4 ms·

I'll be honest, I'm not sure why I should feel nostalgic about inconvenience. Getting lost is a major inconvenience, it creates anxiety, wastes time, and all ar

by mlloyd 2mo ago

I'll be honest, I'm not sure why I should feel nostalgic about inconvenience. Getting lost is a major inconvenience, it creates anxiety, wastes time, and all around just sucks. GPS greatly reduces all of those things at the expense of... I'm not sure what honestly. The article was short on that part - or at least, to me, the benefits felt like inconveniences reframed as excitement and entertainment. I'll pass on this and most of the 'I miss the good ol days when life was harder ' genre. I don't miss the days of stopping at a gas station for directions. I don't miss taking the slower route because I didn't have traffic updates redirecting me. I don't miss inconvenience for its own sake. To each their own, but I really don't get this inconvenience nostalgia period we find ourselves in.

aquafox 2mo ago
I also dont miss the days without GPS bike computers, having to navigate route with printed out google maps sheets just to realize the resolution was not high enough for my route and I had to stop at every 3rd intersection to confirm I'm still on the right track.
- ButlerianJihad 2mo ago
  Back in 2014, I returned to San Diego for a high school reunion. I did not yet have any mobile device, but my parents loaned me a car and their feature phone for my use while I was home. Now a few of my friends arranged an informal meetup which I jokingly called “The Honors Reunion” and they chose a brew pub on Coronado Island. I know many San Diego neighborhoods like the back of my hand, but Coronado was a place where I only drove to the beach, not needing any map or navigation, because it is hard to miss the Pacific Ocean segment between a Naval Air Station and the Hotel Del. Anyways, I asked Mapquest how to find this brew pub, and I made a printout. This should have sufficed: Coronado is really, really small. But the pin on the map led me to a darkened, mostly residential side street. I parked, walked around, scratched my head, and concluded that the map was wrong. So rather than try asking for directions or calling my parents, I am a man after all: I drove up and down every street, crisscrossing the business district, basically brute-forcing the map until I finally stumbled on the location itself. My friends were all there, happy to see me again, and we had a great chat before the big reunion activities began. Arriving back home, I managed to piece together what happened, and apparently I had just made an extra misclick on the map surface just as I printed it out, sending the pin into no-man's-land. That is probably the last time I got thoroughly and accidentally lost.
- ghaff 2mo ago
  I do a fair number of long distance walks in the UK and I do carry maps and a compass, but honestly they're not really high resolution enough to be very useful to the degree that the paths aren't well marked. Having GPS tracks makes things a lot easier. Did a walk a year or two back where the markings were very fragmentary and it would have been pretty hard pre-GPS.
IncreasePosts 2mo ago
You're losing out on the "inconvenient" getting lost experiences, which it appears you are focusing on, as well as the "serendipitous" getting lost experiences. Sounds like you had a bunch of bad times getting lost in the past. Maybe you're just not particularly open to new experiences.
- bluefirebrand 2mo ago
  > as well as the "serendipitous" getting lost experiences I'm glad other people have had such lovely "getting lost" experiences but I never have so I don't have any kind of good feelings for it. Getting lost has always been inconvenient for me
  - IncreasePosts 2mo ago
    OP asked why anyone would feel nostalgic for an inconvenience and the answer is getting lost isn't always an inconvenience for everyone.
gausswho 2mo ago
If we are in a period of nostalgia for inconvenience, it may be because convenience, when taken to its contemporary priority, can lead to a swath of negative side effects. Loneliness, boredom, lack of motivation. There's often not a direct causation, but the correlation is compelling to me. We used to have to talk to people, and/or struggle and learn to meet our objectives. When we can skip those steps and immediately arrive at our destinations, we can sometimes miss the journey.
lxgr 2mo ago
> GPS greatly reduces all of those things at the expense of... I'm not sure what honestly. Setting aside the nostalgia for moments of getting lost that ended well (not all do!): Arguably at the expense of spatial awareness, of how different parts of a city or region fit together in space etc. In a way, the problem is very similar to that of constant availability to others, and the constant availability of distractions to oneself: Sure, "do not disturb" mode is right there, but it takes a lot more willpower (at least once, to establish a routine) to actively seek out moments of being disconnected from people and data not physically present than it used to when this was just the default mode of existence.
rgavuliak 2mo ago
Exactly, especially in long trips this usually resulted to a fight among parents.
balderdash 2mo ago
Yeah - I was in the nostalgia boat, until you said this and remembered all the times I was in the country going to a friend's house that I've never been to before, its night time, nothings open, your low on gas, an your looking for a dirt road with a red snow plow reflector that was after the old white house on the left… yeah don’t miss that too much.
ssl-3 2mo ago
If I have somewhere to be (eventually) then I also have a profound and deep and deep dislike for being lost. And I also remember those old days very well: The gas station maps, the growing accumulation of paper maps in the glove box, asking directions from strangers ("Oh, you want to go there? Sorry, I've never been up on that part of town"). Trying to pre-plan with carefully-printed online maps, and failing. But I haven't been properly lost since buying a Garmin Nuvi in 2008. My introduction to GPS nav was a profoundly liberating change in my life. It showed me a path from which to get from A to B, which is obviously its main intent. And in more-recent years, smart phone navigation often routes me right around traffic problems. It works well for traveling efficiently. (We all know this. That's the boring part.) But! This kind of tech also enabled me to become lost whenever I felt like it. So, with GPS: If I want to get off of the beaten path, I can do that. I can go spend time wandering in a city and find amazing stuff, and always know that I can get back to any known point with ease. If I elect to make a detour, I just make it. I don't worry about how far off of my route it takes me because that route is always undefined. There's no longer any part of my brain that reminds me that every minute I spent detouring is a minute I need to spend backtracking, because turning around and following the same path back to the highway isn't often the fastest way to conclude the detour anyway and the nav knows this and is keeping track the entire time. It's always plotting a course from wherever I am, to whatever destination I want to reach. And I can elect to follow its directions or not, at my whim. When I get bored of driving on interstate highways in Appalachia, I can push the Avoid Highways button and spend some time on brilliantly-twisty mountain roads in West Virginia while still making progress towards my destination. And when I've had enough of that, I can get back on a highway (maybe the same one as before, but maybe not!) again soon enough. With GPS, I can become "lost" (as in I have no idea where I am, and everything around me is potentially a new place to explore) whenever I choose, without ever experiencing any of the existential dread of having no idea which way to turn that I experienced in my pre-GPS days. It's pretty great.

by mlloyd 2mo ago

aquafox 2mo ago

I also dont miss the days without GPS bike computers, having to navigate route with printed out google maps sheets just to realize the resolution was not high enough for my route and I had to stop at every 3rd intersection to confirm I'm still on the right track.

ButlerianJihad 2mo ago
Back in 2014, I returned to San Diego for a high school reunion. I did not yet have any mobile device, but my parents loaned me a car and their feature phone for my use while I was home. Now a few of my friends arranged an informal meetup which I jokingly called “The Honors Reunion” and they chose a brew pub on Coronado Island. I know many San Diego neighborhoods like the back of my hand, but Coronado was a place where I only drove to the beach, not needing any map or navigation, because it is hard to miss the Pacific Ocean segment between a Naval Air Station and the Hotel Del. Anyways, I asked Mapquest how to find this brew pub, and I made a printout. This should have sufficed: Coronado is really, really small. But the pin on the map led me to a darkened, mostly residential side street. I parked, walked around, scratched my head, and concluded that the map was wrong. So rather than try asking for directions or calling my parents, I am a man after all: I drove up and down every street, crisscrossing the business district, basically brute-forcing the map until I finally stumbled on the location itself. My friends were all there, happy to see me again, and we had a great chat before the big reunion activities began. Arriving back home, I managed to piece together what happened, and apparently I had just made an extra misclick on the map surface just as I printed it out, sending the pin into no-man's-land. That is probably the last time I got thoroughly and accidentally lost.
ghaff 2mo ago
I do a fair number of long distance walks in the UK and I do carry maps and a compass, but honestly they're not really high resolution enough to be very useful to the degree that the paths aren't well marked. Having GPS tracks makes things a lot easier. Did a walk a year or two back where the markings were very fragmentary and it would have been pretty hard pre-GPS.

IncreasePosts 2mo ago

You're losing out on the "inconvenient" getting lost experiences, which it appears you are focusing on, as well as the "serendipitous" getting lost experiences. Sounds like you had a bunch of bad times getting lost in the past. Maybe you're just not particularly open to new experiences.

bluefirebrand 2mo ago
> as well as the "serendipitous" getting lost experiences I'm glad other people have had such lovely "getting lost" experiences but I never have so I don't have any kind of good feelings for it. Getting lost has always been inconvenient for me
- IncreasePosts 2mo ago
  OP asked why anyone would feel nostalgic for an inconvenience and the answer is getting lost isn't always an inconvenience for everyone.

gausswho 2mo ago

If we are in a period of nostalgia for inconvenience, it may be because convenience, when taken to its contemporary priority, can lead to a swath of negative side effects. Loneliness, boredom, lack of motivation. There's often not a direct causation, but the correlation is compelling to me. We used to have to talk to people, and/or struggle and learn to meet our objectives. When we can skip those steps and immediately arrive at our destinations, we can sometimes miss the journey.

lxgr 2mo ago

> GPS greatly reduces all of those things at the expense of... I'm not sure what honestly. Setting aside the nostalgia for moments of getting lost that ended well (not all do!): Arguably at the expense of spatial awareness, of how different parts of a city or region fit together in space etc. In a way, the problem is very similar to that of constant availability to others, and the constant availability of distractions to oneself: Sure, "do not disturb" mode is right there, but it takes a lot more willpower (at least once, to establish a routine) to actively seek out moments of being disconnected from people and data not physically present than it used to when this was just the default mode of existence.

rgavuliak 2mo ago

Exactly, especially in long trips this usually resulted to a fight among parents.

balderdash 2mo ago

Yeah - I was in the nostalgia boat, until you said this and remembered all the times I was in the country going to a friend's house that I've never been to before, its night time, nothings open, your low on gas, an your looking for a dirt road with a red snow plow reflector that was after the old white house on the left… yeah don’t miss that too much.

ssl-3 2mo ago

If I have somewhere to be (eventually) then I also have a profound and deep and deep dislike for being lost. And I also remember those old days very well: The gas station maps, the growing accumulation of paper maps in the glove box, asking directions from strangers ("Oh, you want to go there? Sorry, I've never been up on that part of town"). Trying to pre-plan with carefully-printed online maps, and failing. But I haven't been properly lost since buying a Garmin Nuvi in 2008. My introduction to GPS nav was a profoundly liberating change in my life. It showed me a path from which to get from A to B, which is obviously its main intent. And in more-recent years, smart phone navigation often routes me right around traffic problems. It works well for traveling efficiently. (We all know this. That's the boring part.) But! This kind of tech also enabled me to become lost whenever I felt like it. So, with GPS: If I want to get off of the beaten path, I can do that. I can go spend time wandering in a city and find amazing stuff, and always know that I can get back to any known point with ease. If I elect to make a detour, I just make it. I don't worry about how far off of my route it takes me because that route is always undefined. There's no longer any part of my brain that reminds me that every minute I spent detouring is a minute I need to spend backtracking, because turning around and following the same path back to the highway isn't often the fastest way to conclude the detour anyway and the nav knows this and is keeping track the entire time. It's always plotting a course from wherever I am, to whatever destination I want to reach. And I can elect to follow its directions or not, at my whim. When I get bored of driving on interstate highways in Appalachia, I can push the Avoid Highways button and spend some time on brilliantly-twisty mountain roads in West Virginia while still making progress towards my destination. And when I've had enough of that, I can get back on a highway (maybe the same one as before, but maybe not!) again soon enough. With GPS, I can become "lost" (as in I have no idea where I am, and everything around me is potentially a new place to explore) whenever I choose, without ever experiencing any of the existential dread of having no idea which way to turn that I experienced in my pre-GPS days. It's pretty great.