When I’m driving my car, am I
the only person who expects my GPS to yell at me when I don't follow its instructions?
I truly believe I am going to hear something like ‘Why on earth did you turn
right? I told you to turn left. Aren’t
you listening? Here I am trying to make this trip easy and you have just totally
made a mess of it. We will have to reroute again. This is the third time this
week.’
Or when I start out on a trip
and ignore how the GPS tells me to get to the highway. I can here that little click
of impatience. Or worse, it goes silent. Then I think, O God, is it mad at me?
Is it going to take revenge?
And then there is the suspicion
that I don't really trust my GPS. It started with the appearance a few years
ago of the Dirt Path. I live at 108th St. and Riverside in Manhattan and every
time I look for traffic advisories for a route to some place north of the City,
the GPS tells me to take the Dirt Path to 110th St.
Dirt Path? With a capital D?
Is my GPS playing games with me? Or has it made a Mistake? Does it have a
diabolical streak, or does it just want to get my goat?
Just to be clear: there is a
kind of footpath through a grassy area between Riverside Dr. and the parallel
service drive. The dirt path is about two feet wide and is primarily used by
dog walkers. Or, is the GPS really referring to the Service Drive? Not
according to the GPS map. It actually shows a Dirt Path where no car could
possibly go.
But here’s the part that
annoys me: When the Dirt Path first appeared, I told friends about it. “Isn’t
this a hoot?” I would say. “Look, the GPS has made a mistake! ”
Do you know what the
invariable reaction was? My friends would say “Are you sure there isn’t some road
called Dirt Path you don't know about?” And I would say, “Duh, I live here. Believe
me, there are no hidden roads.”
“Well, you better check.”
Do you know how many people
have said this to me? Now I tell about the Dirt Path just to see what they will
say. And always they say, “Technology must be right.”
I see this little example not
as idiocy but as indoctrination, a sort of omen of just where we are going with
these devices. Right now, we have become dependent on them to find our way. And
it's a great thing for the directionally challenged. But doesn’t it bother you
that some day you may go somewhere and the thing won’t work? You will have no
idea how to get out of the place without your little device. I mean, what if you
lose the signal? What if you run out of battery power and your charger doesn’t
work? Do you keep a map in your car any more?
And what’s to stop the
diabolical device from sending you over a cliff? Or into a trap devised by
foreign agents?
On the other hand, you could
be like my husband - aka “The Human Compass” - who is not willing to trust any
electronic anything. He looks at maps and plans trips and remembers where he is
going. He knows immediately if he has made a wrong turn, or if we’re going in
the wrong direction. "You can see
by the shadows that we are heading east not west," he might explain. I
swear he can see on which side of the tree the moss is growing.
I am nothing like my husband.
In fact, some would say I have no sense of direction at all.
Add to that the fact that I
never ask directions, not out of ego but because I can never remember what the
directions were. I just look at road maps, write down directions and hope for
the best. I am very good at U-turns.
But I can find my way to any
major department store in Westchester County without a hitch.
What will I do if the
pandemic puts department stores out of business?
Guess I had better hope my
GPS doesn’t really hate me.
