an interesting thought experiment is to ponder just how many skills are being lost due to technology. I know how to read a map and how to find rough compass bearings but i was never in a situation where i needed either skill. Could i manage without GPS - probably but i’m not confident.
If GPS died tomorrow because of a solar flare, would the younger generations manage?
People are completely dependend on GPS but also might not use it as often as you would think. First time planning a route to some new job/home/friend requires GPS but after that I'll do everything on autopilot. Proximity to existing routes also massively reduces complexity.
In general, I think our adaptation has significantly increased our ability to navigate at the minor cost of using either the map and compass or the new gps and advanced map data.
My GF has been telling about how there's a lot kids at her school that don't know how to tell the time on analogue clocks anymore.
She says it's because kids don't interact with analogue clocks much anymore and Covid lockdowns meant that a lot of kids never learnt it in school either. So apparently there is now a generation of kids who are around 10 - 12 who have no idea how to read the time from an analogue clock.
On one hand, I get the concern about this because mechanical clocks still exist, familiarity informs me that they're easy to read, and nostalgia tells me they're important.
On the other hand, they are unintuitive, less common with every passing year, and I'd rather my children get any recess than add "learn to use another antiquated tool" into the school curriculum. I do complicated math for a living, but nobody's offended that I didn't ever get good at using a slide rule.
I cannot speak for everyone, but my elementary school had analog clocks (which kids learned to read) while maintaining recess, art, music and gym.
Having taught math to children, analog clocks are a great way to learn and apply fractions. I suspect that children's inability to read analog clocks tracks pretty well with their abysmal math skills, like fractions.
So maybe we don't "add" analog clocks to the school curriculum, but we instead replace some nonsense with analog clocks and fractions.
Ten years after the slide rule calculator came out, the physical slide rules had virtually disappeared. Clock with hands show no signs of disappearing. Sundials on the other hand are safe to ignore.
I can't remember the last time I saw someone with a mechanical watch other than as a fashion statement.
25 years ago, my household had mechanical alarm clocks, a mechanical clock on the oven, and multiple mechanical clocks on the walls of different rooms. Today, I think I might have a broken mechanical watch in my "you should probably fix these things" piles.
My parents required me to have an analog watch as my first watch. We did the same for our kids.
Where we are, analog time-telling is a required part of the (common core) curriculum. So kids would have to learn it in school, though not necessarily internalize it for long enough that it would stick in the long run.
Forget about maps and navigation, I just wish all the people obliviously using their phones in public had the spatial awareness to realize they exist in a shared space and take up physical volume. Think sidewalks, roads, etc.
That's odd to me. Even when using GPS I'm always looking at the map to figure out what the upcoming turns are because I have zero faith in the accuracy of the voice directions and arrows. Do people just follow the directions without understanding the route on the map?
>Do people just follow the directions without understanding the route on the map?
Most people I know do that.
I almost always look at a preview of the GPS route and try to understand the gist of the directions before I start driving. I build a narrative like "2 left turns, 1 right, then driving for quite awhile before taking an exit". It helps my mental model of the areas of town and how they connect.
I exclusively use the map and never use voice direction or arrows. Everyone I've mentioned this to or has seen me do it thinks I'm weird for doing so, so I'd say it's uncommon.
I find it a lot easier as I have a mental picture of things.
I think GPS is best thought of as "directions as a service" (demand defaulting to JIT).
What would probably happen is that people would start asking for / giving directions again; my impression is that maps have usually been secondary to this ad hoc social process of informal directions, and it would probably re-emerge.
I don’t know if this is true for older generations, but for myself and many of my zoomer and millennial friends barely know street names making giving or receiving directions much harder.
Personally I rarely rely on turn-by-turn navigation but instead look at the map before hand and take a mental map of the directions to get there.
I always try to build a mental map of whatever area I'm traveling to. Even if only the major highways and arterials. My GenZ son is fully reliant on GPS to go anywhere he hasn't been at least three times before. While I'm sure he could build a mental map if he needed to, it's not something he does because he's never had to.
He also has no concept of road names. I was describing the route I would take when he needed to travel across the Seattle metro one time and any road other than I-5 was a complete unknown to him. It's a little scary to me.
That's interesting. Are you saying many people you know don't usually check street signs against the name of the streets the GPS directs users to? I know that's my reflex when I have readable street signs, but I guess I have no idea what portion of people rely on that vs the "feel" of how close the turn is from the visual representation on-screen (which I use sometimes too, but don't like relying on since it often lags a bit) or other cues.
Not quite, but maybe, I don’t talk to my friends about how they interact with gps directions. I’m saying that when giving verbal directions knowledge of street names aren’t generally shared equally. I know my knowledge of street names when im giving directions for the city I’ve lived in for almost 2 years is not great. I also commute by bicycle and don’t rely on GPS, just navigating by special awareness mostly.
I think people could re-learn they skill pretty quickly, but putting that aside, I wonder how well we could do with just ground based stuff. We’d still have triangulation via cell towers, which was widely used not that long ago. Also I wonder how well we could do with a modern cellphone using image recognition on the road signs paired with a really accurate map of the roads.
Old marine maps had various landmarks on them, along with their height. This allowed you to get angle and distance, giving you the opportunity to calculate position with pen and paper even if you only had a single landmark in view.
Not just old marine maps -- modern marine charts have the same. They mark radio towers, grain silos, etc. because although GPS is widely-used, the old navigation techniques are still important.
I believe the U.S. Naval Academy actually stopped teaching old school celestial navigation for a while, then someone with a bit of common sense realized that there were scenarios (particularly in a war situation) where the GPS constellation might not be available, and started teaching it again.
You can't just pull over at a gas station in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and ask for directions. :-)
I distinctly remember my parents, before satellite navigation systems were common (let alone phones) having endless arguments over bad map reading when on family trips.
It's not a skill that was lost to technology, it's a skill that most people never mastered even before we all had GPS systems in our pockets.
This is answer to a lot of question. The fact that people are dependent on some technology today does not mean that they will be non-functional when that it is taken from them. People adopt very quickly.
If GPS died tomorrow because of a solar flare, would the younger generations manage?