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Comment by paganel | Hacker News Reader

> like side roads filled to capacity with people following Waze directions

I had a feeling related to this when a couple of months ago, after I had given a friend a ride, she told me that she was really amazed of how I was driving around without using an always-on GPS map. I realized that for people in my age (their 20s and 30s) driving in a car now involves being dependent on your GPS maps.

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I find that, at least for walking extended distances over unfamiliar territory (I can't drive), having the map is very useful. Not directions, not routing, but at least a map so that I know where point A and point B are, and I can see the possible routes between them. It also helps when mass transit stops are on the map. Digital mapping is a great boon to my travel, because it's so much easier to look at and carry a 9 inch tablet than to have to haul paper maps. If I didn't have clear digital mapping available on my devices, I probably wouldn't go anywhere new because it'd make me a target for either crime or scams. Now, as far as routing... I like looking up directions before I go so that I have a rough idea of where I should go. But I don't use GPS-backed directions en route most of the time.

Gps is particularly remarkable in the way it completely impedes the development of any ability to navigate routes independently. The only technology I’ve seen with such an incredible brain-atrophizing power, is the calculator.

It is great for being alerted to congestion problems, but many times if you are familiar with the route, you can find optimizations the mapping software can’t.

Yes! Yesterday, driving home from a grocery store five miles away on my usual [fastest] route via the interstate, I told Google maps "home." I guess the AI was having a bad day because it spent the entire ten-minute trip frantically rerouting and giving me new instructions every ten seconds as it tried to route me via city streets alongside and across the interstate's path. I watched the proposed spaghetti-like route on my phone's screen as my car icon cruised along right up the middle. Very amusing. Reminded me of one of those sci-fi films where the robot short-circuits and sparks and speaks word salad.

That might just have been a failure with the GPS -- I've had the same issue before, but the car icon was offset a bit from the highway, so it looked like I was constantly driving on the grass next to it (that must have come as a surprise to the little imps inside my phone doing the navigating).

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