If I was ever asked "why are you sitting around on the computer all day instead of going and doing something productive", I'd say that I was gaining exposure and experience. Limiting that exposure means less of a general ability to easily orient yourself when dropped into unfamiliar circumstances or situations.

Driving around randomly uses gas and contributes to maintenance costs, but gives you an irreplaceable spatial idea of your environment that you can't get from scrabbling through a directory, and which you definitely can't absorb from Google Maps or a GPS.

I only grasped these ideas quite recently, and have been rather motivating to get me to learn more about the academic aspects of CompSci.