GPS: Global Impositioning Systems

[W. K. Lis]

Interesting article on GPS in The Walrus, click on this link:

Global Impositioning Systems

Is GPS technology actually harming our sense of direction?
by Alex Hutchinson

...
When Alison Kendall’s boss told her in 2007 that her civil service job was being transferred to a different building in another part of Vancouver, she panicked. Commuting to a new office would be no big deal for most people, she knew. But Kendall might well have the worst sense of direction in the world. For as long as she can remember, she has been unable to perform even the simplest navigational tasks. She needed a family member to escort her to and from school right through the end of grade twelve, and is still able to produce only a highly distorted, detail-free sketch map of her own house. After five years of careful training, she had mastered the bus trip to and from her office, but the slightest deviation left her hopelessly lost. When that happened, the forty-three-year-old had to phone her father to come and pick her up, even if she was just a few blocks from home, in the neighbourhood where she had lived most of her life.
...
In June, Al Byrd’s three-bedroom home, built by his father on the western outskirts of Atlanta, was mistakenly torn down by a demolition company. “I said, ‘Don’t you have an address?’ †a distraught Byrd later recounted. “He said, ‘Yes, my GPS coordinates led me right to this address here.’ †The incident joined a long list of satellite-guided blunders, including one last year in which a driver in Bedford Hills, New York, obeyed instructions from his GPS to turn right onto a set of train tracks, where he got stuck and had to abandon his car to a collision with a commuter train. Incredibly, the same thing happened to someone else at exactly the same intersection nine months later. In Europe, narrow village roads and country lanes have turned into deadly traps for truckers blindly following GPS instructions, and an insurance company survey found that 300,000 British drivers have either crashed or nearly crashed because of the systems.
...

Directed there from Human Transit:

Humans have two methods of navigation. Spatial navigators can construct maps in their heads as they experience a place, and also tend to be good at using maps as navigational aids. Narrative navigators navigate by creating or following verbal directions. For spatial navigators, the answer to the question where? is a position in mapped space. For narrative navigators, the answer to where? is a story about how to get there.

 

[kettal]

I'm an excellent spatial navigator, but my brain has a fatal flaw.

For some reason, my sense of direction always involves the nearest large body of water to be south. Great when I'm in Toronto, but if I find myself in Hamilton, my compass is 180 degrees out of alignment. In Vancouver, west is south. And so on.

 

[gei]

Those people (the one who can't get anywhere without GPS, the ones who let a GPS direct them off a cliff, etc etc) were just morons.

One way or another, they were going to die a stupid death.

 

[Long Island Mike]

GPS Technology: The Dependency factor...

WKL: As a big geography buff and folded/road map collector I found GPS technology neat but I do NOT have one and also I am the type of person that always has a very good sense of direction.

As someone I know mentioned to me in a "gadget" conversation sometimes people become too dependent on technology perhaps...

I remember that truck accident mentioned-it happened on Metro-North's Upper Harlem Line to an out-of-area trucker who turned off a road onto paralleling tracks at a crossing getting stuck and later a train struck the misguided truck.
A MU train carrying passengers struck the truck. Those tracks there have third rail also-another danger not mentioned. That trucker was issued some tickets but further explained that he was following his GPS and not the true road conditions.

I understand how GEI feels but what is wrong with just studying and/or carrying a detailed map? I remember when I visited Toronto I liked the MapArt version of the Toronto street map-I studied it intently and then carried it if I needed it...Sometimes just a good MAP will do...

Thoughts and opinions from LI MIKE

 

[Redroom Studios]

well, obviously any time we visit a new city we refer to a map to find our way around. I remember the first day I was in San Francisco, I had a hard time getting my bearings in the downtown core. I think this was mainly due to 2 reasons. We were staying on Columbus Ave which runs on a diagonal and of course Market street sub-divides dowtown running on an opposite angle. Within a few hours and certainly by the following day it all made sense to me. I think the girl cited in the original story clearly has some sort of spatial disability rather than being brain numbed by technology. Personally I refuse to use a GPS - that completely takes the fun out of driving. And when I have been in vehicles with people that use one, it doesnt take me long to get sick of hearing that computerized voice!

 

[Therion]

The problem is the abandonment of common sense. I mean, why in the world would you turn onto a set of train tracks? Wouldn't you just assume that the GPS is wrong? I use the maps in my Blackberry quite often, but I don't think I will be getting a GPS anytime soon. I prefer looking at a map, memorizing the way to go, and then getting there by myself. You get to know a new area very quickly like that.

Also, the woman in the first piece clearly has a disability. The article mentions her problem when she was in high-school, and she's 43 now, which means she's had this problem long before GPS systems made their appearance in anything other than tanks.

 

[benii]

some people are just directionally challenged. As long as I can see the CN Tower, I know exactly where I am!