Get lost - it could be good for you
Knowing your way is massively overrated, or so I argue in this column which advocates the benefits of losing your way.
WORDS: JOHN C SILCOX
ILLUSTRATION: ADAM AVERY
My problem with satellite navigation is that I can’t bring myself to trust it. Maybe it’s got something to do with the way it barks out directions in a smug robotic tone, or perhaps I’m simply not made for following orders. Either way, I prefer to embark on a car journey without computer assistance and, when the sat nav is activated against my will, I will happily ignore all advice given because I’m convinced I always know a better ‘shortcut’ – regardless if it’s right or not.
Initially, I guessed my reaction was a man thing – a bit like my assumption, to which many wonky shelves and bent nails can attest, that I am naturally gifted at DIY. But witnessing many male friends at the wheel happily obey their vehicle’s commands debunked that one. Then I suspected I’d inherited a special pathfinding gene from my father who used to navigate aeroplanes in the Royal Air Force, but even Dad has recently started using the sat nav in his new car, so maybe it’s time I do, too.
On paper, the sheer benefits of GPS coordinates are simply too compelling to ignore. In the 50 years or so since they were first invented by the American military, their usage has expanded exponentially to cover an incredibly wide range of things and they’re helping us map our world and whereabouts in even more detail than ever before. Indeed, it seems as though getting lost could soon become a thing of the past: according to the US National Park Service, search-and-rescue missions are dropping fast as a result, from 3,216 in 2004 to 2,568 in 2014.
However, the headlines aren’t all so great. Last year, a Mexican-American tourist became a local celebrity in Iceland after driving more than 230 miles in the wrong direction because of a typo in his sat nav. This isn’t an isolated incident – in the past five years, there have been a series of reports about people driving grossly off-course, up one-way streets and even into the sea. In 2015, a man from out of town drove his car off a long-disused Chicago bridge, killing his wife in the process and badly injuring himself, because he was blindly following GPS instructions.
These types of extreme cases may be rare, but it does raise the question about what our increasingly heavy dependence on automatic navigation tools is doing to our minds. A growing body of research suggests some unsettling possibilities. By allowing devices to take total control of navigation, we are beginning to ignore vital real-world cues that humans have always used to deduce their place in the world. As a result, we are losing our natural wayfinding abilities and possibly more: compulsive use of mapping technology may even put us at greater risk for memory loss, it is posited.
A 2006 study scanning the brains of London taxi drivers found that the hippocampi, the regions responsible for direction, increased in volume and developed neuron-dense grey matter as the drivers memorised the layout of the city. Individuals who frequently navigate complex environments the old-fashioned way, by identifying landmarks, literally grow their brains. Additionally, many studies show that having a smaller, weaker hippocampus makes you more vulnerable to brain diseases such as Alzheimer’s, since it’s one of the first regions affected. Although no direct links have yet been made between memory loss and the habitual use of sat navs, the implications are interesting, to say the least.
So, it seems getting lost could actually have a number of benefits for you and your brain. Well, at any rate, that’s what I’ll be telling my passengers next time I take them up a dead-end road.