GPS Reliance: My Love-Hate Relationship with Navigation

Recently I had the pleasure of chatting with CBC Radio about society’s GPS reliance. Since childhood, I’ve had a love-hate relationship with navigation. As you can imagine, this potentially quite the conundrum for a traveller!

Chatting with Senior Writer, Laura Fraser, was easy, fun, and energizing. Our conversation twisted around bend after bend, discussing paper maps (yes, I’m that old) and MapQuest print-outs, safely navigating as a woman, strategies like intuition and landmarks, how navigation methods affect connection and isolation, and so much more. We connected on mutual ties to Ireland and navigating the world through a woman’s perspective, and nerded out about travel and the tech that both helps and hinders our lives.

Two other people appear in the article. The first is Louisa Dahmani, a neuroscientist and researcher at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital who has studied the negative effects on spatial memory due to GPS reliance. The second, Brenda Holder, is a Cree traditional knowledge keeper who co-founded Mahikan Trails, a tour company that leads people around southwestern Alberta and Banff. Talk about being in good company.

Through our conversation, Laura mentioned a book by Katherine Dunn, a London-based journalist. I made a note to add it to my bookshelf and am including it here in case it’s of interest to you too: Little Blue Dot: How the Global Positioning System Shaped the Modern World. It is also interesting to note that the overuse of GPS was covered by the CBC’s Anna Maria Tremonti in 2016. (This affiliate link supports Travel with TMc AND independent Canadian booksellers!)

Here is the CBC article on GPS reliance, along with a few other musings on the topic below.

The Early Days of Paper Maps. From Hate to Love.

I grew up in the 90s. My family and I often took road trips to visit relatives or explore North America. Those were the good old days when rousing Disney melodies (especially Mulan) and Sum41 belters were the soundtracks to our minivan’s journey. Interactive car games such as “Guess How Many Kilometres This Trip Will Take” or “Wheel of Fortune” led by my ever creative and resourceful mother kept us kids amicably occupied and my parents sane in the times before zombie screens.

As an adult, I learned that one summer family trip was thanks to a paper map and chance when my parents took a ruler, chose a length, and decided on our family adventure by where the spinning stick stopped. Spontaneous car travel with 4 kids – now that’s impressive!

The memory that paper maps most strongly elicit, however, is the lightly traumatizing exercise my well-intentioned father put us through. Starting around the tender age of 10, any time we asked for a drive to a friend’s house, Dad would hand us the paper map and say, “Sure. Tell me how to get there”.

This was my personal hell.

For some reason, my brain required that I turn the map so it was positioned to mirror the direction we were heading. Working within the confines of a car, that’s not an easy task. Working within the time constraints of mine and my father’s patience, another limit. I remember, more than once, crying in frustration. Sometimes I forfeit the chance to play with friends to avoid the aggravating challenge.

But, like many things our parents do to make us better people, improve our skills, and enhance our lives, it is an exercise and a lesson I have come to greatly appreciate. (Don’t tell him though!)

When I hit my teens and acquired the coveted G1 and G2 licences , a paper map could always be found in the glove box. On more than one occasion, I pulled over to the side of a road to consult its wisdom. Eventually, as both my knowledge of my hometown and the proliferation of digital maps rose, the paper map stayed in the glove box.

During the pandemic when the world was going to shit, I pulled out an Ontario road map to keep me sane. Yes, I’m aware of the irony.

Needing a project, a purpose, and a reason to exist outside my apartment in the safest way possible, I turned to that trustworthy paper map. Equipped with its compact creased shape and an unopened coffee table book called Top 160 Unusual Things to See in Ontario, I got to work. Seated on my living room floor, I opened the map to its full potential, highlighting each odd spot. Proximity would reveal where to start since public restrooms weren’t yet open. These were the days before I had my campervan. Instead, the paper indicated where I could stretch my wings and breathe again within a 3-hour driving radius.

Not only was it satisfying to graffiti the map, but the kinesthetic act produced a sense of accomplishment that the virtual world can never provide.

I can still see myself laying the map on the floor with the open book beside me. The sense of purpose and joyful momentum sparked in that decision guided me through the next couple of difficult years. Synchronicity and kismet carried me like Aladdin’s carpet to each new unusual location. I cannot count the number of times I met the perfect person, in the quietest and most distanced of times, in the exact place I needed to meet them. The energy these quests infused back into my heart was medicine.

I shared my road trip discoveries in real-time on Instagram stories and rekindled my love of photography, taking time to absorb new environments and relishing the slow pandemic pace. Returning home, I would dive into books, history society websites, nerdy blogs, and newspaper archives to add to my own Ontario 160 articles (most of which I still haven’t finished writing…). Strangers, family, and old acquaintances would message in response to what I shared. They were delighted to hear about cool places in their backyard. Others couldn’t wait to venture farther out when the pandemic lifted. A popular local radio station, The Mike Farwell Show on 570News, caught wind and invited me on to talk about local travel. Shockingly, traffic on my travel blog climbed during a time when travel was taboo.

A paper map returned me my spark.

MapQuest Printouts. Goodbye Trees. Hello Step-by-Step Directions!

Rewinding the timeline a moment, I got my G1 (beginner driver’s licence) the day I turned 16. MapQuest was in its prime and cell phones were not yet normalized robotic appendages. I don’t remember much about using MapQuest, other than a quiet relief over not needing paper maps. The booklet of printed step-by-step directions, or those I copied from MapQuest onto scraps of paper, were quite satisfactory.

I’m sure the trees had much to say otherwise.

Navigating the World with Google Maps

Like MapQuest, I don’t recall the moment when Google Maps came on the scene or, for that matter, when MapQuest was left in the dust. There are, however, two annoying experiences I’ve had with Google Maps that fractured my blind trust of tech.

Jeju-do, South Korea

The first experience was when I moved to South Korea in 2015. According to its website, Google Maps made its debut in 2005. In 10 years of existence, Google was still working to cover every inch of the globe. The isolated Korean island where I resided was mostly mapped, though not yet translated. Thankfully, after having lived in Ireland, travelling through Southeast Asia and Western Europe, and subsequently living in other Ontario cities, I enjoyed getting lost.

One of the best parts of travel, be it hyperlocal or international, is getting lost. It’s an art. A lost art.

I didn’t always feel that way though. Perhaps it’s the semi-retired perfectionist or the first child in me, but sometimes it stressed me the heck out not knowing where to go or how to get somewhere. My mobility on Jeju-do was extremely limited and my living conditions disastrous, so much so that I eventually quit my contract early and moved back to Canada. Despite my affinity for languages and puzzles, my patience in those circumstances was low. If I’m honest in my reflection, there was some Anglophone privilege mixed in with my stressed out annoyance.

Wellington, New Zealand

The second experience was when I lived in Wellington, New Zealand. My partner at the time and I were apartment hunting. On one such day of back-to-back letting viewings, Google Maps led us to the edge of a forest. No path ahead. Just rows of dense trees and a screen insisting that we forge forward like coureurs de bois. Being brand new to the city and cutting it close to our showing time, we forfeit our meeting. We decided that place wasn’t meant to be and retraced our steps to the bay where we listened to the waves and people watched.

While I’ve framed this as a negative experience (the annoyance was real), in choosing to go with the flow, we enjoyed a relaxing moment by the water.

Navigating the World as a Woman – Intuition and Safety

Something that was a part of mine and Laura’s conversation and not included in the CBC article is navigating the world as a woman. Specifically, how tech does or doesn’t hinder our ability to move safely and trusting our intuition as a guide.

Safety Texts

Early in the move to Dublin, I had the realization that it was wise, if not necessary, to text friends that I was home safe, particularly after a night out. I insisted that everyone do the same, regardless of gender. Affectionately and accurately, they were dubbed “Safety Texts”.

It was my first time not living at home where I would immediately be missed if not present the next day. It was also the first time I needed to consider my presence if no one was there to witness it on a daily basis. I lived with two wonderful friends, who I’m sure would have noticed if I’d disappeared. However, I think the “missing radar” is different with parents or siblings.

Notifying those in close proximity of my whereabouts wasn’t something I’d heard about or been advised by from someone else. It was instinct. If I didn’t let someone know where I was, that inaction could put me in a precarious position. I was suddenly aware that my safety was now my sole responsibility instead of something I took for granted while living with family.

To be clear, I never felt unsafe in Ireland – even while living in Dublin’s infamous north side. As I’ve written about before, I’m a 6-foot tall white brunette Anglophone, navigating the world with much more ease than many others of my sex. That being said, all women instinctively consider their safety from childhood onward.

Head Up

Other navigational safety strategies I developed early on in university and while abroad centered around. First, I rarely am in public spaces wearing headphones. There’s too much audio information about our surroundings that’s otherwise lost. Second, and more often when in an unfamiliar place, I keep my head up and out of the screen. Noticing who and what are physically around you puts you in a better place should you need to ask for help. Plus, the “confused tourist” look makes you a prime target for scams, pickpockets, and the like. As mentioned in the CBC article, I like to use Waze or Google Maps to get me to an unfamiliar destination (especially when short on time) and then I rely on my memory and intuition to return me to my starting point. The game-like personal challenge is a win-win, however efficiently I make it back.

Turns out, this game has many cognitive and emotional benefits.

According to neuroscientist Louisa Dahmani, as quoted in our CBC article, “If we use our hippocampus less frequently for navigation, it can begin to atrophy like an unused muscle and reorganize itself”. Flex on, I say!

Straddling Tech and Intuition

Call me woo woo, call me a skeptic, call me a little whatever, but I believe in the 6th sense. I think intuition is biologically one of our major senses. I think it is as natural and normal and average and powerful and necessary for survival as our ability to taste, see, smell, touch, and hear. We’ve just been functioning without its full potential for so long that we’ve convinced ourselves this reduced modification is normal.

At some point in history, someone (probably a man) decided that women’s individual and collective intuition was a threat, so they squelched our confident inner knowing. At some point, the destruction became systematic. At some point, we told ourselves that only cuckoo people talk about and tap into their intuition. Maybe. Probably not. It’s just fluff. Today we call it gaslighting.

Let the record show that I love men, that I know there are many amazing men in our world, and that I’m fortunate to have some in my life!

Every human has an internal compass to help them navigate life. When we pay attention, it guides our decisions and movements. Those who practice building, strengthening, and shortening the synapses (“neurons that fire together wire together”), grow trust in themselves and thus their intuitive compass brightens.

This applies to navigating both people and spaces.

Whether you walk into a room and sense the energy’s off, or you take a left when you felt in your gut you should have gone right, intuition is a real and important tool to use when navigating. It’s just that we often ignore it. We’ve been taught to dismiss the gut feeling or the sensation in our chest or the voice in our head.

I have a theory that those who travel, especially women who travel alone, redevelop their intuition out of necessity.

Coming from the woman who, from childhood, hated maps and had little confidence in my ability to navigate, all of that changed when I moved abroad alone. As a recovering people pleaser, I defaulted to others for answers, chucking my thoughts to the backseat. Without access to abundant phone data or my social groups to defer to, the first few days in Dublin were challenging and exhilarating as I started to find my own way. Call me a luddite or call me old-fashioned, but it makes me sad that younger generations with access to unlimited, albeit less accurate and trustworthy, information at their fingertips are unlikely to experience the thrill of the struggle.

I reached the pinnacle of navigational pride the first time I confidently relayed directions to someone in Dublin. No phone or other human consultation. Just me. My brain. My memory. My mistakes and analysis that lead to learning the neighbourhoods, buildings, and people moving in and around these new to me spaces. Not only did I feel I achieved some sort of status as a “local”, I was levelling up a new skill thanks to hours of wandering, getting lost, asking people for directions, and paying attention to my intuition. AI can’t compete.

Like all good things, the skill of intuition takes time and practice and many mistakes to develop. The “modern world”, or perhaps more accurately the billionaires and businesses steering the sinking ship, doesn’t value these integral aspects of humanity. Arguably, they’d prefer to erase them. To disappear the cognitive flex of critical thought, the time it takes to develop discernment, and the trust to lead yourself through the noise to get to the paths less travelled. A theory about systemic oppression of intuition and knowledge doesn’t seem so far-fetched when we analyze the self-destructive bludgeon these rich men are peddling.

Connection and Isolation

Last, and perhaps more important now than ever, is the topic of navigation and interpersonal connection. I’ve been writing this piece for a couple of weeks but the perfect conclusion wrote itself into my life (and thus this blog) yesterday while on a Guess Where Trip with 2 fun-loving friends. Driving through rural Ontario, cell reception was low. One phone maintained our directions, though at times the satellites were tricky to reach.

At one stop, a brief conversation with a friendly man veered towards the topic of asking strangers for directions and talking to humans. In a place with little to no cell reception, of which there are many in our world, it demonstrated once more how relevant the skills of communication, intuition, patience, and kindness still are in tech-obsessed times. That this came up spontaneously, while on a road trip built around surprises, strengthening community, and making memories, couldn’t have been more perfect.

Technology has its place. However, the benefits, skills, and magical moments birthed from person-to-person interaction will long outlast any new-fangled beep-bop. Humans have been navigating the Earth as long as we’ve inhabited this little blue dot. To survive we cannot isolate. The hyper “independence” that tech lauds is counter-intuitive to our species. To survive we must connect.

Today’s Conclusion on GPS Reliance

So, while I have much more to say on this specific aspect of navigation, the story will wind down here today. Thank you, dear reader, for spending your time here. I’m so curious to know of your relationships with various navigational methods as well. Please feel free to share them in the comments below. Until we connect again, may your path be filled with wrong turns, kismet, and a little bit of adventure.