There’s a maxim I like: All technology invented before you’re 35 is genius and makes life worth living — and all technology invented thereafter is stupid and guaranteed to rot the brains of the bozos who rely on it. Now a study shows that when it comes to GPS, at least, the adage may be true.
Thanks to way-finding apps like Google Maps and Waze, paper maps have gone the way of the Dewey Decimal System, Wite-Out, and mixtapes — and it’s been a decade since anyone’s said, “If you pass the green fence, you’ve gone too far.” We count on our GPS-linked phones to tell us not only how to get where we’re going, but when to leave, which lane to be in, and what obstructions await us ahead. It’s mad handy, y’all. But what do we trade for this convenience?
A recent letter in the Washington Post by tech journalist M.R. O’Connor argues that relying solely on GPS to help you traverse your environs may actually shrink your hippocampus — the area of the brain responsible not just for spatial navigation but also for recalling the past and even imagining the future. Atrophy of the hippocampus is associated with Alzheimer’s disease, she points out, and the art of getting lost — and of getting oneself unlost — well, it’s lost.