Are navigational apps on mobile technologies evolution or devolution given how we experience places as we travel? Navigational aids help to guide us but people are walking without seeing what is around them as they stare down at their phones. Thoughts?
Nav apps and nav devices are designed to guide you from A to B and depending on the app it does not have to be the shortest or fasted route. This has a big impact on the efficiency of deliveries. In many large cities around the world the requirements on taxi drivers’ geography knowledge have been dropped or relaxed. A total stranger in a city can get his current bearings and information on where to find the nearest hotel, parking garage or pharmacy. All this can be considered evolution.
The flip side is that people who rely on GNSS for all their navigation needs, tend to lose the skill to navigate with only paper maps or even just a recollection of a map. So, they are dependent on the nav app because their sense of orientation is degraded. This could be seen as devolution.
Finally – I do not have the statistics but people walking around staring down at their phones might be less interested in where they are but who is saying what in their social networks….
I fully agree with Bertam.
I will add my comment: in daily life when we want to go from A to B we also observe while reaching B. It is not only one function we perform waling around the city! Imagine yourself in Firenze for the first time and going to the hotel....you will probably want to look around from the first moment ... ps and nav devices are designed to guide us , they are inavitable today and yet they just a tool for one function, and people are multyfunctional by all means...Before they were invented people managed to go around quite efficently.
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