All over the map
This week is all about wayfinding and way-losing— how we find vibes and humor and memories in maps and how we get lost in maps, without maps, in spite of maps.
🗺 Putting feelings on the map
Google maps stakes out new territory this week. The company is introducing a neighborhood vibe feature to put Google back on the map for all those insouciant Gen Zs who are using TikTok for restaurant searches. This is the vibe shift we are not only meant to survive but that we (as in our data) created. The technology relies on a blend of AI with community contributions to Google Maps' landscape, such as photos and reviews.
The vibe check will roll out alongside other immersive features like landmark aerial views (kind of like Apple Maps Flyover feature) and live view with overlays for street names, directions, and business ratings
It reminds me of Georges Perec’s experimental “An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris”, written from a bench over three days in 1974. Not the best guidebook to Paris but mundanely fascinating for inveterate people watchers. And that makes me think fondly of one of my favorite projects by artist Kyle McDonald. Exhausting a Crowd which crowdsources descriptions of city activity. No bank ratings or traffic reports here though, instead it’s (mostly) comic narration of random people and events for a set period of time. The point behind this online crowdsourced collaborative art project is to get us thinking about what kind of data we can gather, who is in charge of it, and how it is displayed.
🙌 Feels on the Interwebz
Thinking a lot about how we feel about climate change this week, as I embark on an artistic collaboration with a dear friend, Judith Modrak, to understand climate emotion from the inside out. We’re gathering composite brainwave portraits of feelings like flight shame (feeling ashamed by your carbon footprint) and solastalgia (feeling nostalgic for anticipated loss) and terrafurie (protective anger toward those who actively destroy the environment). Since I’m tracking everything related, I stumbled across the latest research that says how a walk in nature protects our mental health and I can’t help but wonder whether our encounters with nature will ever cause more stress than they prevent?
A couple of years ago there was a lot of attention on how kids should be polite to chatbots. Heck, I was one of those advocates. Modeling respectful interactions is good in theory but it does seem a little silly to be polite to a chatbot when really what we want to do is test the boundaries and show that humans are superior after all. Then most people, especially kids, get bored. So, I’m a little skeptical about this piece in The Guardian about voice assistants hindering children’s social and cognitive development. I do agree that most products are designed for adults though, without assuming that kids are using them too. It’s quite rare to see children taken into account in the development process.
You’re not imagining it, we’re all a bit less open, agreeable, and conscientious than we used to be before 2020. A new study in PLOS ONE suggests the COVID pandemic has triggered some shifts in personality that affect everyone, especially young people who are in a more formative state as far as personality goes. People’s personalities do shift after significant life events and, well, the pandemic was a pretty big, global life event wouldn’t you say? Given that people who report high levels of conscientiousness, agreeableness, or extroversion are more likely to experience a high level of wellbeing, this explains why we might be feeling less mentally healthy even if we’ve made more health-conscious lifestyle choices.
Behold another moment of collective effervescence as Twitter discovered the glorious photos of the Santa Clara men’s cross country team. Hard to choose a favorite but the half-mustache is something.
Friday Feeling > Navigational Atrophy
🔑 DEFINITION
Anxiety that the human sense of direction may be permanently altered by use of digital maps.
See also: Anticipatory grief, death by GPS, automation bias
📜 A BRIEF HISTORY
The anxiety that humans are losing their navigational capabilities because of global positioning system devices (GPS) dates back to at least 2003, when Wired pointed out that campers were relying too heavily on the technology.
Since the 2010s news stories about death by GPS have become commonplace. Humans put too much trust in the automated system, ignoring their own observations or sense of direction.
After 2015, more experts started to worry that people are losing the ability to navigate for themselves and that we will be unable to cope when it fails. Neuroscience research circa 2020 shows that GPS use does have a negative impact on spatial memory.
Automation bias, or the propensity for people to favor suggestions by automated decision-making systems, extends beyond the territory of GPS. Over-reliance on systems in intensive care units, nuclear power plants, and aircraft cockpits can lead to life or death errors.
💗 EXPERIENCE
One way people cope with uncomfortable emotions is to meme about it. A quick survey of GPS memes shows the range of complicated feelings prompted by GPS.
Fear of following GPS blindly off a cliff, into a lake, through a wall
Frustration at “rerouting”
Defiance by going off the suggested route
Competitive pride in trying to beat the projected time
Annoyance when GPS interrupts your favorite song or a conversation
Outrage at the GPS voice bossing you around
Apprehension at allowing maps (and other people) know your location
It’s not all unhappy feelings though.
There’s comfort in having maps as a backup even if you know your way
The thrill of discovering crowdsourced wisdom for new places
Amusement at finding candid moments
A tinge of nostalgia at revisiting old haunts
The mischievous joy at uploading cursed images
🎉 FUN FACT
Almost all maps—Waze, Apple Maps, Mapquest, Here WeGo—default to the most efficient route from point A to point B. What if you want to take the road less traveled? Well, there’s a (m)app for that! The Roadtrippers app finds the most scenic route and even lets you organize point-by-point kind of like the old-school style like the AAA TripTiks.
🎩 PERSONS OF INTEREST
Daniele Quercia and Luca Maria Aiello, researchers at Nokia Bell Labs in Cambridge, and Rossano Schifanella, Professor at the University of Turin, created Happy Maps. The project looked at what would make city life more enjoyable and mapped it using crowdsourcing and geo-tagged pictures. Good City Life collected other sensory maps for smells and sounds, too, and is the long-long precursor to Google’s neighborhood vibe feature.
💡 BIG PICTURE
Our internal GPS is changing. On this, geographers, psychologists, anthropologists and neurologists agree. Handheld navigational devices have been linked to lower spatial cognition, poorer wayfinding skills, and reduced environmental awareness.
It’s not all for the worst though having maps can help us to feel supported in situations where we feel uncertain, like traveling in a new city, or even vulnerable, like walking after dark in an unfamiliar neighborhood. Digital exploration can lead to physical exploration. And it can mean greater independence for people with disabilities too.
Instead, we can look at GPS as a way to supplement, rather than replace, our spatial awareness. As long as we can still tune in to the sensory information we pick up from the world around us, we can avoid some of the pitfalls. And it might be good to remember that sometimes it is okay to get a little lost.
🤔 LEARN MORE
Read about the sweet nostalgia for a childhood home frozen in time or the bitter disappointment of discovering its loss
Learn how street views of Paradise, CA before the 2018 Camp Fire can give us a sense of climate grief and longing for the before times
Watch TikToker and professional Google Maps player @georainbolt (aka Trevor Rainbolt) find anything in the world from a Google Street View photo
Find out where Google Maps is headed next
Do a deep dive on Wayfinding: The Science and Mystery of How Humans Navigate the World where M.R. O’Connor still finds hope despite our reliance on GPS
🧭🧭🧭🧭🧭
That’s all the feels for this week!
xoxo
Pamela 💗