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- Hacker News
- The good old days. I used to live in a cul-de-sac and out-of-town people often wanted to get to a nearby street. The nearby entrance to that one was blocked for traffic reasons.
Tell people they have to turn right 6 times and drive 4 kilometers and they won't believe you.
by stephbook - I just had a much smaller version of this experience yesterday in SF -- the goal was to climb the rocky peak at Corona Heights and then visit the Randall Museum, and as I was coming down Roosevelt not 500 feet from that first stop (around a corner to my right), I realize that I absolutely recognize this neighborhood and in fact I realize that I have been to the Randall before -- or at least I've been in its backyard -- about two years back on a hike up some stairs from the States Street playground with my daughter. The choice of the park was random and then she had wanted to know what was up the stairs so we climbed them and we ended up in the play yard behind there.
But, based on the landmarks I can see and my vague memory that the Randall is "up above us" I turn left on Masonic away from Corona Heights Park, misidentifying the neighboring Buena Vista Park as Corona Heights and orbiting it looking for the museum until we see a prominent staircase with a sign saying "Buena Vista Park" and I realize the extent of my eff-up. I turn away and switch my car's screen from Media to Map -- it doesn't have Corona Heights marked in green as a park but it's reasonably clear where it has to be -- and then unexpectedly I realize I'm in the Castro, randomly?
Punching the thing into GPS takes a second and then the Randall is in fact, in a cul-de-sac which is not what I was expecting -- actually I miss the turn down States Street where the playground was -- and so even though I'm "right next" to the Randall, GPS is like "okay, let's go up the big hill all the way back to where you started turning onto Roosevelt, and we'll try ALL OF THIS over again."
My wife and daughter, needless to say, did not view this as a successful exploration even though I was quite happy with the fact that I'd indeed recognized the neighborhood (and the playground and the museum without seeing either of them).
by crdrost - One of my best experiences in Prague back around 2010 was when I had no Google Maps, tried navigating with a hotel pamphlet map, and promptly lost my way towards the student culture house I was trying to find.
Ended up asking some locals where I was, and amused they assured me I was way outside the map and had gone east instead of north. I did not want to backtrack so I asked if there was any nice places to get a beer nearby and they pointed me towards a beer garden. Those were some of the nicest Pilsner Urquells and Staropramens I had during my visit. No tourists to be seen, and good vibes all around.
Nowadays I mostly navigate with GPS and rarely just happen on random places like that. I guess we lose some of the discovery when you always know where you are going.
by snorremd - I was hiking one time and did have a guidebook. Things didn't look quite right but I did convince myself I was on the right track. (This was pre-GPS.) Eventually I ended up in someone's backyard. Fortunately there was (obviously) a road there and I figured out I had gone the wrong direction from the trailhead. (I think it was the Appalachian Trail.)by ghaff
- Pre-gps, my wife and I used to head to a destination (local trips to pick up something, often a good distance from home) and on the return home pick random right and left turns. Eventually we would wind up headed back home, but not after exploring the countryside. It was always a nice way to spend an afternoon.by noefingway
- To some extent this is what "killed" geocaching too. It's still a good niche hobby but up until to 2013 or so it was more fun when not everyone had a GPS in their pocket. Of course you can still play without a GPS but there was a kind of sense of community where everyone tried to help each other. Now you just look at your phone and follow a pathby haunter
- Really? I was under the impression, and Wikipedia supports me on this, that geocaching was always about using GPS.by BenjiWiebe
- It's fascinating to see how reliant our world is on GPS services (GNSS more precisely, not only location, but especially time) and how we still get even more reliant every day while at the same time we can see how fragile all of this is in the conflict zones of the world.
Maybe there is room for a stalker like lost art in navigation in places where it all breaks down but I doubt it.
The future I see is more one of autonomous navigation systems. Ones that pick up locations cues wherever they are and build a local map that helps you or your vehicle to find your way.
by weinzierl - Can you describe what you mean by “stalker like lost art in navigation places”? This sounds cool!by charv
- I still keep a paper map in my car, and I still know how to use it. I even update it from time to time; once every year or two. It covers my usual area in broad strokes.
I just haven't used it for a very long time, and I no longer have the constantly-accumulating pile of them that I used to have (for details in Chicago and Detroit and Pittsburgh and anywhere else where I've ever needed a map).
Almost every part of the US that is East of the Mississippi is stored offline in my phone with Google Maps. I can peruse that if necessary, even in the absence of cellphone service and GPS. I just need my particular phone and a way to power it up long enough to write down some directions.
If the cell network is still up but orbital GNSS is kaput, it can even do automatic offline navigation using other location providers (as in that which can be derived from wifi and bluetooth observations). The resolution sucks, and so does the update interval, but it's better than a kick in the pants.
For a decade or so, the built-in Maps program on Windows would allow maps to be downloaded and used offline, too, so I used to have updated maps stored in my laptop as well. (That whole system was killed (thanks, MSFT) so I should probably find an alternative; maybe something based around OSM would be good.)
> The future I see is more one of autonomous navigation systems. Ones that pick up locations cues wherever they are and build a local map that helps you or your vehicle to find your way.
Sounds neat, but the impetus to create such a thing doesn't seem to exist at the present time.
by ssl-3 - The "Derive"[1] app from french collective "Hérétique"[2] his really great to help you wander while still going on your way. I use it a lot when discovering a new city by foot...by toinebeg
- Nice reads if you're interested in it's originsby toasty228
- It's possible to get "lost" even with modern GPS.
My wife and I went on a backpacking trip in the wilderness some years ago. We decided to take a shortcut, bushwacking down a river drainage (1.5 miles) rather than taking the trail all the way around (7 miles) hoping to extend a later part of our trip.
We got downhill through the bushwhack to the bottom of the river valley just fine, but discovered at the bottom that a fire had come through the area a year or two prior. It had completely obliterated the trail, any markers, etc, and trees were fallen everywhere making moving in a straight line very difficult.
Despite having a phone with GPS and offline maps showing exactly where the trail "should" be, the lack of the trail actually existing combined with the challenging terrain made navigating out of the area a huge challenge. It was very easy to start wandering off in the wrong direction away from where the trail used to run without realizing and having to course correct back. I think we were moving at maybe 1/3 mile per hour, for 5-6 hours, until we finally made it out of the burn to where the trail existed again.
by biotinker - I recently had GPS put me in a loop. At every point in the loop, I was following the GPS and the road signs. The elements of this loop were the normal GPS route-finding, one bug (where it told me to take a certain road east, when it should have said west), and one incomplete signage (where GPS told me to exit onto a certain road, the exit sign only said the road went one direction, but in fact the same road went both directions). Following the directions as given resulted in not actually doing what the GPS routefinding wanted me to do, and the recalculated path put me to the place where I tried to follow the sign and went the wrong way, which led to it recalculating again, and sent me back around the loop.
I went around this loop twice before I realized that something was obviously broken, pulled into a parking lot, and actually looked in detail at what was happening. Then I was able to see what both problems were, and did the right thing for where I was, rather than what it was telling me to do.
by AnimalMuppet - I'll be honest, I'm not sure why I should feel nostalgic about inconvenience. Getting lost is a major inconvenience, it creates anxiety, wastes time, and all around just sucks.
GPS greatly reduces all of those things at the expense of... I'm not sure what honestly. The article was short on that part - or at least, to me, the benefits felt like inconveniences reframed as excitement and entertainment. I'll pass on this and most of the 'I miss the good ol days when life was harder ' genre.
I don't miss the days of stopping at a gas station for directions. I don't miss taking the slower route because I didn't have traffic updates redirecting me. I don't miss inconvenience for its own sake.
To each their own, but I really don't get this inconvenience nostalgia period we find ourselves in.
by mlloyd - You're losing out on the "inconvenient" getting lost experiences, which it appears you are focusing on, as well as the "serendipitous" getting lost experiences.
Sounds like you had a bunch of bad times getting lost in the past. Maybe you're just not particularly open to new experiences.
- Exactly, especially in long trips this usually resulted to a fight among parents.by rgavuliak
- If we are in a period of nostalgia for inconvenience, it may be because convenience, when taken to its contemporary priority, can lead to a swath of negative side effects. Loneliness, boredom, lack of motivation.
There's often not a direct causation, but the correlation is compelling to me. We used to have to talk to people, and/or struggle and learn to meet our objectives. When we can skip those steps and immediately arrive at our destinations, we can sometimes miss the journey.
by gausswho - I also dont miss the days without GPS bike computers, having to navigate route with printed out google maps sheets just to realize the resolution was not high enough for my route and I had to stop at every 3rd intersection to confirm I'm still on the right track.by aquafox
- Yeah - I was in the nostalgia boat, until you said this and remembered all the times I was in the country going to a friend's house that I've never been to before, its night time, nothings open, your low on gas, an your looking for a dirt road with a red snow plow reflector that was after the old white house on the left… yeah don’t miss that too much.by balderdash
- If I have somewhere to be (eventually) then I also have a profound and deep and deep dislike for being lost.
And I also remember those old days very well: The gas station maps, the growing accumulation of paper maps in the glove box, asking directions from strangers ("Oh, you want to go there? Sorry, I've never been up on that part of town").
Trying to pre-plan with carefully-printed online maps, and failing.
But I haven't been properly lost since buying a Garmin Nuvi in 2008. My introduction to GPS nav was a profoundly liberating change in my life.
It showed me a path from which to get from A to B, which is obviously its main intent. And in more-recent years, smart phone navigation often routes me right around traffic problems. It works well for traveling efficiently. (We all know this. That's the boring part.)
But! This kind of tech also enabled me to become lost whenever I felt like it.
So, with GPS: If I want to get off of the beaten path, I can do that. I can go spend time wandering in a city and find amazing stuff, and always know that I can get back to any known point with ease.
If I elect to make a detour, I just make it. I don't worry about how far off of my route it takes me because that route is always undefined. There's no longer any part of my brain that reminds me that every minute I spent detouring is a minute I need to spend backtracking, because turning around and following the same path back to the highway isn't often the fastest way to conclude the detour anyway and the nav knows this and is keeping track the entire time.
It's always plotting a course from wherever I am, to whatever destination I want to reach. And I can elect to follow its directions or not, at my whim.
When I get bored of driving on interstate highways in Appalachia, I can push the Avoid Highways button and spend some time on brilliantly-twisty mountain roads in West Virginia while still making progress towards my destination. And when I've had enough of that, I can get back on a highway (maybe the same one as before, but maybe not!) again soon enough.
With GPS, I can become "lost" (as in I have no idea where I am, and everything around me is potentially a new place to explore) whenever I choose, without ever experiencing any of the existential dread of having no idea which way to turn that I experienced in my pre-GPS days.
It's pretty great.
by ssl-3 - > GPS greatly reduces all of those things at the expense of... I'm not sure what honestly.
Setting aside the nostalgia for moments of getting lost that ended well (not all do!): Arguably at the expense of spatial awareness, of how different parts of a city or region fit together in space etc.
In a way, the problem is very similar to that of constant availability to others, and the constant availability of distractions to oneself: Sure, "do not disturb" mode is right there, but it takes a lot more willpower (at least once, to establish a routine) to actively seek out moments of being disconnected from people and data not physically present than it used to when this was just the default mode of existence.
by lxgr - Orienteering is a good skill to have. My wife and one of my best friends could both get lost trying to get out of a cardboard box.
With that said, in the days before GPS, I recall wandering off my planned route for a bit in a new to me city, crossed the wrong street, and ended up in the poorest neighborhood and gang controlled territory. Nothing came of it, other than a lesson learned to be a little more careful about planning potential deviations rather than impromptu ones.
Going into the donut store and having to pass money under bullet proof glass and getting the donut through a revolving bullet proof door was certainly an interesting experience, though not one I'd care to repeat.
by zdragnar - Used to do it as a hobby for a day or two at a time. Just drive in a random direction and take roads you don't know. After a day of driving break out paper maps to find my location. No asking for directions. Ran across interesting things like Natchez Trace Parkway.
Do something similar in large cities except only look at the city's map the day before and then set out sans map using public transit and foot only. My directionally challenged friends thought it curious so a couple tagged along once. One of them had a blast "getting lost" on purpose and dubbed them adventures and continued tagging along, becoming the highlight of trips. Find things you do not expect, good and bad. Keep a good nature and you meet interesting people.
by klvino - Pre-(consumer) GPS, I definitely got turned around even in cities I knew reasonably well that aren't on a grid system in parts. It can be bad enough today in some sections of busy cities where you need to constantly shift lanes etc. and be at least moderately aggressive but trying to drive with a map open on your lap at night could be a bit of a nightmare--and not especially safe. It probably took me years before I had a passable sense of the geography of Boston.by ghaff
- Getting lost isn't fun. I resent the people who say so.
In many places in the world, a missed exit on a freeway can take you 20-30 minutes or more from your destination, with no chance of turning around.
There is an art to wandering, for sure, but this luddite paean to wandering neglects the fact that for most of human history, one of the largest drivers of technology was navigation technology to AVOID getting lost on purpose.
This is projected metaphysical angst masquerading as nostalgia.
by epsteingpt - I drove from Alaska to Argentina with no GPS, phone, or and kind of digital maps. I had no timeline, so I was always “lost” to some degree.
I throughly enjoyed following my nose 99% of the time. Navigating in Central America and rural parts of South was easy. Stopping to ask directions lead to the best street food, hidden beaches and random stuff ( going to weddings, etc). It really helped me learn Spanish too. It’s always worth remembering drivers did this for 100 years, and walkers and horse riders for many, many thousands. GPS is pretty new.
Getting out of the mega cities in South America was not fun, and overshadowed the romantic aspect of the no gps thing. I spent 4 hours trying to get out of Quito. Multiple police pointed in different directions, etc.
by testing22321 - Getting lost when you have time and a full tank of gas is fun.
Getting lost when you need to be someone on time is awful.
We can love the former and hate the latter.
by abnry - You can still get lost today if you want to.
When I go to a new city, I find a landmark than take the train/bus/subway towards it but not to it. I get off ~ 3-5 miles away from it, then I try to find on my own navigating the streets in the general direction of it. Yes, it takes a an hour or two to get there, but I get to see things at random which otherwise I would miss.
I have seen people with phones in their hands asking for directions and not knowing how to tell Google Maps where they want to go.
- Or even less structured, just taking the first random bus you come across and see where you end up.by teodosin