Comment by ToucanLoucan | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ToucanLoucan | Hacker News Reader

> There's mounting fascination among the "youngs" in how people socialized, found where they were going, and got things done before the mid-1990s, when the internet, email and mobile phones started becoming common.

Mostly badly. I remember the thrill of printing MapQuest directions and if you missed an exit, your passenger then had to pull maps out of the glove compartment and start comparing them and the directions to find out the easiest way to return to your route. And hell, that was after MapQuest which in itself is Internet-based. I also recall vaguely being a kiddo when we would do family road trips, and my grandpa would navigate in the passenger seat with 2 or 3 different maps on his lap, switching between them as needed for a better look at wherever we were going.

I also remember my last truly "analog" friendships were in an apartment complex I lived at before we moved elsewhere and got our first internet connection. I have no earthly idea where any of those people are today, hell I don't even remember the school that well. We basically never "arranged" anything, and I mean, it's not like we were incapable, but we had no ways of contacting one another outside of when we'd meet at school or the bus stop. If a friend of yours was sick at home, you just didn't know what was happening with them for that day at all. Or, hell, if someone moved, unless they announced it ahead of time, that person who you might've been deeply acquainted with just vanished from the world one day, or over one particular summer.

Even as someone who technically spent the vast majority of their childhood without much technology, I don't recall really having many friendships until my first email account and later, flip phone with SMS enabled some manner of autonomous communication for me. Not sure if that's everyone's experience but it was certainly mine.

You're certainly right about the maps. And even with printed "turn-by-turn" directions, people got lost constantly.

But, I will say that the younger "GPS-only" generation seems to be significantly worse at Land Navigation. Reading maps to navigate meant you had to be good-enough with cardinal directions, etc. Those who have always followed the voice guide on their phone seem to struggle even pointing north, let alone determining which way to go.

It's very strange to me how averse people are to missing their exits now, too. I don't know if this is just because of the proliferation of dash cams, but it seems you see a lot more people now who slam on the brakes and turn around or reverse on motorways to recover their route, when the GPS they are almost certainly using will re-route them to an alternate way to get wherever they're going with literally no effort on their part.

No one likes the "re-routing" as there's no notification if it's going to route them a longer destination. Which is potentially yes. But who hasn't gone "shit!" when they've missed their turn off?

So rather than, back-up take chance in avoiding a pile-up and take the original exit.

The risk/reward of that to me is just ludicrous though. I consider myself pretty damn open minded but I cannot imagine taking that kind of risk to avoid something so utterly benign as being late.

For the record, I'm not saying I do either; hell no. In case anyone thinks I do.

My reply was how I would imangine of how those who do such dangerouse manoeuvers. Then again, people don't think and that includes using signal indicators.

I think it also is a skill issue. People who are used to driving and navigating have more of a mental model of how the roads connect up, and can often correct an error without needing a GPS to explain how to reroute.

For example, in much of the country (less so in dense old urban areas) a lot of highway exits are "diamond interchanges" so it is trivial to, at any exit, get back on at the same exit going in either direction.

In general a good driver is pretty aware of stuff like this, especially in their home areas, so already has a pretty good idea of what to do if they miss an exit.

I think starting out GPS-based rather than starting without it and graduating to it eventually, is a big mistake, as it encourages this kind of stressful thinking because navigation is totally outsourced.

I speak from experience -- I'm an older millenial but nevertheless started driving with GPS because I never started driving till my mid 20s. My first couple drives, in NYC, were in retrospect very dangerous to myself and to others, as my attention was divided between the GPS and basic skills like lane maintenance.

To this day I'm always so much more comfortable partly memorizing or really just reviewing the rough outline of the route on the GPS while parked before starting the trip. It just feels good for the GPS to truly remain what it should be -- an assistant, not a master.

Is this something you've seen IRL or just in sensational online footage? I have not notice this IRL in the USA, although I've noticed overall driving get slightly more aggressive and ignorant since the pandemic

Reading maps gave you a view of the surrounding area and the bird's eye view of optional roads nearby. You can load up on the gaps in your knowledge and skip the rest of navigating.

GPS interuptions puts me on edge while I'm talking to passengers and changing lanes by muscle memory.

I can empathize with the younger generation struggling to point north, the UIs for GPS maps are surprisingly myopic.

I mean, "north" in the context of software that's taking you places is rather redundant. Does it really matter if your next left is taking you north, south, east or west?

That being said, at least in Apple Maps, when you stop using the turn-by-turn and the map zooms out, it does auto-orient to North being "up." I'm not sure if Google Maps does the same but I see no reason it wouldn't.

Right as I was starting to drive MapQuest was a thing. My dad had a 3rd-party GPS unit for his car but I only rarely got to use it. To save paper/ink I’d only print out the instructions to get to the place I was going and then reverse them to get home (many times I made the wrong turn and had to backtrack till I found something that was on my directions to reorient myself). I drove to a lot of random places while working for my parents (real estate agents, I took pictures, installed/collected lock boxes and signs, virtual tours, etc).

Nowadays I’m completely dependent on my GPS but I don’t see that as a bad thing really. I know some people do, but it’s not a skill I need, why would I bother learning the route? I’m good at quick math and especially at getting “close to” (calculating a sale price, tip, etc) the right answer but I haven’t honed my long division skills in decades (I assume I could still do it, I know the method) because I have a calculator in my pocket always. In the same vein I don’t know assembly, heck I found EE to be boring as hell, I don’t care about logic gates but I can write software without issue.

Every generation stands on the shoulders of the ones that came before and it seems like every older generation hates the younger for doing so. It’s honestly tiring and reeks of “If I had to put up with X then so do you”. This is not aimed at your comment, just a general observation.

Basically everything until the "algorithm" and "infinite scroll" together in classic chaos theory fashion destroyed civilization.

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