photography from Guatemala, Maryland, Italy and elsewhere by Doug Terry

VISIT DC? AN ESSAY ON WHY EVERY AMERICAN CITIZEN SHOULD VISIT

WOULD YOU BUY THIS CAR?

IS COLLEGE WORTH IT? SOME COUNTER VIEWS

The TerryReport: Home page

                                   News, analysis, commentary, social trends, culture, politics, government, books, movies, travel, cycling and other stuff

                                                                     T H E  T E R R Y R E P O R T 2012

                                                                                 Facts first, logic always, truth before everything

YOU THINK GPS SYSTEMS ARE GREAT? THEY HURT AS WELL AS HELP

Slowly but surely we are losing some essential skills of living. A retired grade school teacher told me recently that most students don’t know how to tell time with an analog clock (big hand/little hand).  Since it isn’t considered an important skill, with most clocks providing numbered, digital readouts, who cares? It is not that difficult to learn, but a lot of people resist, apparently.  Many students can’t write long hand either, even by the time they finish college. They go from print to typing on a computer, so if they need to write out a letter or a note, they have to do it by whatever the fastest printing by hand method they learned.

One can imagine that, by the start of the next century, most people won’t know how to do anything at all, other than get up in the morning and, perhaps, brush their teeth (that might be automated, too, by then). It is true that our ancestors had many skills that now are considered obsolete because we simply don’t use them anymore. Many people, if not a majority, could play a musical instrument a hundred years ago, before records and radio turned us all into passive receptors of music made and recorded by others. Until well into the 20th century, people gathered round pianos and sang together and everyone knew how to do it without being embarrassed.

So, now here comes GPS. Count me a techno-phobe on this issue. Using turn by turn navigation makes everyone into a passive, ignorant traveler. As the article in this weekend’s NY Times points out, it can also lessen one’s ability to find one’s way without talking assistance.

What happens when GPS goes down? What happens if your car breaks down somewhere at night and you have no idea where you are? How can you even tell a tow truck operator, the police or a taxi to come and get you? What would happen if you were robbed and had no phone available? You’d be more than lost, you’d be somewhere strange that you did not recognize with no good way out. It would be as if your brain had stopped functioning. Guess what? It does, if you rely too heavily on outside assistance.

People follow GPS systems as if the voice directing them is the voice of god. We become utterly dependent on something that people have not had for thousands of years. There is a famous story of a couple traveling down the west coast of the US. Their GPS told them to get off the Interstate and take roads that headed inland. They did so and found themselves trapped in a blizzard in the mountains and almost died. People also tell stories of people following GPS even when it is obviously wrong and then not knowing what to do next. I read of one community where a sign was put up that said, “YOU CAN’T DRIVE ACROSS THIS LAKE”, because so many GPS slaves had gone down a dead end street at the direction of the voice and then had no idea what they should do next.

Everyone, children and adults, should know how to find their way around in the world. While there is a small subset of people who are spatially challenged, shall we say, who probably can’t find their way around with a guide dog leading the way, everyone else should learn. It is not so hard.

METHODS OF LEARNING LOCATION

Here are some of the methods. When you are entering a strange area and you expect to be spending some time there (a few hours or a few days), make note of what you see going in and where it is in relation to your point of entrance. Old gas station with no pumps on the right? A trailer park? A huge high school with a stadium size football field? Just take note of what you see, where it is in relation to your travels and then, if you get lost or are just looking for something  else, you will have an orientation to the area in your head.

One trick I have used in travels in various parts of the world is to look for a landmark that stands above the houses and buildings. It could be a water tower or a flag on a tall pole or even a cell phone tower that is unusually high. I will make a mental note (these days without even thinking about it), that I am, say, about half a mile from the tall object and insight of something else. Now, I have a reference point in my head and I am creating mental map of where I am and where I would need to go to leave the town or area.

This method is called dead reckoning. You can find much more about it in Boy Scout handbooks and in any even minimal survival guide. Because I have traveled so widely, and because I got lost a number of times when I was around 10, 11 and 12, I have a mental requirement, no matter where I am in the world, of knowing the area around me, how to get from place to place and how to get out. This habit is no built out of fear, but just out of an inner desire to place myself in the world rather than having to ask everything of someone else.

Developing a sense of east and west (and north/south) can also be helpful. Since the sun always rises in the east and sets in the west, no matter where you are in the world (except at the poles, where it sometimes just circulates in those directions and never sets), you will know west, generally, by where the sun is headed and east by where you saw it coming up in the morning. This is another factor to add to making what is called a mental map of your location.  Over time, reference points become part of your thought processes, without having to call on them consciously.

The best way of establishing an orientation is walking, biking or driving around. Getting lost, a little, is a great way to learn new ways of going places and, once you find your way, you add “data” to your mental map of an area or city. On top of all that, its enjoyable. Taking taxis or having someone else drive can add a little bit of data, but not much.

We are in danger of becoming zombies to our technologies. We sit back and let the tech toys do everything, but they take away as well as give. Basic skills are being lost by the pound.  Okay, most people don’t need to know these days how to go out and kill a bear or field dress a deer (I wouldn’t want to, even if I did know the procedures.) There are some skills we shouldn’t let atrophy. One of them is finding our way home without calling, “Mommy!”

Doug Terry, 2.4.12

contact The TerryReport here

SCROLL DOWN FOR TOP NEWS HEADLINES (home page only)