maps has taken a very long time to start actually showing street data to lay over the sat photos; I'm sure it's not for the lack of trying.
Thanks to GPS, I truly don't need to ask directions...
Looking for a job?
Want your resume written professionally?
DON'T USE TUNAREZ!!!
It makes bombs, missiles and artillery very, very accurate.
We must GPS space!
If only we had satellites there, then we might be able to triangulate just like on earth!
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
There is nothing worse than seeing another drooling, gps-addled half-wit darting back over the danger zone of an exit and nearly causing an accident. I honestly think they should be banned completely. I've found that merely studying my google maps for any destination and having a basic concept of direction (all of 5 minutes of work) are far more useful. And since one more megabyte of your internal brain-ram is now free from glancing nervously at the little glowing rectangle stuck to your windshield, you are more free to actually notice that hole-in-the-wall Indian place you wanted to try.
He helped usher in GPS with such chart hits as "Down Boys" and "Cherry Pie". These hits established GPS as a force on the rock'n'roll map.
I got my first GPS more than a decade ago - primarily for geocaching. I got TomTom Navigator in 2002. Has it changed me? I reckon so. My sense of directions has definitely faded. I rely quite heavily on a device to tell me where to go, and I simply do not waste any braincycles on the road to the destination.
Like on of the above posters, the biggest benefit for me is business trips. Before phones had built in GPS I had a small Dell PDA with built in GPS solely for business trips.
Also, I remember getting lost in China. Since the map I had was written in Western style, I couldn't even ask for guidance to a named street, because it was called something else in Chinese. Now GPS is the most important accessory when traveling.
My own experience is that on those rare occasions when I need to ask someone directions, no one has any idea where anything is, even if they live or work in the area I am lost in. I'm not sure whether to blame GPS, or general human stupidity. Luckily, my phone GPS usually works.
I discover things everyday. Things that people next to me don't even notice. In the middle of the city, or on some country road, doesn't matter. You just have to look for it. Asking a piece of plastic where things are just isn't the way to do things. Also, if you need a GPS to get around your own town, then please, do us all a favor, and don't. Even my dog knows his way around the place where he lives.
Another gay ass fluff piece.
GPS might be useful. Oh noes!
I have trekked and droven in higher himalayas all my life. Got lost many times , some times almost faced death . Trust me what you describe above has nothing to do with exploration. The elements are not same and feeling is different when you have a safety net....All GPS is doing is enabling people like you who actually dont deserve to be at those places, leaving heaps of garbage in otherwise untouched lands.
I am in London: I read that as "after the horse has been stabbed for the night".
This topic shows GPS is quite different in Europe compared to USA, partly because the roads are different. The majority of journeys I do, I known reasonably well. I use the GPS because, if there is a problem, I want to be able to turn off, and rely on the GPS to take me through back roads. It usually predicts very good routes, and when they are not the best, its often for a good reason. I had one that could handle the traffic so well that 3 hour journeys through central London were done in an hour using empty side streets.
Of course I don't do everything it says: my first one tried to send me down a flight of stairs in Cornwall!
I find it very interesting to look at features either side of me, and use the GPS to find out what they are.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
I live in China, and one of my favorite pastimes in my town was to ride my electric moped around and discover new places. Who knows where the road leads? What, I got lost? Big deal, it just helps to get to know the city. After a while, I got a reputation as the guy to ask when someone needed to know where something was.
About a year ago, a new arrival in town showed me her iPhone. It had integrated GPS with Google Maps, in English even. All the shops were there, even the small ones. I saw a place I wanted to go, and asked her how to get there. She said she had no idea, she just popped up a window with the address in Chinese and showed it to the taxi. Getting around town by bike was a foreign idea to her. She also showed me her Chinese food menu (bilingual with photos) and her voice activated translation program (just speak and it translates to Chinese). I said, "Wow, with this you don't need to know anything or speak Chinese at all." She said, "Yeah, isn't it great!" I just sighed.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
i don't use gps, but if i get lost i sorta usually know which direction i need to go.
for those that use gps a lot, do you find yourself completely lost without it or you you retain that sense of which way you should go?
what happens when your gps contradicts your sense of direction? which one do you trust more?
New tools make things easier for us. So we spend less effort on that activity. So that area of brain is not used anymore. So we are atrophying. Thus, its better for us to go back to pre-stone age era. Long live sophism!
Every single new technology that actually proved useful and had wide-spread usage had this discussion. Nothing to see here, move on.
I tend to log GPS data for uploading to OpenStreetMap so I stick very closely to the speed limits, and slow down when I'm negotiating complex twisty side streets so I get better resolution.
I really enjoy just riding into the sun with my bike (as in bicycle) without any real direction, checking out new routes I've not tried before. Thanks to GPS I know I can always find my way back. So in a way it makes me stupid (I don't have to remember the way I came from), it makes me lazy (not planning routes ahead) but it also makes me more adventurous taking me where my bike has not taken me before, discovering new places.
Some years ago, I moved to a big city, used to live in a small village beforehand, so GPS wasn't much use anyway. In the beginning, I was heavily relying on GPS systems to get me where I wanted inside the city, and in the end what happened was that there were some "islands" in the city that I knew pretty well: The immediate vincinity of my flat, the area around my workplace, or where my regular bars were located. However, everything in between was a big black hole, and if you had asked me how to get from one island to the next, I'd have shrugged and pointed at the navigation system (or I had just used the subway).
Then, big shock, I decided to buy a motorbike. From one day to the next, no GPS anymore, since navigation systems for bikes are horribly expensive, and the phone is just impractical since you need to stop, take of the gloves, get the phone, etc... So I actually had to memorize where I wanted to go beforehand. I was lost more than once, but these days I have a much better understanding of the city I live in, and I even got to see places that I have never seen in my whole car-driving-time. Many times now, I can even skip looking at the map beforehand, simply because I know already how to get where I want. I also noticed, that when you listen to the instructions of the GPS system, I tend to pay less attention to my surroundings. Of course I'd watch the traffic, but I'd hardly see anything beyond that, and that is something that has remarkably changed since I don't rely on it anymore.
If anything I am now inclined to discover more. With the ability to get birds eye views of places I am visiting I am walking to all sorts of places I would otherwise have not found or not been keen to go.
Is how many people on a site like this confuse GPS with GIS. GPS is just the positioning system that provides you with coordinates based on satellite triangulation. GIS is the mapping system.
I've been traveling on the job for 35+ years and have a map in my head. I don't 'need' GPS to find my way around, but it's handy to have. It displays my speed more accurately than the speedometer and it gives a fairly accurate time of arrival.
When I go to another state to work I ask for the opinions of the guys I'm working with to tell me which local places are the best for breakfast and dinner.
GPS has turned the majority of the car drivers around here into digital lemmings. Some would not even recognise their own home without a tin can voice announcing "destination reached".
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
The thing that atrophies your sense of direction the most is the external navigator that does the thinking for you. This navigator can be a person next to you or can be a functionality of your GPS app. It's this external help that does the thinking for you that makes you lose every sense of where you are and where you are going.
But the fact that GPS shows you at all times where you are on a map, does that hurt? Maybe, but whatever effect that has might be very variable. In any case I'd separate it from the navigation part..
Nepal was ruined by the locals long before GPS.
I spent about 15 years in the boy-scout movement, and I learned pretty well how to walk in the world using maps, compass, sun and stars for finding my way to home. Furthermore, it is about 35 years I practice mountain hiking and climbing, often alone, and never got into troubles when I had to find my path. This experience has been fruitful also when it comes to driving: it is quite surprising how easy it is to find your road, when you have the ability to think in terms of cardinal points, notable references and you have in your mind a rough image of the territory you are crossing. So I never use a GPS in my daily activities, but I rescued twice people in the mountains who were into deep troubles, because they had neither map nor compass, but only a GPS with all the waypoints loaded in the memory, and a empty battery.
However I do have a small GPS tracker, and I use it when I go around in the woods picking up mushrooms and truffles: if you combine your findings with coordinates using geostatistics you get very interesting maps. And no, I am not going to publish them on the web!
On the surface of the Earth, there is no "discovery" if you are talking about finding new lands or something. The whole surface is mapped, with quite a bit of precision. It is all known. The age of discovery, in that sense of the word, is dead.
Now of course if you want a thrill of personal discovery, you still have that option. You can go exploring any area you like and not use a map, GPS, etc. You can personally enjoy finding out things for yourself, without having looked it up first. You just know that it has in fact been mapped by humans.
All GPS does is let us know where we are much better than ever before. It is an easy to use tool that makes precise geolocation a reality everywhere except maybe densely forested areas or underground.
Some hikers keep the GPS in their backpack as a backup, look at the tracks and paths on a map, and as the parent poster says look at the contours and lie of the land. They will probably look at the map once or twice per mile in open country. If they intended to walk along the top edge of a wood, but find they reach it at a path entering the middle, a quick check of the map and on they go - they can join their original track at the other side. Often their GPS will show coordinates only, and will be used in an emergency referencing against a paper map.
Other hikers have a GPS with a detailed walking map added. They will look at this every few hunderd yards. You will sometimes see them backtrack 20 yards after a fork in a path and take the other one, rather than angling across country to join it. If they expected to walk along the top edge of a wood and reach it at a path entering the middle they would probably bactrack or find a marked path round the edge. Entering woods can bring you into dangerous territory where you lose the signal. If their GPS failed or ran out of charge they would probably be on their mobile calling rescue services. If they didn't get a signal they would not want to head for higher land if it meant leaving the track.
To me the second type doesn't sound fun and is a liability to themselves and the rescue services.
This is not a bad point, and I can sort of relate to what you mean. But still, I find that truly being lost is itself the best discovery tool. You really start paying attention to details when you have that "holy shit, how do I get home from here?" feeling. I've often said to friends that mine is the last generation of humans that will know what it feels like to be lost. That might sound like a good thing, but the human brain has lots of gears in it that are designed for dealing with being lost. I think it's a bit of a shame that we're going to stop using this capacity that we have.
We do.
Was navigating a car from the backseat, back from a night out. It's a town I don't live in and we often use a 'Navi' (german layman term equivalent of 'GPS' in the U.S.). However, the Navi was packed away, since I knew the way from the venue to where we were going. But I was chatting with the lady next to me and we missed a turn. It's been ages since, but I instantly went into 'landmark, neighbourhood and general direction' mode and we got to the destiny with barely any delay. And that was across a river, with another river nearby and on the other side of town.
I'd say navigating without artificial assistance is a skill like bicycle riding. Once learned you won't forget it. It's a also a lot about taking calculated risks. And I do remember turning pages in huge road atlases, cursing every time about how tedious the task of connecting one double-page to an adjacent is, and thinking up better methods. Alas, back then we did know the concepts, didn't we? But the technology just wasn't there or cheap enough. I figure you could build a decent Navi on my DOS Pocket PC from the early 90ies - only they weren't widespread enough for it to be feasable. Mercedes Benz had only started working on digital roadmaps, smaller flywheel compases and stuff a few years earlyer.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
... in my mom's basement. And of course I'm way too fat to leave...
Be seeing you...
Yes, GPS changed us. Many GPS-equipped peoples assume that you have GPS too and do not give extra instructions when they give you an address.
For me, the main problem with GPS is that paper maps are slowly disappearing. At least, in Eastern Europe. In 4-5 years, I'll have to buy GPS navigator even without real need only because paper maps are not sold anymore.
Barring large scale failure and poor terrain, our children will be the first generation of children who will grow up not knowing what it is to be lost.
I think that where the change will be the most obvious will be how the next generation will relate to this service compared to us. We have had to get used to this technology whereas our kids will be growing up not knowing anything other than ubiquitous GPS and wireless networks etc etc.
Interesting times.
It used to be that, with a map, I could find little-used alternative routes around highway congestion. Some of those routes are themselves now becoming congested, and I suspect much of the extra traffic is GPS-directed.
I did not know or care about much of the areas around me ( adjacent towns etc.)when I moved to central FL. for the past 20 years, since I have been using GPS for about a year and a half in my work I have a much better understanding of my surroundings and can get to areas I have been before without the GPS with ease. It is a tool, just like a regular map or even google maps. I really don't understand how having more knowledge and intel about something could cause you to have less wisdom about that given subject? It really doesn't make and sense?
I purposely get myself lost and explore. Just use the gps to get me back
There Can Be Only One...
I've got Aspergers and it always used to stress me out anytime I had to travel. Even if I knew exactly where I was going, still the potential of making a wrong turn or having my route blocked would make me dread going places.
Now with my GPS I can travel with a smile. Even if I've been a certain way 100 times just having it with me completely eases my mind and let's me focus on other things. I totally recommend getting a GPS to anyone with travel anxiety or any type of panic attacks.
Also strangely by joining OpenStreetMap I'm motivated to explore my environment to find new places not yet mapped, I can honestly say I've seen just about every street in my town now compared to in the past when I'd always take the exact same routes.
GPS really improved my quality of life.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
I never used it. I've always been able to get into my car and drive in any pointless direction then find my way back. The family used to do that all the time when I was a kid. I'm sure sending a repeating ping to satellites would make life a lot easier for people wanting to know where you are if need be.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
GPS is only as smart as it's operator. You also get what you pay for. My second unit, a $100 refurbished TT 720 kicks ass with real time traffic that's subscription free using clear channel FM found in most metropolises. If I override a navigation decision it doesn't harp, it recalculates the route given present location. This unit makes my first look like a hammer and screw.
GPS saves me time and gas. If i want to ramble I'll turn it off, smoke a doob and flow.
You were probably stupid before the general adoption of GPS technology.
The big impact I have seen from GPS proliferation, is people conflating tech that tells you where you are, with mapping (and mapping databases and routing algorithms). It is pretty shocking to hear people say, "My GPS [gave me bad advice]" and others around them accept this as a normal statement, whereas ten years ago the speaker's confusion would have just gotten them smirks, even from non-techie laymen.
So in that respect (ignoring issues of reliance on tech itself), GPS really does seem to be making us dumber.
I'm pretty sure I'm GOING to get marked as a troll, but I found it ODD that you used caps a lot to emphasize your sentences. Do you realize how MUCH you actually do this?
Quite aware. HOWEVER, I do it in lieu of using HTML formatting, which can vary dramatically in appearance from browser to browser and by user preference.
Using caps for emphasis, I side-step this issue.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Once in Switzerland he seriously proposed a route that was 3 sides of a square because the fourth side was the (very) scenic route. I overruled him and took the fourth side, while he complained for the next hour and a half that we would be "late", right till we got to the airport nearly two hours early.
GPS was made for people like him, though I wonder if he has looked for one with an "avoid mountain passes" option.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
As a touring cyclist having a gps has been a godsend. I plot my routes ahead of time with some Google map based software like Ride With GPS, then download the route as a track into my gps. Keeping on route is as simple as following the line on the gps. If I want to go off route, the gps gives me the data to do it. No more trying to memorize cues, stopping to check turns, or fumbling with maps that were either too large for any detail or too detailed to get the big picture. I do keep some sort of paper map and magnetic compass along just in case of gps failure. The gps occassionally directs me to non existant roads but that is an issue with maps in general.
My navigational skills are better for the gps, even with gps off, as I actually see and learn where I am in reference to various landmarks. Similarly, the advent of Google to how Google maps allow me to fget my head around unfamiliar places. While planning for a cycle tour of the UK in 2006 I had spent months studying Ordinance Survey and Sustrans maps with minimal success in getting the big picture. Then Google came out with their easily scrollable, zoom in zoom out well annotated features. Six hours of playing with it gave me a firm grasp of UK geography.
In short, with a gps I for the first time turely know where I am. Folks who blindly follow gps instructions probably had no clue to begin with.
Others have touched on this here, but to be more to the point: GPS is a good (although sometimes overly-relied on) tool for navigating from Point A to Point B. What I find it most useful for, however, is allowing me the freedom to drive, hike, or bike way off the beaten path to the point of getting lost, only to ask GPS how to get back home if and when I do get lost. For me, especially in the city scenario, GPS actually enables me learning the city faster and with a larger working area than without it simply because I'm no longer concerned about getting "lost".
[eyeswivel] That's what they want you to believe. [eyeswivel]
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
For awhile, I was known by my GPS coordinates. It made social networking impossible because my name changed every time I moved, so subsequently, I decided to translate my name to a galactic coordinate set. Now I shave my name with 7 billion others, and I am part of a larger collective. Since my resistance to universal truths diminished to zero, this completely changed my perspective my priorities. I was immediately aware that I shared a common set of concerns with all my brethren and cistern. I no longer purchase anything that isn't 100% recyclable, and all my investments are in socially responsible companies led by executives that belong to the Unitarian Universalist Church.
I am currently on a pilgrimage to the University of Manchester, the alma mater of James Lovelock. Where I will offer my soul to Gaia and transmogrify into a beautiful butterfly. Then I will show up and Woody Allen's stoop and demand 90% of my success, on the spot. Unless I take a wrong turn and end up in a lake or stranded in Death Valley because I listened to the monotonous voice emanating from this @#%^ contraption on my dashboard.
Did I mention that I'm texting this on my SmartPhone?
One day the GP will get used to emphasis by upper case characters... the way things have been since the beginning of the Internet.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
So suddenly a mapping and coordinate technology is responsible for litter?
That would have nothing to do with the person going there would it?
You sound like a person living near Yosemite when the park opened.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
Much ado about nothing. The internet only decides things for people who have shut off their brain. If you want to tackle that, it's a completely different issue, but go right ahead because I'm sure those people are missing out on a lot more than town X's identity.
Your kids/grandkids/greatgrandkids (as appropriate) will not know what it feels like to be lost. Think about that. The notion of being lost is a universal human feeling not quite like any other feeling. We've all been lost, regardless of our navigation skills. The next generation won't ever be lost. They won't experience that feeling. They may be in unfamiliar territory, but they will know where they are.