I was reading an article written by Greg Milner who is the author of the forthcoming book 'Pinpoint: How GPS Is Changing Technology, Culture And Our Minds', and that set me thinking how reliance on GPS while driving could erode our cognitive maps because we stop thinking for ourselves. In Human Evolution, we talk about the 'use and disuse theory' where disuse of an organ leads to its loss over a period of time!
As Greg mentions, after a couple of Swedes mistakenly followed their GPS to the city of Carpi (when they meant to visit Capri), an Italian tourism official dryly noted to the BBC that "Capri is an island. They did not even wonder why they didn't cross any bridge or take any boat". And an Upper West Side blogger's account of the man who interpreted "turn here" to mean onto a stairway in Riverside Park was headlined: GPS, Brain Fail Driver.
But some have tragic endings - like the couple who ignored "Road Closed" signs and plunged off a bridge in Indiana last year. Disastrous incidents involving drivers following disused roads and disappearing into remote areas of Death Valley in California became so common that park rangers gave them a name: "Death by GPS." Last October, a tourist was shot to death in Brazil after GPS led her and her husband down the wrong street and into a notorious drug area.
If we're being honest, it's not that hard to imagine doing something similar ourselves. Most of us use GPS as a crutch while driving through unfamiliar terrain, tuning out and letting that soothing voice do the dirty work of navigating. Since the explosive rise of in-car navigation systems around 10 years ago, several studies have demonstrated empirically the downside of using GPS. Cornell researchers who analysed the behaviour of drivers using GPS found these drivers to be "detached" from the "environments that surround them". Their conclusion: "GPS eliminated much of the need to pay attention."
We seem so driven to transform our cars, or other conveyances fitted with latest GPS that we fail to see one of the consequences is a possible diminution of our "cognitive map", a term introduced in 1948 by the University of California, Berkeley psychologist Edward Tolman. In a groundbreaking paper, Dr Tolman analysed several laboratory experiments involving rats and mazes. He argued that rats had the ability to develop not only cognitive "strip maps" - simple conceptions of the spatial relationship between two points - but also more comprehensive cognitive maps that encompassed the entire maze.
Could society's embrace of GPS be eroding our cognitive maps? For Dr Julia Frankenstein, a psychologist at the University of Freiburg's Centre for Cognitive Science, the danger of GPS is that "we are not forced to remember or process the information - as it is permanently 'at hand',' we need not think or decide for ourselves". She has written that we "see the way from A to Z, but we don't see the landmarks along the way". In this sense, "developing a cognitive map from this reduced information is a bit like trying to get an entire musical piece from a few notes".
There is evidence that one's cognitive map can deteriorate. A widely reported study published in 2006 demonstrated that the brains of London taxi drivers have larger than average amounts of grey matter in the area responsible for complex spatial relations. Brain scans of retired taxi drivers suggested that the volume of grey matter in those areas also decreases when that part of the brain is no longer being used as frequently. "I think it's possible that if you went to someone doing a lot of active navigation, but just relying on GPS," Dr Hugo Spiers, one of the authors of the taxi study, "you'd actually get a reduction in that area."
GPS is just one more way for us to strip-map the world, receding into our automotive cocoons as we run the maze. Maybe we should be grateful when, sometimes we end up in an entirely different but beautiful place, even if by accident!
As Greg mentions, after a couple of Swedes mistakenly followed their GPS to the city of Carpi (when they meant to visit Capri), an Italian tourism official dryly noted to the BBC that "Capri is an island. They did not even wonder why they didn't cross any bridge or take any boat". And an Upper West Side blogger's account of the man who interpreted "turn here" to mean onto a stairway in Riverside Park was headlined: GPS, Brain Fail Driver.
But some have tragic endings - like the couple who ignored "Road Closed" signs and plunged off a bridge in Indiana last year. Disastrous incidents involving drivers following disused roads and disappearing into remote areas of Death Valley in California became so common that park rangers gave them a name: "Death by GPS." Last October, a tourist was shot to death in Brazil after GPS led her and her husband down the wrong street and into a notorious drug area.
If we're being honest, it's not that hard to imagine doing something similar ourselves. Most of us use GPS as a crutch while driving through unfamiliar terrain, tuning out and letting that soothing voice do the dirty work of navigating. Since the explosive rise of in-car navigation systems around 10 years ago, several studies have demonstrated empirically the downside of using GPS. Cornell researchers who analysed the behaviour of drivers using GPS found these drivers to be "detached" from the "environments that surround them". Their conclusion: "GPS eliminated much of the need to pay attention."
We seem so driven to transform our cars, or other conveyances fitted with latest GPS that we fail to see one of the consequences is a possible diminution of our "cognitive map", a term introduced in 1948 by the University of California, Berkeley psychologist Edward Tolman. In a groundbreaking paper, Dr Tolman analysed several laboratory experiments involving rats and mazes. He argued that rats had the ability to develop not only cognitive "strip maps" - simple conceptions of the spatial relationship between two points - but also more comprehensive cognitive maps that encompassed the entire maze.
Could society's embrace of GPS be eroding our cognitive maps? For Dr Julia Frankenstein, a psychologist at the University of Freiburg's Centre for Cognitive Science, the danger of GPS is that "we are not forced to remember or process the information - as it is permanently 'at hand',' we need not think or decide for ourselves". She has written that we "see the way from A to Z, but we don't see the landmarks along the way". In this sense, "developing a cognitive map from this reduced information is a bit like trying to get an entire musical piece from a few notes".
There is evidence that one's cognitive map can deteriorate. A widely reported study published in 2006 demonstrated that the brains of London taxi drivers have larger than average amounts of grey matter in the area responsible for complex spatial relations. Brain scans of retired taxi drivers suggested that the volume of grey matter in those areas also decreases when that part of the brain is no longer being used as frequently. "I think it's possible that if you went to someone doing a lot of active navigation, but just relying on GPS," Dr Hugo Spiers, one of the authors of the taxi study, "you'd actually get a reduction in that area."
GPS is just one more way for us to strip-map the world, receding into our automotive cocoons as we run the maze. Maybe we should be grateful when, sometimes we end up in an entirely different but beautiful place, even if by accident!
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