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.'"
Soul-less (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure, and taking someones picture will steal their soul as well. And now you can get a camera and a GPS in a single convenient package [gpsreview.net], so you can both take the souls of the natives _and_ conveniently avoid their local culture at the same time!
Meanwhile, back on planet Earth, my GPS has brought me to more interesting places than I care to count, places I would never have visited without this handy tool pointing the way (or at least helping not to get lost). I'm sure the next generation won't even know what the phrase "getting lost" really means, just as being "out of contact" will have no meaning to them. A map will be about as useful to them as a sextant is to us (what? You sold yours on Ebay years ago? Shameful!). And personally, I wish them all the best with it!
"Real men" ... bah! (Score:2, Interesting)
But do real men use sat-nav?
In the same way that "real men" only program in assembly!
Sorry, which planet Earth? -sextants still in use (Score:3, Interesting)
One good solar flare and no GPS and VHF for a while. Did you realise that? Solar storms in the past have gone on for days, which is a long time to be without navigational aids. Your hurrahing for technology is misplaced. Yes I have GPS, yes I keep conventional maps and compass in the car as a backup. I've known too many people drive around London for ages because they were in an urban canyon and the GPS could not distinguish parallel streets. Our problem around here is Bulgarian and Polish drivers who use car GPS until they find themselves as a T-junction too small for their Actic (semi) to get round, unable to reverse, and have to pay a local farmer to drag out their trailer with a tractor. Great fun unless they're blocking your way home.
(As for "taking pictures will steal souls", can I just point you at the late Michael Jackson, an obvious case of the phenomenon? I think it was Terry Pratchett who observed something like "the idea that taking pictures steals souls is held only by primitive tribes and advanced psychologists".)
Sure. (Score:3, Interesting)
At midnight in an unknown town after fighting 3 hours with a bike tire from hell I want to be knocking on stranger's doors and ask for directions instead of firing up Google Maps on my cell and find my way myself. (Wait, that's GSM-nav. Does that count?)
Incidentally, I planned my route with a good old fashioned map, because online resources for bike routes in Germany suck ass.
We use them because they're better (Score:3, Interesting)
That's why they are popular. It's also possible to update a Satnav with new data if roads change, or new ones are built. Most people's car-atlases are obsolete if more than a few years old - meaning we have to replace them regularly to keep up-to-date. While the cost is small, it adds up with a new atlas every couple of years.
The biggest problem with using a map is knowing where you are starting from. It does have a larger "page" than a Satnav screen, which means you get more context at once, but if you are lost it's impossible to work out how to get to where you want to be - as you don't know where you are to start with. Similarly, if you're alone in a car, probably the single most dangerous thing you can possibly do while driving is keep looking down to refer to a map on your lap, while trying not to shunt the vehicle in front if it slows down.
The point in the article about men disliking taking instructions from a woman's voice shows how out of touch the writer is (and therefore how completely lacking in credibility the whole article is). If you don't like one vioce CHANGE IT. If your budget Satnav only comes with one vioce BUY ANOTHER if it annoys you that much. So far as comparing map-reading with calligraphy or thatching - this is completely spurious: almost no-one in past eras could do either of these crafts, just like very few people have ever really had the skill to read a map (Question: do you know how to tell which way a river flows, by looking at the direction of the contours? Congratulations, you're in the top 1%)
Real human directions (Score:5, Interesting)
This isn't just satnav. I don't know many people who can remember how they got somewhere just after they drove with somebody dictating directions. My theory is that "left here... second right..." kind of directions turns off (or reduces the need for) the area of the brain that would normally be tracking where you actually are in relation to where you are actually going.
Re:Road signs (Score:5, Interesting)
I was way behind the curve in getting a sat-nav even though it fits the kind of tech-gadget market that should interest me. You're absolutely right that a sat-nav isn't vital for travel, but then nor were road signs if you have a map, a map isn't important if someone wrote the route down for you and writing it down isn't required if you just remember it in your head....
The point of a sat-nav isn't to make the impossible possible, it is to provide a quick and easy way to do something and a safety blanket if you go wrong. I must of used my sat-nav 50+ times now and the only time it has been really advantageous was when I got caught in a 5 mile queue of still traffic at a junction between motorways. I got it to plan an alternative that didn't use the next motorway and got home virtually as fast as originally planned. Yes it would be possible to get my map out and look for alternatives, but sat-nav does it quickly, optimally and can compare distances and times more easily, what's there not to like?
Re:Road signs (Score:5, Interesting)
I guess a GPS unit is a bit like code generation tools (zomg a backwards car analogy!
Re:Map on TomTom (Score:2, Interesting)
I tried following just the voice commands for a bit, and couldn't get myself to the point where I trusted myself to be correctly following the instructions. I don't think I did anything wrong in that time, but every turning felt like a bit of a gamble. In contrast, a quick look at the screen with a map on it and I can see the context of the junction. So I know that I've got to turn left here but 20 feet down the road I want to turn right, say. Or that this little road on the left isn't actually the 'next left' the satnav wants me to go down. I'm also appalling at counting roundabout exits (though I tend to give directions using them), and work better off knowing which direction I'm going to be leaving in, where, again, the map comes in handy. In general, I find the voice mostly useless, so turn it off, and just use the map with the arrows at the bottom. I do tend to have a reasonable idea of where I'm going, though - I'll have researched the route and at the very least recognise towns I'm going to be going through or towards.
Doubt it... (Score:3, Interesting)
I would rather posit that the constant (in)breeding of stupid people is 'destroying local knowledge'. I was brought up before (Not by much) the internet and 'wikipedia as a verb', and at least in my case easy access to information SUPPLEMENTS what I know, and doesn't make me RELIANT on such technology. Of course, as society gets dumber and lazier as a whole, I have little doubt that instant access to information WILL replace actually having to know and remember stuff... But that's not the fault of the technology, it's the fault of modern civilization's end-run around natural selection. :P
Laws Of Technology..... (Score:3, Interesting)
The Laws of Technology:
1) The more technologically advanced and/or complex a system is, the easier it will be to defeat or break.
2) As information retained by technological systems increases, the less information is retained by humans, thus progressively minimizing the need for a human working knowledge.
3) "Advanced" doesn't necessarily mean advanced.
Who needs to:
1) Learn how to read a map if you can use your GPS?
2) Learn how to spell, if you have spell-check?
3) Learn proper grammar, if you have grammar-check?
4) Learn penmanship, if you type instead of write?
5) Learn Morse code, if your cell phone cannot get a signal?
Unfortunately, people have become so reliant on technology that they have made themselves completely vulnerable to the most simplest of problems, particularly #1 above, which could be the difference between life and death if the GPS unit is damaged or the batteries are dead. Number 4 is becoming an increasing problem, since pharmacists are increasingly misreading prescriptions because the handwriting of the doctor that wrote them is so bad that they dispense the wrong compound, with disasterous results.).
Consider learning Morse code: If you are in a situation where you need it, like boating or hiking, chances are VERY good that your cell phone won't get a signal, and a 50 cent mirror or $2.50 flashlight will get a distress message out better. Even with a radio, basic radio operation skills are far more helpful that being able to text, since cell reception is not as widespread, powerful, or reaching as a signal from a radio.
Skills that are not dependent on technology are vital. Society has become reliant on technologies and gadgets that were intended to *aid* in accomplishing tasks, and not intended to completely replace hard skills.
If you need to live your life surrounded by gadgets, gizmos, and the latest tech, chances are you are already diminishing your capability to adapt and function should something happen and they stop working.
OpenStreetMap the future for local knowledge (Score:5, Interesting)
Most of the digital mapping data misses out a lot of local features. Even the Tele Atlas data that Google maps uses is buggy and in Western Europe misses minor roads, and I've even seen it miss junctions between major roads. In Eastern Europe it often misses entire roads and cities (e.g. compare the capital of Albania on Google Maps [google.co.uk] and OpenStreetMap [openstreetmap.org] .
Even in Western Europe, the digital map makers miss stuff like cycle and walking trails. If you look at a detailed map like the British Ordnance Survey, which has been built upon local knowledge for hundreds of years, you'll see an amazing amount of information that is missed in the digital maps. I was surprised the first time I looked up my local area and saw that even the tiniest woods were named, and every hill was named and had elevation data. This is local data that almost no-one cares about anymore, but it still seems a shame to lose the history. I think the future is this kind of local data encoded in a modern digital open-standard format, and the only project I see doing this kind of work is OpenStreetMap.
Re:Road signs (Score:5, Interesting)
One drawback is I can't give directions at ALL, but thats minor to me."
That's wierd, becauseI can not only give someone step by step directions, I can tell them exactly how much distance to travel on each road before making a turn and lot's of other information, even if I don't possess personal knowledge of the route and/or destination ! . Hell, I can even E-Mail them a hard copy if they want. Allow me to introduce you to my magical secret [google.com] !
In other news, the existence of technologies such as refrigeration and gun powder have greatly reduced the abilities of most to survive as a hunter gatherer. This is a pretty huge concern, and somebody should really write an article to warn us of all the dangers!
Historical place names (Score:4, Interesting)
It's more than just the back streets. I often notice LOTS of fascinating details on local maps (such as the high-res ordnance survey maps) that simply aren't included in the likes of Google Maps, Microsoft's Live Virtual Earth Whatever, etc. Mapquest (or was it multimap) used to provide these, but when google earth and all came along, they switched to Live to compete, and lost all the details that made me use them.
There's a basic example of what I'm talking about here:
http://www.keith-dufftown-railway.co.uk/maps/Map3.gif [keith-duff...lway.co.uk]
Note the names of hills, local areas, quarries, etc. Often these local names are what give rise to street names and town names. More importantly, stuff like ancient pagan sites and ancient burial grounds --- the fascinating rich places of history and legend --- are often included.
The world will definitely be a colder place if these are lost in favour of being able to zoom in from a globe to pixelated overhead photos of cows, and low-res DEMs instead of intricate contour lines.
Re:Sorry, which planet Earth? -sextants still in u (Score:5, Interesting)
In the parent's defense, events strong enough to distrupt GPS comms do not have to be on the scale of the Carrington Event that you mentioned. From
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/06may_carringtonflare.htm [nasa.gov]
In December 2005, X-rays from another solar storm disrupted satellite-to-ground communications and Global Positioning System (GPS) navigation signals for about 10 minutes. That may not sound like much, but as Lanzerotti noted, "I would not have wanted to be on a commercial airplane being guided in for a landing by GPS or on a ship being docked by GPS during that 10 minutes."
The same article says
On Earth, power lines and long-distance telephone cables might be affected by auroral currents, as happened in 1989. Radar, cell phone communications, and GPS receivers could be disrupted by solar radio noise. Experts who have studied the question say there is little to be done to protect satellites from a Carrington-class flare.
Granted, recent the recent flare-related GPS disruption didn't last several days, but large flares do happen on a fairly regular basis (the article mentions 'huge' storms in 1942 and 1989). Which confirms the parent's main point: that backup tech (like sextants) is really a necessity when lives are at stake, simply on the basis of solar flares.
Obviously, backup tech is also needed to cover everyday problems like systems breakdowns while at sea.
Sat-nav is a menace (Score:3, Interesting)
One time we came home from holiday ro find the wall had been knocked down by a 5 axle lorry that didn't even realise what they'd done.
Much more steps should have been taken during the writing of sat-nav code so shit like this doesn't happen, Tom-Tom, Garmin etc. should have consulted gotten local knowledge so to avoid problems like this. I read of one village that has had some serious problems with lorry drivers treating it as a rat-run, http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/03/08/satnav_menaces_somerset_village/ [theregister.co.uk]
Sat-nav creators should hold some responsibility for their actions, or rather inactions in forseeing shit like this happen.
Re:Road signs (Score:4, Interesting)
I bought a gps to get from Ottawa to Disney World. Got me there alright except the gps guided us to the staff's entrance and not the general public entrance. The man at the gate was wonderful and gave us pins, a bit of fairy dust a local map and then he sent us on our way. We ended-up with free parking on top of that. The lesson I guess is that sometimes it pays to get lost.
Re:Road signs (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't drive, but I do cycle most journeys of under an hour.
I live in London. If you follow the road signs (the ones for cars) on a bicycle you'll travel a lot further than you need to in most cases, and be using the busy main roads and junctions, which are the least pleasant to cycle on (except at 4am on a Sunday). It's better following the cycle route signs, but they try and avoid large roads, so the route still isn't as direct as it could be.
If I have time I have a look at a map (one with the cycle routes marked, as they're free [tfl.gov.uk]), and plan a route like "follow the cycle route signs towards Westminster, until I get to King's Road since it goes too far out of the way then, but rejoin it after the park".
Every time I go somewhere new (or somewhere I've not been often) I pick up some extra local knowledge, like noticing I'm going across a street I recognise the name of, or seeing that going the wrong way down a one-way street (ahem) would have saved a large detour.
Re:Road signs (Score:2, Interesting)
I have recently brought my bike to the city but i'm almost terrified of cycling through parts of it - i've lived here about 2 years now and have regularly visited for most of my life. But i work near Holborn and the traffic here is crazy
Re:Is Sat-Nav Destroying Local Knowledge? (Score:3, Interesting)
What the grandparent is trying to say is "Yes".
Pretty much same thing happened when cell phones came around, all of a sudden, I couldn't remember anyone's phone number. I was used to look up the name in a contact list and click on dial.
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.
So yah, we are becoming quite handicapped due to technology, not judging if this is a bad thing or a good thing, however if GPS were to dis-appear today, I have faith that we will recover quite soon, i.e. if GPS don't stick around long enough to effect our evolution.
Re:Road signs (Score:3, Interesting)
If, at a higher zoom level, a twisty road gets normalised to a straight line to a destination, it may as well be a straight line. The twists and turns are immaterial.
Just like a statistical plot: the individual data points may fluctuate, but if there is a clear trend (if the fluctuations are less than the confidence interval), the fluctuations become moot in doing analysis.
Mart
Re:Sat-nav is a menace (Score:4, Interesting)
I wonder how many more stories like this we'll see once sat-nav becomes something that almost everyone uses. For now, most people who have it don't have it on for most of their trips, but many people who "grow up with it" eventually will. This means that the magic voice will have incredible power in shaping urban traffic patterns. Some roads will be jammed while others will be empty, and all because of sat-nav. I wonder if cities will start adapting to sat-nav by widening the streets that (say) Gramin likes to recommend.
I can imagine a scene in a future movie where some old coot gives the protagonist a ride without nav-sat through the city - taking shortcuts, avoiding lights, dodging jams, and revealing hitherto unseen, decaying, abandoned-looking streets. The protagonist gets to his destination in half the normal time, but still thinks the old man is nutty for his luddite refusal to do things the easy way.
Re:Road signs (Score:3, Interesting)
This reminds me of a neat map trick I learned when I started riding a motorcycle. It's called the "String Test". It's a simple test: lay a piece of string along a road that has the mileage displayed on it, then measure the string on the provided map scale. If the printed distance is longer than the measured distance, that means the cartographer artificially straightened the road for the purpose of drawing the map. And that means it's a twisty, windy road, and will be a lot more fun on a motorcycle!
The twists and turns may be immaterial if your only purpose is to get from A to B, but different people have different purposes. On a bike, the fun comes from the ride, and freeways are flat and boring. In an truck, the purpose is to move cargo, and there a twisty road may indicate danger or even an impassable situation. Straight roads are more profitable.
Re:Road signs (Score:2, Interesting)
For example, TomTom can show you the "fastest" route and the "shortest" route. When showing the "fastest" route, it makes assumptions about the speed you can drive that are not always true; it often assumes a speed of 30 mph on major roads where you can go 50. Accordingly, it will prefer a route of twice the length on the motorway vs. a major road. On the other hand, "shortest" will get you on absolutely unsuitable roads. It will send you five miles down a single lane dirt track instead of 5.1 miles on a major road.
The latest TomTom (with "IQ Routes") uses real data collected over time to determine the speed that people actually drive on the roads, so if people tend to drive at 50mph on a segment of road, it will route with this speed in mind.
Also if the road is busy at certain times of the day, it will also account for this, and maybe suggest an alternative route.
Re:We use them because they're better (Score:3, Interesting)
The nice thing about a paper map is size. If you are suddenly confronted with new data, like a new road, or construction obstructing your route, a look at the map can give you a nice general idea on how to navigate, because you can see your current position and your goal in one look.
However, there's two downsides:
The best compromise, IMO, would be a satnav system fed with detailed topographical data, like the zoning information used in .nl (take a look at the Netherlands map in Openstreetmap, it is built from this data) or the Ordnance Survey in the UK, displayed on a large screen (10" minimum). That would give you both the good overview of a paper map, and detailed navigation.
Mart
Re:Is Sat-Nav Destroying Local Knowledge? (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Your friend doesn't seem too bright. He could have picked up a map at any gas station for two dollars, rather than waiting in a long line at Circus City or Butt's Buy to pay fifty times as much.
And as to the cell phones, I don't miss having to memorize numbers one bit. The only problem is I don't know my own number, but then again I never call my own cell phone.
if GPS don't stick around long enough to effect our evolution
I don't see how it could possibly affect our evolution. GPS isn't likely to make you die childless, which in a nutshell is what evolution is all about.
Re:Is Sat-Nav Destroying Local Knowledge? (Score:5, Interesting)
I started to use a GPS on our trips because when you need to get 30 bikes ready for a left turn, it's nice to know it's two miles ahead instead of waiting for the sign to show up. Plus, it's really hard to read a map while you riding a motorcycle, the wind tends to move it all around unless you use a tank bag.
I moved to Phoenix 6 years ago, and can now ride my motorcycle anywhere in this beautiful state or the Phoenix metro area without a map or GPS. The GPS and the mapping software on my PC have helped me to design routes much easier than I could have with a map. I can use Google maps to get a satellite view of roads and determine if they are dirt or not.
These tools have helped improve my local knowledge, not lessen it.
My wife has similar experience in her car. Her GPS has given her the confidence to go into areas in Phoenix with the knowledge that she will be able to get there safely. With that experience, she has gained a better understanding of the Phoenix area.
The above notes, while anecdotal, indicate that for some people, the GPS helps them learn the area.
Maybe it's all about how smart or observant the person using it is to begin with. Smart people learn faster without effort, and observant people notice their surroundings without having to work at it. I've always been good at finding my way back to a place after I've been there once or twice, even if someone else was driving. So maybe I'm just naturally more observant that those that don't learn their local area when using a GPS.
Re:Is Sat-Nav Destroying Local Knowledge? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Is Sat-Nav Destroying Local Knowledge? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Very true.
Everyone should carry a Road Atlas in the car, and if they spend any significant amount of time in a certain city or county they should purchase a local area map. Most convenience stores carry them. The best places to find local maps AFAIK are truckstops, convenience stores, and the local Chamber of Commerce.
Having said that, when I get a call from a prospective client I do use Google Maps to find the address. Then the printout of the map goes into the client list folder with the client's info written on the back of the map page.
I agree, learn to read a map (Score:3, Interesting)
In 2009, I find it amazing at how many people simply cannot read a map. Not only can they not read a map, they can't even guesstimate their orientation based on landmarks and/or the position of the sun. As far as orientation goes, out here in Phoenix, Arizona, most people seem to get that due to the way the metro area is laid out and the fact that everyone gets "The sun rises in the east and sets in the west".
SATNAV makes us lazy... VERY lazy, like most modern gadgets, it takes away the need to know the basics about anything. It goes along with kids now being REQUIRED to use a calculator in jr high school math. They're not learning the basics, so when the gadget that does a function is taken away (in this case your Garmin or other GPS device), you're left helpless, unable to do anything because your gadget is no longer in arms reach. To make this more relevant to the Slashdot crowd, think of life without your current favorite IDE of the moment, be it Eclipse, NetBeans, or what have you. Imagine having to code in JUST a text editor, without all the fancy features you rely on. Imagine building a website without Dreamweaver or somethig like that. You now exist in a world that I come from. While I appreciate the ease in which things can be done, I can still hand-code HTML, and can still write code with nothing more than VI or even ed if it came to that. Same thing for GPS and though I don't own one, I can see where it could be handy but since I can read a map, it's simply not necessary.
Maybe it's a generational thing too. A lot of my generation (Gen X) has these basic skills intact even though a lot of us embrace technology; we can live with it or witout it. The current gen knows nothing of a world without this technology, so to NOT have it would be near catastrophic. At the same time, there are those who precede my genreation that dove in head first with technology, yet still enjoys life without that tech.
Re:Is Sat-Nav Destroying Local Knowledge? (Score:3, Interesting)
Excellent points... My fear is that GPS is destroying our non-verbal memory. But as you would say, only to those who rely exclusively on it. Case in point... (not just to the parent but to anyone) ... if you use GPS to get to a place you've never been before, can you find your way back WITHOUT GPS? IMHO the legitimate reason for a "no" answer is because you were too busy paying attention to the GPS to take note of landmarks. But after visiting that same place again and again I would hope that most folks would develop the ability to navigate the return trip sans-GPS before they're able to navigate the main trip sans-GPS.
This is slashdot after all... if there's anything that unites us it would be a desire to exercise our brains. Over reliance on GPS stops/slows our use of a key part of our brains (IMHO).
Re:Is Sat-Nav Destroying Local Knowledge? (Score:3, Interesting)
Your example shows that you didn't have any local knowledge of that road. You knew how to get from A to B and your GPS suggested a slightly different route.