Is GPS ruining our ability to navigate for ourselves?

[Todd T]

Why waste your brain on dumb navigation? Instead enjoy the scenery

I find this to be the exact opposite of the truth.  GPSers are more likely to walk around with their heads down.  GPS navigation gives you the rat’s-eye view of the maze.

[Jeff McWilliams]

I find this to be the exact opposite of the truth. GPSers are more likely to walk around with their heads down. GPS navigation gives you the rat’s-eye view of the maze.

Seems like a broad generalization and not always true.

When I hike with both a paper map and a mapping app (e.g. Gaia GPS), I’ll make a guess of where I’m at on the map and then verify it with Gaia, and then put the phone away again.  With a few exceptions:  section hiking the JMT with all of Wenck’s waypoints for known campsites loaded, I would look at the phone more often to see how close to a CS I am, did I overshoot, etc.   If I reached one that was already occupied, then bring up Gaia again to see how close to the next one, pull up its description, etc.

The only time I have ever had my head truly buried in the GPS was when GeoCaching, where you’re completely tied to finding the hidden cache by GPS.

On the other hand, I’ve had my head buried in a paper map (& compass) plenty during Orienteering meets.  Controls are often purposely placed in confusing areas on our courses, so that being even slightly off bearing could take one up the wrong gully of three gullies running in parallel, or to the wrong shallow depression.

[Stefan H]

Yes, yes it is. We’ve seen people’s navigation skills degrade for decades, to the point where ide bet the majority of people can’t point north. In a new city I can turn the robot on, get there, and learn nothing about the route. I’ve seen people unable to navigate their home city without the robot.

I’ve always refused to bring a phone hiking, but now I have a GPS watch. I log metrics, check distance, alti, HR, but I will never look at the maps during a hike, let alone depend on them. For me, it’s one or the other, I take directions or I use my head.

[AK Granola]

Since this thread got resurrected, I’ll add on too. I work in a library with more than 22,000 maps and nautical charts. Every once in a while someone uses one for research, almost never as a navigational tool. Our library may be the only one in the world with some of these maps. But most of these beauties will sit in their drawers forever, unloved. With the iPhone generation, will even the researchers learn to use them? Probably not. It’s sad. The collections will be there as long as I’m there, but I fear when I depart, it will be the end for all of them, because a 30-something will throw them all away, considering them obsolete.

Do all of you know that your local public library may have old maps? They might even have old trail guidebooks to trails you aren’t even aware existed. The trailbeds might be overgrown, but they might also be really cool, or hide thrown-away treasures, like the Voyageurs canoe trails. Your library might even have a treasure map of old fruit trees planted long ago, in isolated places throughout the country. Varieties that might be the most amazing ones you ever tasted. A natural seed bank, hidden away.

Treasures exist outside the online world, but perhaps not forever. Okay that’s a bit away from the question of whether GPS ruining our ability to navigate without it; of course it is. But it’s really more that all modern life is burying the knowledge recorded or learned long ago. Good to be an old fuddy duddy and treasure those memories

[sbennett3705]

It seems the loss of situational awareness comes in stages. First: map & compass (checking often, very awake). Next: GPS app (getting sleepy). Next: GPS watch (napping until the watch says to turn). Last: follow the blue line on Far Out (totally comatose). I pity the Far Out crowd: never exploring, camping only at specific spots, waiting for the App to update, etc…

[Alan W]

https://www.positive.news/society/londons-black-cabbies-hailed-for-brain-research/

The link is a very short blurb  about deeply detailed & peer reviewed studies.

Memory and observation for geospatial navigation change brains (for the better) in ways that “blind usage of GPS does not.

[Ben Perry]

Let’s be honest… rank and file members of the outdoor community have never really possessed a meaningful ability to navigate for themselves.

Previous generations were hit over the head with “ten essentials” messaging, and many of them dutifully carried paper map and compass as they were told. But when the rubber hit the road, most of them didn’t know how to use them together well enough to extract themselves from whatever situation with which they found themselves confronted.

Now, I know you, esteemed BPL member, could never be described as such. You can use map and compass, can navigate by reading the landscape, the sun and stars, the wind, and all such available methods. I’m not disparaging you.

But I do claim that for average outdoor users, GPS and other electronic devices provide a navigational capability that should have existed in the past… but really didn’t.

[Terran Terran]

Most learn how to read sign.

[jscott]

Hiking on trail with a modern paper map has always worked for me. Good, no need to bring my phone and all the apparatus required to re-charge it. And anyway, I’ve already planned ahead before leaving in order to anticipate my route.

as far as checking to see how far the next campsite is if the one I was aiming for is full:

–that almost never happens, even in the Sierra once out in the backcountry

–a local map will indicate the next campsite

–I have another skill: namely, finding a good spot to camp away from established campsites

Off trail, or snowy conditions. are another matter entirely. then, I bring a gps.

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