Is Sat-Nav Destroying Local Knowledge? 519
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.'"
speed dial (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Road signs (Score:5, Insightful)
Is Sat-Nav Destroying Local Knowledge? (Score:3, Insightful)
*dons tinfoil hat and tinfoil accessories*
Amahgawd! mapmakers and backseat navigators of the world unite and sue these sat-nav people!
It's just like the buggy coach whip makers!
sat-nav makes it safer to be on the road, now all those idiots driving with a 4' by 4' map over the stearingwheel can actually see where they're going. (that is, if they would stop txting while driving)
I'm sorry to say, i really don't feel my masculinity threatened in any way by a female voice telling me when to turn.
It does, however, alliviate some of the stress of urban driving in cities i don't know.
Allow be to be the first.. (Score:1, Insightful)
to say Bullshit!
Ever think about how many cars DON'T have sat-nav in the world?
This guy is a perfect example of people nowadays writing articles without first using their brain.
It's not the SatNav... (Score:4, Insightful)
What's destroying local knowledge is the video baby-sitters in the back-seat. When I was a kid we knew what our neighborhood LOOKED like. These days kids just stare at the screen in the headrest in front of them from the time they pull away until they get where they're going. I'll bet half of them couldn't find their way home if you dropped them off two blocks away.
Re:Road signs (Score:5, Insightful)
Completely accurate. I bought a gps the same week I got my license. Before that I'd always drive with my parents and they would navigate for me, just trying to be helpful.
Half the time when im out, I have no idea where I am. I am where my gps told me to be. This bothers me sometimes, but the tradeoff is that I can literally go anywhere I want. Now when people start to tell me directions I just tune out and know I'll just do what the gps says. I can and have driven across the state with no problem.
One drawback is I can't give directions at ALL, but thats minor to me.
But just a counter point to play devils advocate: you dont need to use turn by turn directions, you can just use it as a small backlit map that is constantly showing you where you are. Beats unfolding paper.
everyone wave their arms in panic! (Score:3, Insightful)
Meh. It's local knowledge for *everyone* (Score:5, Insightful)
With Nokia Maps/Ovi Maps, Nokia for example are making it possible to both know exactly where you are, but also where everything you are interested in round about you is, how to get to it and making it possible to share it instantly with anyone else you think might be interested.
It's the end of the locality of local knowledge. Not of the locality or of the knowledge itself. Or put another way, local knowledge goes global.
Re:speed dial (Score:3, Insightful)
Except speed-dial lists aren't subject to the sun's 11-year solar cycle. We've just passed through a solar activity minimum, during which everyone buying into this new gee-pee-ess tomfoolery is having a great time with their magic talky boxes that never guide them astray. Come a few years and the amount of solar radiation will return to its former values. We'll be seeing estimated position errors nudging the 30m mark, as opposed to the 5-10m we've been enjoying of late.
30m is more than enough to cause the occasional hiccup in road-snapping, at best causing a loss of faith in the system, at worst a loss of life.
I, for one, keep to the old ways. I keep a compass and a paper map in my car and have thusfar avoided buying a satnav for fear of blunting my orienteering skills gained through my time spent in Scouts. A valuable skill which I'm sure will keep me from hitting the wall when the revolution comes.
Au contraire (Score:5, Insightful)
I find that having a GPS makes it easier to learn the local streets, since it shows me where I am on the map at all times. Otherwise I have to spend all my time trying to figure our what that tiny street sign says and I miss everything else.
Real men don't use tools? (Score:5, Insightful)
Local knowledge is just that - local. If you live there, you have the knowledge. How can GPS destroy that? And you know what? The article does not argue how it does. GPS is used for new routes. It's new knowledge. Nobody uses Sat-Nav repeatedly for the same destination.
Sat-Nav and GPS are tools - the article poses a question akin to asking if real men don't use hammers. I wouldn't use one to open an egg, but I would use one to fix my stairs.
I am as much a psychogeographer as anyone who loves to discover a city by getting lost in it, but if I am crossing the country (in my case, Belgium) to buy something, I would like to be efficient about getting there.
Some disturbing truth to this (Score:3, Insightful)
This wouldn't surprise me so much accept some of these folks are supposed to be computer geeks, who have no illusions about the magical powers of computers and software. Are people lazy or what?
No one use GPS to navigate to local places. (Score:2, Insightful)
What local knowledge? No one use GPS to navigate to local places. We use GPS to go places we have no knowledge of. I drove through Austria, Germany, Denmark, Sweeden, Norway this summer without any problem. Last time I did the same 5 years ago I had to spend a full day over the map figuring out the best way to go. Making notes of motorway exits and stuff. And still at every stop I was reading maps, because roads change gets closed etc.
The other thing is that the just because you use satnav you still have to look at the road ahead. If you can not remember which turn you have taken just because somebody has told you "take the second one" then you have more serious problems than SatNav can solve.
Re:Road signs (Score:5, Insightful)
I can see the utility of satnavs, but speaking for myself, I don't really see any need for one. Yes it could avoid my taking a wrong turn from time to time. But unless I was a gadget freak, would it really be worth my while carrying yet another piece of junk around in my car to save maybe 10 minutes a year finding my way back onto the right road?
As for maps (road maps that is), of course they are indispensable if you're going some place you don't know. If I want to get to Szekesfehervar I have to at least have an idea where the damned place is before I set out. By any stretch of the imagination, I don't see how using a map is severing me from a real place and reducing the world to lines on a piece of paper.
Re:Road signs (Score:4, Insightful)
Huh? Much ado about nothing. (Score:2, Insightful)
Real men use signs! (Score:4, Insightful)
Try spending a week driving in Italy with a broken sat-nav with a van full of in-laws flown in from all corners of the world, in particular try it when your *not* italian like me! The funny thing was that I never needed the thing, I mean seriously how many signs pointing to Rome do you need to see on the Motorway to know your on the right track?
Well having said that, on my previous trips to Italy when using a sat-nav on no less than two occasions the sat nav directed us onto a half constructed road! And I kid you not, one of those occasions the sat nav insisted that my fiancee and I drive off the edge of a half constructed bridge!!! It was the on-ramp to the motorway under construction!
This was Italy so that kind of thing apparently happens often, oh and before you ask there were none of the usually expected signs indicating that the road you are turning onto doesn't actually expect prior to the half built bridge!
The moral of the story is the usual rule of thumb with any system - garbage in garbage out, don't put all your faith in a machine!
Re:It's not the SatNav... (Score:5, Insightful)
What's destroying local knowledge is the video baby-sitters in the back-seat. When I was a kid we knew what our neighborhood LOOKED like. These days kids just stare at the screen in the headrest in front of them from the time they pull away until they get where they're going. I'll bet half of them couldn't find their way home if you dropped them off two blocks away.
You know, as much as I love a good ragging on TV, and as much as I hate the use of video valium for babysitting, this isn't really a new problem at all. I had to learn a lot of my community from scratch when I learned to drive because I used to read in the car.
But I wouldn't call any parent that got their kids to read a lot a bad one, would you?
Re:Road signs (Score:2, Insightful)
I have found it helpful to only rely on the GPS when I really have no idea where I am going. For mos trips I keep it off. That way I keep up my navigation skills to some degree.
It is also a good idea - though it can be hard to stick with it - to use the GPS as fallback only. You still let the GPS tell you where to go but simultaneously try to figure out which way you yourself would have chosen and keep watching the signs. This also helps if for some reason the GPS screws up (old map, road construction work etc.) or gives unclear directions (confusing intersections etc.) which I have experienced several times.
Re:Road signs (Score:3, Insightful)
I guess a GPS unit is a bit like code generation tools (zomg a backwards car analogy! :P ) in that it's a good tool for experts, but it can hinder the development of expert skills by beginners.
Yup. The law of leaky abstractions. In order to use the higher level tool efficiently, you must be proficient in the lower level foundations [joelonsoftware.com].
Re:What's more (Score:3, Insightful)
Absolutely spot on. It's just changing the usage & interface that we have of maps.
Re:Some disturbing truth to this (Score:3, Insightful)
The reason is quite straightforward. If the free information contradicts the earned / paid-for data, and they then go with it, they'll have wasted the investment in the non-free source. It's just human nature. If you want them to believe what you tell your visitors, get a toll number, so when they call you for help / directions they won't want to waste the cost of the call - thereby ensuring they'll follow your instructions.
Oh yes, one more thing (call it the consultants rule): the more they pay, the more care they'll take and the more likely they are to do what they're told.
Re:Road signs (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't actually agree because at what point do you stop learning "lower level foundations".
So say you use a GPS do you need to read maps? And if you need to read maps, don't you need to understand north, south, east, west? And if you need to understand NSEW do you need to understand a compass? And if you need to understand a compass do you need to understand longitude and latitude? And if you need to understand longitude and latitude what about true north and compass north? And what about...
What did you want to do? Oh yeah go from point A to point B! The problem I have with this lower level foundations is that they are completely irrelevant if you don't need to use them. After all the point of the argument is to go point A to point B. If you were creating the maps in the first place then well yes you need to know all of that stuff.
When I see Joel's illustration of string and strcat I just smile and think wow reminds of that old man saying, "why when I was your age I was walking through the snow and it was -150"
Again not to say that some people don't need to learn it, it all depends on what your day job is.
Re:OpenStreetMap the future for local knowledge (Score:3, Insightful)
I have multiple GPS devices, one for driving, and one for hiking. Different maps, different devices... After all if you are driving do you really care about the name of a woods? Yet if you are hiking it is important, oh wait, it is already there...
Sorry that I slapping you around, but I wish people would inform themselves on the different types of maps, and gps devices that there are. They should really take a closer look at the Garmin catalog, because then they would understand that not all devices or maps are created equal.
Don't know about Sat-nav (Score:4, Insightful)
But Google maps sure as hell increased my local knowledge. I like staring at maps. I like to pick a spot, and go there by bike.
I could see that a sat-nav on a bike will make one more courageous to explore the local area... and if you're one of those polluting road-jamming filthy bastards, you might explore the region by car...
If you look at it like that, sat-nav increases local knowledge. :D
Re:Road signs (Score:3, Insightful)
"But just a counter point to play devils advocate: you dont need to use turn by turn directions, you can just use it as a small backlit map that is constantly showing you where you are. Beats unfolding paper."
I follow military practice (because it makes sense) and have both paper maps and GPS. Electronic devices die, maps are cheap and can stay in the glovebox. Each has its uses.
I print out Google Earth satellite views with road overlay (print screen caps) for a larger-than-GPS screen view of the building I intend to visit. If I'm picking up a used car or truck, I can often see it in the photo.
Re:Road signs (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is, of course, that you are entirely wrong.
Yes, you need to know every one of those things, except maybe the difference between magnetic and true north (unless you're close to the north pole, anyway) because GPSes are, get this, sometimes wrong. Or worse, they don't work at all.
I was driving the other day on an Ontario highway. I don't live in Ontario, so I was using my GPS. Guess what: the GPS had an outdated map, so it got lost. I didn't because I know how to use a map besides a GPS, and because I can read road signs.
What Joel says is exactly right - nobody gets to be a good programmer without having good knowledge of the underlying systems. Oh, you can be passable and earn a decent living, but all the really good ones know exactly how the CPU is going to execute their code and how all the different parts fit together. The same thing goes for any other part of life. You can get around fine without worrying too much about how your GPS works or about the finer details of cartography, but when it comes down to it, anyone who can use a map is automatically better at navigating than someone who can't because there are going to be situations where a GPS just isn't going to be good enough, and even if you never come across those, knowing how to use a map will make you better at following directions, anyway, much like knowing how the CPU works can help you even when you're writing in a high level language.
Re:Road signs (Score:3, Insightful)
I started using a GPS two years ago when I received one as a present. As with many "old guys", I didn't inherently trust the female voice, figuring it couldn't know all of the details I know of Boston area streets. To my surprise, it is usually spot-on accurate and now routinely saves me lots of time when I am in an area I'm not familiar with.
The GPS is a useful tool and one of those inventions that will eventually become commonplace. I'd hate to see map reading go the way of how to read an analog clock or learning cursive handwriting. One could argue that if we're expected to do less driving to reduce our "carbon footprint" then when we drive, we need to do it more efficiently and a GPS will help do that.
Re:Road signs (Score:3, Insightful)
That's how that CNet editor died... his family survived by staying in the car.
I agree with you. The GPS is nice, it usually gives decent advice, but you have to keep THINKING.
Re:Sat-nav is a menace (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Is Sat-Nav Destroying Local Knowledge? (Score:5, Insightful)
Last year, my friend I went to a cottage , I reached first thanks to my tomtom, he got lost and called me for directions, I said "I dunno, the GPS got me here!". After struggling for an hour, he stepped into a big box store along the way in a small town and picked up a GPS, got there in about an hour after that.
To be fair to you and your friend, neither of you had any local knowledge to destroy-- that's why you both needed the GPS. What was missing that we used to use was a set of turn by turn directions on paper which you could read to him over the phone when he called.
Really, the question is silly. People who rely on GPS don't have local knowledge to destroy. In situations where they do, they ignore the GPS and use it instead. I use my GPS daily to find work sites I've never been to, but the ones I have, I spend a lot of time ignoring the GPS's instructions. "Make a left here onto the most congested street in the city", it suggests, while I retort "no, you idiot, I'm going to parallel that street on a small side street where there's no traffic". My GPS is good at reading a map, but it's a complete moron when it comes to actual local knowledge. Where the GPS shines is at giving accurate turn-by-turn directions based on your current position, which is a hell of an improvement over the kind of human generated guidance we used to have to put up with: "turn down the street with all the trees along it and turn left where the old schoolhouse used to be; when you see the big oak tree, you've gone too far". GPS isn't destroying local knowledge. It's just destroying infuriatingly bad directions generated by people with no navigation skills.
Re:Sat-nav is a menace (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Road signs (Score:3, Insightful)
Most people driving cars dont think.
and yes I know this first hand, I ride a motorcycle and I see what most of you do to try and kill us on bikes.
Re:Is Sat-Nav Destroying Local Knowledge? (Score:5, Insightful)
I second that emotion, man. GPS works great as device that reads a map aloud, maybe a slight step up from a passenger with a road atlas. Local knowledge trumps GPS every single time, however, because GPS devices can't make decisions based on information that isn't necessarily related to getting from point A to B. GPS can't tell you to avoid such-and-such street because it's a really rough part of town, nor can it tell you that Local Sports Team is playing a home game today at 5:00 PM, so if you drive too close to the stadium you'll be stuck in traffic for two hours. Also, from personal experience I can tell you that GPS doesn't always work accurately in places like Baltimore, MD or Washington, DC, places where the whims of urban development have created streets that are one-way during some hours of the day and two-way during others, and where a straight(ish) street will change names four times over five blocks, or where some streets are really more like paved alleys.
Re:Road signs (Score:4, Insightful)
I know there are motorcyclists out there that ride dangerously, but you have to admit the GP is correct - plenty of people out there drive badly, and it's not vehicle-specific. If you don't believe that, then you're probably part of the problem.
To the GP - they aren't trying to kill motorcyclists specifically; they're trying to kill EVERYONE.
Re:Is Sat-Nav Destroying Local Knowledge? (Score:5, Insightful)
The turn-by-turn electronic voice is merely a crutch for people who can't read maps. People will continue to give horrible directions even with GPS. Bottom line: learn to navigate with a map and compass.
I can't even count the number of times some well meaning person tried to give me directions like, "it's on the right side of Foobar Avenue".
So then I ask "Is that the right side as you're headed east or headed west?" and they freeze up as their eyes glaze over. Sometimes I try to help by rephrasing the question like "well, is it on the north or south side of Foobar Avenue?", and of course they're still helpless. Too many people have no concept of cardinal directions and no idea how to dead reckon from one point to another without familiar landmarks. If these kind of people ever found themselves in unfamiliar territory they'd be screwed.
And what if I'm driving by myself? Awfully inconvenient to have to pull out a map every half and hour to get the next set of directions. Or if I run into a road closure/construction/heavy traffic and need to make a detour. Or if I need to find something that is not on a map (the nearest parking garage in the city, the nearest gas station as I cruise along the highway).
Turn by turn navigation is a tool. It tells me when and where I need to turn. It means I can concentrate on driving instead of remembering that the turn I'm looking for is three blocks after Water Street. It means I don't have to slow down in traffic to try and decide if this is the turn I want only to find out that it's not forcing me to cut back into traffic like a madman. It means I am never lost even if I miss a turn. It just buzzes about recalculating and then finds me a route back. Is it perfect? No - it has more than once directed me to make an illegal left hand turn. But when I'm going somewhere for the first time I don't leave home without it. I'm a better driver with it in the car. I'm a safer driver with it in the car.
Re:Laws Of Technology..... (Score:3, Insightful)
When you've learned to survive in the wild after being left without anything on your person you'll have earned the right to lecture society about its dependence on technology.
You are so accustomed to "old" technology (like textiles, knives, clean plentiful water, food everywhere) that you take it for granted and don't even realize it. You'd be dead in a week without all these things you take for granted.Yet somehow this new technology is harmful and turning us to vegetables.
You are exhibiting classic reactionary ludditism.
Re:Is Sat-Nav Destroying Local Knowledge? (Score:3, Insightful)
Turn-By-Turn directions don't really help a lot unless you're already on the route. If you miss a turn (and don't realize until later), it's hard to recover.
There are two fundamental questions:
- Where the hell am I?
- How do I get from Here to There?
Without knowing where you are, it's hard to get (or give) directions. Similarly, a map doesn't help until you find some way to correlate your map to your current location -- whether that be a landmark, street sign, or other feature.
Re:Is Sat-Nav Destroying Local Knowledge? (Score:3, Insightful)
Well of course most people don't have a concept of which way a road runs in cardinal directions. Most local roads don't run in cardinal directions, or even directly between cardinal directions. They usually run something like "sort of south-east until they get to the church and then turns northerly curving around to full north to get around the lake, then turns back east".
Re:Is Sat-Nav Destroying Local Knowledge? (Score:3, Insightful)
Surely you can tear your eyes away from the road at least once every half hour to look at the map displayed on your dashboard-mounted GPS device.
If you can't be bothered to scan your instruments, why are you still permitted to drive?
Re:I wax nostalgic about smallpox... (Score:1, Insightful)
These articles provide balance to the manufacturers sales info which will only mention why the product is great (usually with appeals to people's emotion rather than logic or reason). They also provide balance for reviews of products that never look at the bigger picture (usually due to unmentioned commercial interests).
Something like a Tom Tom may be the best consumer sat nav on the market, but all sat navs have downsides and these are usually over looked completely in product round-ups, for example.
What I don't get is why so many people attack these non-pro new consumer gizmo articles.... it often sounds like the attacker has spent a lot on money on a product and now doesn't want to know of any possible downside.
About your sig too - when following that post it really does sound you like are unable to question the status quo in the world. In fact, you are so committed to maintain the status quo that you think it'd be OK to take another human life? Either you are a xEO of a major bank, or you are the definition of a mindless sheep!