I honestly can’t remember the last time anyone’s asked me for directions. It really is awesome that every phone now comes with decent navigation as standard.
Heck, it’s much, much better than most standalone systems ever were. You now get free traffic advisory on your phone, which used to be an expensive paid feature on devices like TomTom.
I do shudder to think what’ll happen if GPS ever goes down or gets downgraded to unusable. Most people have lost their non-technology navigation skills, assuming they ever had them.
I have a friend who loves giving directions. I have begged her just to send me an address.
That’s my wife for craigslist item pickups; she’s giving them streets to turn on and where to park. And then frustrated when they call and are late and lost. Just give them the address, and let google do it
which used to be an expensive paid feature on devices like TomTom.
That, and the outdated routes that wouldn’t know about blocked roads and this kind of stuff
assuming they ever had them.
This is me this is me!
I think I was born at the correct time for this…
One of my first jobs involved covering hundreds of miles for on-site tech support. Pre smartphone.
The best thing about printed turn by turn directions is that if you miss a turn, you’re pretty much screwed. They were occasionally wrong as well, listing streets that didn’t exist etc.
I’d generally have a backup map as well just in case.
Having asked for directions in the UK in the early 90s: Drive down yer a bit, turn right at the stone and hammer inn, then a left at the second roundabout, drive till you cross the cow tressle, then take the third laneway on the right…etc. Like they really have a skill remembering lengthy directions.
People used to remember phone numbers as well. Now you’d only really know your own and maybe some important ones like yer ma’s
I hated finding places with printed directions. I had to drive somewhere for work and the directions were crap, I ended up having to stop and ask for help multiple times
My experience as well. Real life treasure hunting is only fun for so long.
Before printed directions, I had a Mapsco book https://www.ebay.com/itm/266324662580 of Dallas and surrounding.
About half the size of a phone book, had to frantically study the map at stop lights, but damn near impossible to get lost if you had one.
Wouldn’t call it nostalgia, like missing 56k modems, a “hostage to low tech”.
Mapsco was a brilliant idea! I did a lot of driving to both old and new neighbourhoods back then. I was always buying the newest editions so I could get the updated streets for new subdivisions (I think they have had supplementals between major editions too)…kinda like a Google maps update…but with paper. I think I left a stack of those books in my truck when I traded it in as I had just been gifted a Garmin GPS
I stopped at a convenience store in Boston to ask for directions once. Not sure if the guy I asked was trolling or not, but he responded in the heaviest most unintelligible Boston accent of all time and I ended up still being lost lol.
What I find kind of amusing in a “no, I’m not actually a Luddite” kind of way is that I make plenty of use of mapping, but very little of GPS. Oh, I definitely use it to pinpoint me on the maps I’ve downloaded, but I’ve only used turn by turn navigation a couple of times just to see what it’s like. My normal procedure hasn’t changed since I was a kid playing “turn by turn navigator” on family trips: pull out the appropriate map, figure out where we are, figure out where we want to go, eyeball a route while noting general direction and guesstimated travel time, pick out a few things that will signal we’ve gone off track somewhere, and go.
I spend enough time in places where there is no cell signal that I always have downloaded maps available and refresh them before I might have to depend on them, the same way I used to stop at gas stations and tourist information booths to pick up current maps.
My primary use for GPS is to track my routes on the water and my fishing spots and, to a lesser extent my hiking, neither of which actually requires actual charts or maps. Although I do find the charts and maps useful.
I still remember the game changer of getting a dedicated gps device and replacing my printed MapQuest directions.
Ah the memories when I asked my mom wheter I could go to some new friend and she pulled put a map and asked for the address so she knows where to pick me up
Didn’t Google Maps use to be able to print directions?
You misspelled Mapquest
You misspelled Rand McNally
Yahoo Maps FTW!
It still can, but it used to be able to too
Yep! Last I checked, you could still see all the upcoming directions in a list ahead of time. I prefer to have some idea of what’s coming beforehand, so I’m glad that’s a feature. I don’t know if printing them is still an easily accessible and intended feature, though. Although I guess you could always print a screenshot of the list of upcoming directions either way.
Can it not do that anymore?
I find it odd, that in the age of GPS, I still find myself behind folks who will slow down for intersections (usually on a two lane road w/ no dashed lines for passing) as if they’re unsure if the road coming up is the road they need to turn onto
I do that because I still find Google to have rather weird estimations on when to turn.
“Oh turn on ash Street in 200m? Okay. Wait, Ash Street is this coming street in like 50m, isn’t it? Better slow down and check”
Especially bad after there’s been construction. They added an exit to a highway near me, and for months afterwards the GPS was sending me out the wrong exit.
Fair point, I hadn’t considered that perspective. I’ve been using Waze, and I rarely get above 40mph when using it, so I usually have tons of warning and time, but I can see how folks can be cautious
I remember the first time driving somewhere new on my own with a sheet of mapquest directions and getting lost. When I finally got home, My parents scolded me for relying on mapquest instead of studying a map.
Fuck, am I old now?
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