Confused but entertained
Digital navigation is not without its own serendipities. On a recent holiday to Poland I was diverted round an accident – only to be trapped in a secondary jam in a tiny hamlet whose mystified residents gazed from their gardens at the sudden influx of vehicles, all of which had been directed there by the same Google instructions.
Powerless and ignorant
Yet I remember orienteering in the countryside where I grew up, rigorously observing my surroundings and then matching them to the abstract symbols on the map. I had to constantly make a manual connection in my mind between those symbols and the real things they represented. I could not know for sure where I was on the paper's flattened version of the world, but had to trust that I was estimating correctly. To navigate like that is almost an act of faith, in which a circuit of information and belief is established between your body, your map, and the trees. There is a circuit when using Google Maps, too – from body to screen to satellite, cycling every second – but often narrower and cruder, like drinking Red Bull rather than getting a good night's sleep.
There’s nothing wrong with the convenience auto-mapping creates and the navigational superpowers it gives us. They are particularly crucial for people without any natural sense of direction, and I wouldn't want to lose them. But to find our way only with maps drawn by others leaves us powerless and ignorant. It is wise, wherever we have the space and time, to explore a little, in order to draw up our own.
