5 ms·

As a student from another city, I have only enough understanding of the geography to read Google Maps critically - for the details, it's indispensable. A

by kfcm 13y ago

As a student from another city, I have only enough understanding of the geography to read Google Maps critically - for the details, it's indispensable. Amazing that those people in ancient times--of what, 5-7 years ago?--could survive without smartphones and Google Maps. People used to have maps, or just go out and explore new places. Not only learn the streets, but find great restaurants, coffee shops, stores, meet new and interesting people. I am amazed daily at how these things have instilled learned helplessness into people in such a short time span.

superuser2 13y ago
Good point. I'm guessing students were less bold with CTA and took more cabs, or else avoided going out unless they knew the could afford a lengthy adventure getting home. It wasn't impossible before, but it's certainly easier.
jrlocke 13y ago
Argue the convenience is not worth the privacy costs, but don't suggest the convenience is trifling. Sure, these tasks were all possible, but it's clear that a smart phone can replace your map, bus schedule, train schedule, subway map, Zagat guide—in many cases not only is it a substitute but a patent improvement.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
GeneralMayhem 13y ago
I'll be off your lawn in a moment, but first, you might want to consider that just because something can be done the old way doesn't mean that that's superior, that smartphones are in fact very good at showing you new places to go, and that "wanting machines to do tasks that machines are better at than humans" and "helplessness" are not synonymous.
- growupkids 13y ago
  Navigation is a perishable skill. Overreliance on GPS has been shown to degrade navigation skills and other brain functions [1]. 1. http://phys.org/news/2010-11-reliance-gps-hippocampus-function-age.html http://phys.org/news/2010-11-reliance-gps-hippocampus-functi...
  - jamesrcole 13y ago
    So? Using a calculator probably degrades your ability to do sums in your head, yet a calculator allows many people to do sums they wouldn't be able to do just in their heads.
    - microtherion 13y ago
      And literacy degrades people's ability to memorize texts.
      - netcan 13y ago
        It does, and something is lost. Storytelling is/was a great human tradition, perhaps the defining one in a literal sense. It's becoming extinct because of literacy. Today it's considered an eccentric pursuit. That doesn't mean literacy is bad or that campfire stories repeated and evolved for generations are better than novels or films. But, oral storytelling as art or culture has characteristics that just aren't present in novels just like novels have characteristics that aren't present in TV shows. If you are willing to be more abstract about it, you might compare it to working as an Apple engineer and collecting edible roots near a stream. The former is clearly superior as a way of feeding your family. The latter still has certain human qualities that are beneficial to people and worth preserving. As we move forward we lose some things which may be valuable. Nostalgia and the desire to preserve is not a bad thing.
        nnnnni 13y ago
        I recently realized that I like plays. Movies have mostly replaced them, which is a shame. However, there are things that movies can do that plays definitely can't do, and the reverse is true as well. I think that there's room for both!
nknighthb 13y ago
The hypocrisy of posting this on a website eludes you, doesn't it? People used to communicate face-to-face, why are you here?
adrianhoward 13y ago
I'm in my 40s - so I've spent most of my life using "normal" maps. For me - they suck. I have a lousy sense of direction. Despite actively trying to improve it for decades I regularly got lost. Not lost in the fun-exploring-new-places sort of way - but lost in the fuck-me-going-to-miss-the-last-train-home sort of way. I used to regularly schedule in hours of extra time for "just in case" scenarios. I used to avoid unfamiliar locations and over-plan trips to extreme degrees. I never wandered off the beaten track in the middle of the day - coz I could easily spend hours finding my way back. I now go to strange places with almost zero planning. I can just pick a random direction for a walk and be confident that I can come back again. They have saved me probably weeks of prep time and contingency time at this point, and have let me go to many places that I would have otherwise never have visited. They have lifted a huge weight of worry from my shoulders every time I had to get from A to B. So for me google maps et al have freed me from the learned helplessness of traditional maps.
- tanzam75 13y ago
  Without smartphones does not mean using paper maps. It means that featurephones would have eventually converged with offline GPS devices -- the Garmins and TomToms of the world. In many ways, this would have been a better model for the navigating consumer. GPS devices operated on a one-time purchase model -- no subscription, no contracts, no data caps. Maps were shipped with the device, and many came with free lifetime updates. Traffic data was broadcast over FM radio, and eventually mass-transit data might've been broadcast as well. There are also broader implications. Without smartphones, AT&T and Verizon would have lost a lucrative revenue stream. Their best choice for deploying capital would have been to build fiber to the home. Not a bad trade -- smartphones for gigabit broadband in every house. With wireless at a technological plateau, maybe T-Mobile and Sprint could have caught up. Perhaps we'd have seen more robust competition to the duopoly, and lower prices. This is alternate history. But it's alternate history along the lines of Douglas North, who dared to question the economic benefits of railroads.
  - superuser2 13y ago
    That would completely kill public transit navigation, however, which relies on live access to current public transit schedules and tracking data.
jamesrcole 13y ago
Are you saying people did just as well when the only option was paper-based maps? As someone who spent the majority of their life with only that option available, I very strongly doubt that.
hrktb 13y ago
> Amazing that those people in ancient times--of what, 5-7 years ago?--could survive without smartphones and Google Maps. Actually 10 years ago I got lost all the time, would ask my way to people with very vague memory and not much of a talent to give direction, in the worst cases I would pay a taxi after a while to bring me back to a known point, and got taxed huge amounts when the taxi guy would also get lost because the address wasn't correct. Some people (i.e me) are really bad at orienting and reading maps. Before Google Maps I had a "dumbphone" with a GPS app, and it changed my life (even when going new places I could go back in a predictable amount of time. Imagine the impact).
peteretep 13y ago
> Amazing that those people in ancient times--of what, 5-7 > years ago?--could survive without smartphones and Google > Maps And by extension, people just 100 years ago survived (sometimes) without antibiotics. Or ATMs. Or television. Or commercial flight. Isn't amazing how helpless people have become?
- noswi 13y ago
  Also, they didn't survive at all, they're all dead.
hnnewguy 13y ago
>People used to have maps At one point, earlier, people didn't even have paper maps, so why stop there? You're conflating helplessness with convenience. Yes, people used to do things the hard way. Now we get to do them the easy way.

by kfcm 13y ago

superuser2 13y ago

Good point. I'm guessing students were less bold with CTA and took more cabs, or else avoided going out unless they knew the could afford a lengthy adventure getting home. It wasn't impossible before, but it's certainly easier.

jrlocke 13y ago

Argue the convenience is not worth the privacy costs, but don't suggest the convenience is trifling. Sure, these tasks were all possible, but it's clear that a smart phone can replace your map, bus schedule, train schedule, subway map, Zagat guide—in many cases not only is it a substitute but a patent improvement.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

GeneralMayhem 13y ago

I'll be off your lawn in a moment, but first, you might want to consider that just because something can be done the old way doesn't mean that that's superior, that smartphones are in fact very good at showing you new places to go, and that "wanting machines to do tasks that machines are better at than humans" and "helplessness" are not synonymous.

growupkids 13y ago
Navigation is a perishable skill. Overreliance on GPS has been shown to degrade navigation skills and other brain functions [1]. 1. http://phys.org/news/2010-11-reliance-gps-hippocampus-function-age.html http://phys.org/news/2010-11-reliance-gps-hippocampus-functi...
- jamesrcole 13y ago
  So? Using a calculator probably degrades your ability to do sums in your head, yet a calculator allows many people to do sums they wouldn't be able to do just in their heads.
  - microtherion 13y ago
    And literacy degrades people's ability to memorize texts.
    - netcan 13y ago
      It does, and something is lost. Storytelling is/was a great human tradition, perhaps the defining one in a literal sense. It's becoming extinct because of literacy. Today it's considered an eccentric pursuit. That doesn't mean literacy is bad or that campfire stories repeated and evolved for generations are better than novels or films. But, oral storytelling as art or culture has characteristics that just aren't present in novels just like novels have characteristics that aren't present in TV shows. If you are willing to be more abstract about it, you might compare it to working as an Apple engineer and collecting edible roots near a stream. The former is clearly superior as a way of feeding your family. The latter still has certain human qualities that are beneficial to people and worth preserving. As we move forward we lose some things which may be valuable. Nostalgia and the desire to preserve is not a bad thing.
      - nnnnni 13y ago
        I recently realized that I like plays. Movies have mostly replaced them, which is a shame. However, there are things that movies can do that plays definitely can't do, and the reverse is true as well. I think that there's room for both!

nknighthb 13y ago

The hypocrisy of posting this on a website eludes you, doesn't it? People used to communicate face-to-face, why are you here?

adrianhoward 13y ago

I'm in my 40s - so I've spent most of my life using "normal" maps. For me - they suck. I have a lousy sense of direction. Despite actively trying to improve it for decades I regularly got lost. Not lost in the fun-exploring-new-places sort of way - but lost in the fuck-me-going-to-miss-the-last-train-home sort of way. I used to regularly schedule in hours of extra time for "just in case" scenarios. I used to avoid unfamiliar locations and over-plan trips to extreme degrees. I never wandered off the beaten track in the middle of the day - coz I could easily spend hours finding my way back. I now go to strange places with almost zero planning. I can just pick a random direction for a walk and be confident that I can come back again. They have saved me probably weeks of prep time and contingency time at this point, and have let me go to many places that I would have otherwise never have visited. They have lifted a huge weight of worry from my shoulders every time I had to get from A to B. So for me google maps et al have freed me from the learned helplessness of traditional maps.

tanzam75 13y ago
Without smartphones does not mean using paper maps. It means that featurephones would have eventually converged with offline GPS devices -- the Garmins and TomToms of the world. In many ways, this would have been a better model for the navigating consumer. GPS devices operated on a one-time purchase model -- no subscription, no contracts, no data caps. Maps were shipped with the device, and many came with free lifetime updates. Traffic data was broadcast over FM radio, and eventually mass-transit data might've been broadcast as well. There are also broader implications. Without smartphones, AT&T and Verizon would have lost a lucrative revenue stream. Their best choice for deploying capital would have been to build fiber to the home. Not a bad trade -- smartphones for gigabit broadband in every house. With wireless at a technological plateau, maybe T-Mobile and Sprint could have caught up. Perhaps we'd have seen more robust competition to the duopoly, and lower prices. This is alternate history. But it's alternate history along the lines of Douglas North, who dared to question the economic benefits of railroads.
- superuser2 13y ago
  That would completely kill public transit navigation, however, which relies on live access to current public transit schedules and tracking data.

jamesrcole 13y ago

Are you saying people did just as well when the only option was paper-based maps? As someone who spent the majority of their life with only that option available, I very strongly doubt that.

hrktb 13y ago

> Amazing that those people in ancient times--of what, 5-7 years ago?--could survive without smartphones and Google Maps. Actually 10 years ago I got lost all the time, would ask my way to people with very vague memory and not much of a talent to give direction, in the worst cases I would pay a taxi after a while to bring me back to a known point, and got taxed huge amounts when the taxi guy would also get lost because the address wasn't correct. Some people (i.e me) are really bad at orienting and reading maps. Before Google Maps I had a "dumbphone" with a GPS app, and it changed my life (even when going new places I could go back in a predictable amount of time. Imagine the impact).

peteretep 13y ago

> Amazing that those people in ancient times--of what, 5-7 > years ago?--could survive without smartphones and Google > Maps And by extension, people just 100 years ago survived (sometimes) without antibiotics. Or ATMs. Or television. Or commercial flight. Isn't amazing how helpless people have become?

noswi 13y ago
Also, they didn't survive at all, they're all dead.

hnnewguy 13y ago

>People used to have maps At one point, earlier, people didn't even have paper maps, so why stop there? You're conflating helplessness with convenience. Yes, people used to do things the hard way. Now we get to do them the easy way.