BBC:
When was the last time you were well and truly lost? Chances are it’s been a while.
Extraordinary gadgets like smartphones and satnavs let us pinpoint our location unerringly. Like the people in Downton Abbey, we all know our place. However, the technology which delivers the world into the palms of our hands may be ushering in a kind of social immobility undreamt of even by Julian Fellowes’s hidebound little Englanders.
Discovery used to mean going out and coming across stuff – now it seems to mean turning inwards and gazing at screens. We’ve become reliant on machines to help us get around, so much so that it’s changing the way we behave, particularly among younger people who have no experience of a time before GPS.
I’m famous for having absolutely zero sense of direction. Even with GPS, I get lost all the time. But I’m OK with that. As a matter of fact, I use my GPS to get lost. I’ll set it for home and then go out riding my motorcycle. Whenever the GPS tells me to go in a certain direction to go back home, I go in the other direction. I’ve explored thousands of miles in the US and Canada like this and have found some wonderful places that I otherwise would have never come across.
When I was a kid, my best friend and I used to take day-long walks all over Queens, NY. As relatively urbanized as it is, parts of it were easy to get lost in. At least for me; my friend almost always knew the way back.
I’m chastened to realize that, in the decade I’ve lived in my current neighborhood, I’ve almost never taken that sort of walk without having a specific retail objective.
Anyone who speaks fondly about getting lost hasn’t ever actually been lost. I’ve been lost in countries where they don’t speak English, and I don’t speak the local language well enough to get directions. The local cell service was either 2G or no G, and it sucked the power out of my iPhone, so I couldn’t use Maps.app. The sun doesn’t stay up waiting for you to figure things out, and it gets ten times as hard (and who knows how many times as dangerous), once it’s dark. And the cash don’t work, so you don’t even have the local currency. It’s happened to me more than once, and let me tell you: the only fun thing was the story afterward. Do it in a city, and things will probably still be okay. Do it outside the city and you might get a very Darwinian lesson.
I’m reminded of the girl in Common People (Shatner version, for appropriate emotional content).
Glad we had a real man here to explain that to us. 😉
Sarcasm from a guy who’s memories of getting lost were walking around in his home town with a guy who clearly wasn’t actually lost. Well, don’t worry. I’m sure it’ll sting in a day or two. If it soothes your threatened ego, I wasn’t playing one upsmanship with either you or the OP. I was pointing out getting lost in a padded and safe environment isn’t really getting lost, any more than camping in your back yard is roughing it.
My wife and I do much better discovery with the aid of tech than we did without it. Neither one of us is particularly outgoing or fond of wandering around looking for a place to eat. There were many times before iPhones that we’d be driving around an unknown place looking for a thing to do, a dog park, a place to eat, or whatever and making no progress. We tend not to fight but those episodes usually turned into arguments or silent simmering. Being able to turn to Maps and (I hate to admit it) Yelp has removed one of the few thorny issues in our relationship and has led us to plenty of fun and good food.
Okay, Hoss. Your personal definition — regardless of context — is the only valid one. Feel better?