As someone who lived and drove in the pre-smartphone era, let me say that things like spatial reasoning and map reading and navigation are skills very much like spelling and math, where yes, you can work to develop them, but some people are just naturally talented, others are naturally at a deficit. - ThreadSky

tomel.bsky.social • 12 days ago

As someone who lived and drove in the pre-smartphone era, let me say that things like spatial reasoning and map reading and navigation are skills very much like spelling and math, where yes, you can work to develop them, but some people are just naturally talented, others are naturally at a deficit.

Reposted from Courtney Milan

I’ve had multiple people now tell me that GPS is bad because nobody learns to navigate, and as a person who substantially predated GPS, excuse you, it is so nice not driving in circles for hours.

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tomel.bsky.social•12 days ago

I can do a lot of cool stuff. I never struggled with calculus or spelling or even the quantum mechanics classes I took.

But if you give me a map where up is not the direction I am facing? It will take me longer than the trip to figure out what my route is supposed to be.

tomel.bsky.social•12 days ago

I can navigate reasonably well in places I have lived for years, but I could not explain where things are in relation to each other. I will frequently still round a corner or crest a hill on an unfamiliar route and learn that I’m someplace I go frequently but on a different side of the intersection.

tomel.bsky.social•12 days ago

The only places I’ve ever been able to navigate with any facility were the city where all the roads and addresses were on a numbered system, and the Interstate Highway system. And in both of those cases, I still worked on a “familiar routes only” system prior to GPS, and still got lost.

tomel.bsky.social•12 days ago

My wife’s approach to travel is to sometimes plug in the city she’s traveling to if she hasn’t been there many times and then disagree with whatever the GPS spits out, and watching that must be what someone watching me solve the Schrödinger equation would be like.

tomel.bsky.social•12 days ago

It’s not like I haven’t tried, it’s not like I don’t like maps. But my brain refuses to hold onto key information like street names or where things are in relation to each other.

tomel.bsky.social•12 days ago

And on those occasions when I actually do remember, my anxiety about being lost or late and my self-doubt about my skill have me second-guessing things until I confuse myself.

ricchciuk.bsky.social•12 days ago

When I got my first job as an organizer about 20 years ago we still had to use maps. As smartphones and GPS became more common we stopped using maps and now I have trouble reading them at times.

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