Have you traveled using maps and GPS? They are very different, and not even comparable.
It seems to me like comparing a shovel to a ditch digging machine.
It is possible to navigate using maps. But not practical for the mass audience of GPS who can’t use maps. And impossible for the industries that require GPS (uber types).
Technology is a multiplier that increases the returns on things my removing labor and letting it focus on other, more productive things.
Similarly, arguing that the internet isn’t 1000x easier to learn things because libraries exist is odd to me. Have you ever tried to use a book in a library to find that it’s checked out? Or not available at all. Inter library loans used to take 30 days, if I had access to a good library, and now that information is available to me for free.
This doesn’t mean the world is perfect or that we don’t still have so much work to do. But it’s just an odd perspective that seems unmoored from reality, since these things can be objectively measured.
Am I in some kind of weird HN bubble where no-one has ever used a physical map?
I've travelled extensively pre-turn by turn navigation using physical maps, i spent a year motorcycling across mainland Europe in my early 20's using nothing but physical maps, I did the same but in the US during the early-mid 2000's.
Was it as easy as sticking a zip code into a magic box and having it tell me where to go and when to take a turn? Probably not. But it wasn't much more complicated because I know how to read maps and can remember things for more than 10 seconds.
I used a physical map, but especially inside cities how the hell are you supposed to keep your eyes on the road and navigate at the same time? A 30 minute drive can have idk 50 turns. Do you memorize those 50 turns? What about places where the street signs suck?
Lol... no it's quite the opposite and far less distracting to actually navigate by map. You read the map, interpret the relevant bits, hold (in broad strokes) the entire strategy in your mind, and then just drive. Most of the small decisions don't matter. In fact, this greatly improves situational awareness. I don't need to pay attention to navigating every interesection when I just read the map and realize that every road as long as I'm heading roughly east will dump into the big collector road that I need to get to. I remember whether I'm on one side of the freeway, or the other, and I can find my way onto it without any additional assistance.
Interestingly, it's often MORE efficient than using Waze or some navigation app with ADHD that can't see the forest for the trees. I pity those that never learned to see the forest.
I'm not sure it's an HN bubble so much as a people under a certain age bubble. Smartphones in the modern sense have only been mainstream for a bit over 10 years. The internet was only mainstream for about 10 years before that. But a lot of people seem to assume that we were hunting woolly mammoths with flint spears before that time.
Yes today's communications are nice but we really didn't need GPS or cell phones to leave the house however primitive paper maps and, yes, some degree of planning seem.
Well as a society we are super screwed if some event wipes out the internet or computers. The dependence is gonna keep increasing. I wonder when we'll hearing stories about Amazon servers shut downs inadvertently killing some people.
Less pleasant than GPS, sure, but by no means a rare skill or impossible to achieve. Would you get the road wrong more often, and have to stop and re-check? Yeah, definitely. Would you still get from A to B in roughly the same time? Yeah, definitely.
For what it's worth, my experience is the opposite. When I read the map and know the whole path ahead of time I'm far more likely to get it right the first time compared to using an app in the city that tells me to turn right 200 feet from the intersection when I really needed that information 200 yards from the intersection. Or sends me on some weird right then left then right thing instead of realizing I can just go straight.
I don't think anyone is disputing that technology makes things easier.
And I've frequently commented that early career me would be incredibly frustrated by the difficulty of accessing information about just about anything were I to be transported back in time.
But it's also the case that we were actually able to travel, communicate, and learn about things in 1990. Yes, it was generally higher friction and relied more on physical artifacts like maps and printed photos but we were able to manage quite well.
When I was younger and lived in California, people had Thomas Guide maps. These were the best. As a pizza delivery dude in college, it made it pretty simple to find a house/apartment. And it didn't require batteries etc. Now it wasn't as easy as an iPhone with maps built in, but it wasn't like it was impossible.
There used to be a whole trope of men (especially) not wanting to stop and ask for directions. I'm sure there are younger people who would watch a movie or a TV show where this happens and go "Huh????"
There are also any number of plot points that revolve around not being able to reach someone that also wouldn't make a lot of sense in general today.
It seems to me like comparing a shovel to a ditch digging machine.
It is possible to navigate using maps. But not practical for the mass audience of GPS who can’t use maps. And impossible for the industries that require GPS (uber types).
Technology is a multiplier that increases the returns on things my removing labor and letting it focus on other, more productive things.
Similarly, arguing that the internet isn’t 1000x easier to learn things because libraries exist is odd to me. Have you ever tried to use a book in a library to find that it’s checked out? Or not available at all. Inter library loans used to take 30 days, if I had access to a good library, and now that information is available to me for free.
This doesn’t mean the world is perfect or that we don’t still have so much work to do. But it’s just an odd perspective that seems unmoored from reality, since these things can be objectively measured.