E110 SCARY STORIES

            Heart racing, hands shaking, I am occasionally jolted awake after experiencing a nightmare that has haunted me for years. I begin in a familiar environment, such as my school or my house, usually surrounded by people I recognize. My muscles relax as I spot my parents or close friends nearby. But suddenly, I blink my eyes and I’ve been relocated to a new place entirely. It’s typically dark and spooky; maybe in the woods or on an eerie, unfamiliar street. A shudder of fear rocks through my body as I realize that I’m utterly alone, and it seems the more I try to return home, the more lost I become.

 

            Referring to myself as “directionally challenged,” I have always had an unnaturally difficult time memorizing directions or knowing where I am in relation to other places. As a food deliverer, my GPS has been my lifesaver for the past three years. Each Tuesday, my friends and I arrive at a local catering company, and one by one we load up our cars with hefty bins of food. Each bin is to be taken to a house that is anywhere from ten minutes to an hour away. We’re given a sheet with five to six addresses, and sent on our way. For the most part, I have never had any major issues delivering food. I simply plug the address into my GPS and my path is mapped out for me within seconds. However, there have been a few nerve-wracking instances where my daunting nightmare seemed to come to life for a few of my fellow deliverers.

 

            The fear of getting lost is commonly referred to as mazeophobia, although some scientists claim that the true culprit of fearing getting lost lies within the fear of being put in uncomfortable and unfamiliar situations. Whether one fears getting lost while driving a new route or walking home alone, the anxiety connected to not being able to make it back to a safe place on your own is one that seems to have diminished significantly due to the advancing world of technology (“Tell Your”). GPS systems, Uber apps, etc. have made it nearly impossible to get lost in today’s society. Needless to say, these advancements have saved countless people from their anxieties of facing disorienting situations. However, our overreliance on technology to lead us home could be just as detrimental as it is beneficial.

 

            The human mind can be “surprisingly good at developing ‘mental maps’ of an area” and this skill can grow stronger and stronger with more practice. When we travel to new places, we both consciously and unconsciously recognize landmarks along the way. The position and spacing of these landmarks become things we memorize, allowing us to navigate to this location more easily in the future. However, with the help of GPS, we rarely practice using our mental maps, so our skills are slowly fading. In an experiment, 26 residents of a town in Germany were asked to navigate a three-dimensional model of their hometown. When told to point towards familiar landmarks, they were a lot less error-prone when facing north. Researchers believe this is due to the fact that physical maps, such as city maps, are typically oriented north.

 

            By studying their city map, the residents of the town were able to navigate their way easily, especially when facing north. This proves Julia Frankenstein’s theory that physical maps help us build up our mental maps. The problem with using a GPS is that the virtual screen is constantly changing directions, and not always pointing north. In this sense, a GPS shows us “the way from A to Z, but we don’t see the landmarks along the way.” Human brains are always working to decrease the amount of information we need to store, and this is why GPS is so appealing to us (Frankenstein). Although extremely convenient, GPS does not seem to help strengthen our mental maps; if anything it works to weaken them.

 

            I found Frankenstein’s research to be true after watching my friend Carly panic when getting lost during a delivery job. About 45 minutes from home with two houses to go, Carly’s stomach dropped when she realized her phone was about to die. She quickly screen-shotted pictures of the directions she received from her GPS and switched her phone to airplane mode to conserve as much battery as possible. She only made it to one more house before her phone died, along with any sense of where she was.

 

            Our boss soon received a call from Carly’s last house, complaining that their food was never delivered. After realizing that her phone had died, we all began to worry for Carly’s safety. As it grew later and later, my friend and I decided to head out together and try and search for her. Just as we were stepping into our cars, we got a call from Carly that she had made it home and was recharging her phone. After driving aimlessly for about an hour, Carly had finally come across a town name that she recognized and was able to follow road signs back home.

 

            The story of my friend is a perfect example of psychologist Eleanor A. Maguire’s discoveries. She and her colleagues at University College London established that spatial experience changes brain structure. After studying the brains of London taxi drivers, they saw that the gray matter in their hippocampal areas, a specific section of the brain that focuses on memory, increased and grew stronger. The more the drivers learned and memorized the spatial arrangement of the city, the greater their internal GPS became. By finding this relationship, Maguire could also conclude that with less spatial experience, our internal GPS will grow weaker. She uses the example of playing an instrument to clarify her findings. The more you practice playing, the better you will become. The longer you go without practicing, the quicker you will forget how to play (Frankenstein).

 

            Along with GPS, other technological innovations, such as the Uber app, seem to be taking over as our methods of navigation. Valued at $50 billion, Uber has become one of the most prominent apps on the market. Uber undeniably has many benefits; I myself admit to using it fairly often. According to CEO, Travis Kalanick, the ultimate goal of Uber is to some day be cheaper than owning a car, and with their unbeatable prices, they seem to be on the right track (Campbell). Uber is aiding in increasing both safety and efficiency on the roads, but at the same time, it is decreasing people’s ability to be self-reliant.

 

            In a recent survey I created, I asked people a series of questions related to how they navigate from place to place. In response to my first question about how many times people used GPS to get to their destination in the past two weeks, most people said that they used GPS two or three times. College students responded to my second question about how often they used Uber in the past two weeks by stating that they used it five or six times. However, this app was not as popular among older individuals due to the fact that it is commonly used to drive younger folks to parties where alcohol is present. Finally, when asked if they would have trouble navigating to their previous destinations, now without the help of GPS or Uber, people of all ages conceded that they doubted they could make it there on their own. Evidently, GPS and Uber play a strong role in people’s lives, regardless of their age. Although these resources may therefore appear essential, some argue that they are actually holding us back in ways we may not realize.

 

            In an article about navigating with technology, Greg Miller summarizes Harvard physicist John Edward Huth’s book, The Lost Art of Finding Our Way. Huth argues that it is nearly impossible for us to imagine traveling without the use of GPS, but for the bulk of human history, people had to navigate without modern technology or even physical maps. He highlights that knowing how to travel without a GPS not only improves your chances of finding your way back when your battery dies, but it also gives you a greater awareness of your environment. Back in ancient times, people navigated through the use of their surroundings; they used cues from the sky and the sea. Travelers analyzed moss on trees and the orientation of old churches to point themselves in the right direction. By acquiring and exercising the knowledge that the environment has to offer, humans are able to reconnect and gain a greater awareness of the world around them. According to Miller, Huth hit on a key point that by obsessing over GPS and other technology, “‘It’s almost like depriving yourself of music or a conversation with another person. There’s a richness that you’re missing out on’” (Miller).

 

            With the existence of GPS, Uber, and so much more, you would think that the “magic” of technology would be enough to finally wash my nightmares away for good. But in the end, I’ve found that the scariest part of getting lost is that there is no one true solution. The modern crutch of GPS is something that is unimaginable for many people, including myself, to live without. Yet at any point in time, this technology could falter, taking away our only hope of getting home and replacing it with the gut-wrenching fear of being forever alone in an unfamiliar place. Although there are obvious benefits to technology, the more we rely on it to tell us where to go, the deeper we travel into the endless maze of never truly knowing which way to turn next. By putting down the GPS, we can finally find our way to the maze’s exit: being confident in navigating the world on our own.

 

 

Works Cited

Campbell, Harry. "Have We Become Too Dependent On Uber?" Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 9 June 2015. Web. 02 Dec. 2015.

Frankenstein, Julia. "Is GPS All in Our Heads?" The New York Times. The New York Times, 02 Feb. 2012. Web. 02 Dec. 2015.

Miller, Greg. "Navigating Without the Crutch of Technology." Wired.com. Conde Nast Digital, 5 Sept. 2013. Web. 02 Dec. 2015.

"Tell Your 'mazeophobia' to Get Lost." NBC News. N.p., 17 Oct. 2011. Web. 02 Dec. 2015.

Jones, Amanda. “Navigating with Technology.” Survey. 02 Dec. 2015.