From here to there

The other night, I needed to go to a part of Fitchburg that I'd not visited for probably 40 years. I used to know the city pretty well, - Fitchburg Music where I bought a Gibson guitar, the college where my mother attended and where I tried to look older and cooler, the Co-op where you could buy pastries that were almost as good as my grandmother's. It's been quite a while, so I needed some help.
First stop these days is generally Google Maps. There are other mapping tools to be sure and I even have GPS on my phone. The latter costs money, so I only use it when I'm really lost.
I think that maps are among the most interesting things that humans have created. To develop a flat representation of a physical world is quite an achievement. I can study maps for hours, marveling at the connectedness of places. Old maps, in particular, before the advent of aerial photography, shows how science and imagination can bring us something beautiful.
But, we can't afford to confuse maps with reality. Maps, as good as they are, are mnemonics, giving us clues to help us remember or interpret the reality that's in front of us.
Recently, I read You Are Here: Why We Can Find Our Way to the Moon, but Get Lost in the Mall, by Colin Ellard. In the book, we learn how, as a species, we're not very good at managing life in spaces. We get lost easily (as shown here and here) in fairly small spaces. Some peoples, such as the Inuit, have imbued their language with a sense of direction that allows the name of a place to include its location. By comparison, New Englanders in particular are quite content to give directions such as "go past the mall where Caldor's used to be." (with apologies to Jeff).
Google Maps fall prey to the  "more information is better" trap. The amount of detail regarding each turn, notably each route or street sign, obscures the often simple reality that's in front of us.
For example, taking the leisurely route up through Princeton, Google Maps tells me to "Turn right at Gregory Hill Rd/MA-31/MA-62" when it would be much simpler to say, "Take a right after the Prince of Peace Church." It's much easier to spot a church than to read street signs.
Of course, if I was in need of serious help, I could have picked up a GPS gadget and had Bob Dylan or Homer Simpson narrate my travels. (I'll leave the "How many roads" and "D'oh" quips for readers imagination.
More seriously, as we let GPS units and the turn-by-turn instructions from various mapping services, we're losing our ability to navigate by the stuff around us. By extensions, we're also no longer seeing where we are.
Some neurological studies of patients with Lyme and Alzheimer's diseases and others whose  frontal lobes have been compromised develop spatial disorientation or loss of geographic memory. Places that were once familiar are no longer. New memories can grow, but old memories of places seem to be gone forever. As we rely on gadgets and website to provide us with navigational guidance, it's going to fun (for varying values of fun) to see what we forget and what we discover anew.