Previously, I talked about how I am not a fan of the aux cord, and today I have another modern technology that I feel can become detrimental. Oddly enough, this is also related to cars: GPS. I once was at an event of about 80 people. Everyone was flown into the nearest airport and given a rental car to get to the venue. One speaker began by asking who used a GPS to get to the venue. I had not, and looked around to see if anyone else hadn’t, but I couldn’t find a single one. Here is the worst part: the directions from the airport to the venue consisted of two turns. Two turns required 98.75% of the people there to turn on their GPS.
As with the aux cord, and even to a greater degree, I feel that there are certainly times when GPS is a good thing to have. When you’re in a new location or get lost, the GPS can be a life saver, but too much of a good thing can lead to a dependence and poor navigational skills. The summer after my sophomore year in college, I stayed on campus to take classes. One day a friend gave me and some others a lift to the nearby grocery store. She turned on the GPS when we got into the car. Everyone in the car had been to this supermarket countless times already, yet somehow the driver did not know how to get there. I proceeded to turn off the GPS and navigate myself.
The reason I don’t like GPS is because overuse of it makes the need for having navigational skills disappear. One might say that this isn’t a problem since we can just rely on GPS if we have no navigational skills. This is true, but the problem is deeper than whether or not you can get from point A to point B. By removing the need to think when driving, people are decreasing the amount of time their minds are engaged. A quick search brought me to articles about a researcher at McGill who has done studies that suggest just what I mentioned--that reliance on GPS negatively effects our cognitive abilities in ways other than just navigational prowess.
One reason this is close to my heart is because this past summer my navigational skills helped me to avoid a potentially dangerous situation when I was hiking in Joshua Tree National Park. I had just climbed to the top of a rock structure, when I turned around and saw nothing but brown. I thought for a split second that it was some weird SoCal summer haze situation, but then heard the increasingly loud roar and quickly realized it was a dust storm. I raced back to my car and drove away. There was no cell or radio signal at all in the park, so I was all on my own, except for the map of the park roads that I had memorized. With only three main roads in the park, I did not have many options, and if I were to make the wrong turn, I would have ended up in the dust storm. Because I am confident in my navigation skills, I was able to drive away from the storm and cut back to get back to my place safely. If I had been dependent on GPS, I could have been a malfunction away from ending up in the middle of a dust storm.
In an electronic age when people are hand fed ideas and information whenever they pick up a phone or open a laptop, we have fewer and fewer opportunities to simply put our minds to work. I think the ability to get answers to questions instantly is beneficial; I’m not suggesting we shut down the internet. What I am saying is that we should value the chances we do still get in our daily lives to engage our minds--like driving without GPS. You don’t need to memorize 30-turn directions, by all means use a GPS for that, but at least look it up beforehand to check, because I think everyone can manage two turns without a GPS.
A final note on the topic: I probably wouldn’t be quite as opposed to the heavy use of GPS if it wasn’t for the fact that I have noticed some people do not use proper GPS, but instead use their smart phone’s map app. By doing this, they are forcing themselves to look down constantly instead of being able to just listen to the directions. This distracts them from the road and puts others at danger and should really be avoided.
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