We are doomed young people don't know directions

Yes folks, if there is ever an EMP or something, only old, but healthy people will probably survive.

I've had two young people (old enough to drive) recently that did not know how to get to their own homes because either their phones
were dead or GPS was not available!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm not great at directions, if anything i'm pretty bad at it, but I have to say if you are of driving age and have lived in the same place all your life,
how on God's earth do you not know how to get home??? Where we live is not complicated either.

a reply to: JAGStorm

It could be that they are experiencing effects from the Mandela.

I have to agree.

I attended a funeral some time back out of town. I wasn't sure how to get to the exact address, but I knew very well how to get to the general area. So I took the lead and my son followed until we got near the place.

We swapped at a gas station where we hit the Interstate. We were in sight of the entrance ramp. It was simple... right out of the parking lot on the main road, and the first left onto the ramp. I even pointed out the ramp, and got behind him. The very first thing he did was turn right out of the parking lot onto a side road that went back in the middle of nowhere! The exact wrong direction, pointing as far from the Interstate as possible.

We spent a good 30 minutes of him trying to figure out how to get his GPS to get him onto the Interstate. I finally gave up, told him to follow me again, got us on the Interstate, and called him on the cell to tell him to take the lead. He did... and the first thing he did was miss his exit because it was under construction and no one had told his GPS!

We made the funeral... barely. He was smart enough to hide his phone from me the rest of the day, because I seriously wanted to smash that useless piece of trash into itty-bitty pieces of dust.

Whenever someone wants to come visit, I tend to stand out at the road to catch them as they come by... most GPS place me about a half-mile down the road at a church house... don't ask me why...

TheRedneck

a reply to: JAGStorm

Face it Jag, technology is creating a new breed of human that will be unrecognizable to us older folks. Technology and the profit driven tech companies that push their products at the youth at an unrelenting pace are pushing us down a path that with a little foresight might not have been the best avenue of how to guide our youth.

However, it is here now and I see little hope of reversal other than that emp you suggest.

a reply to: JAGStorm

Most of the population have no clue how to figure out North South East or West.

People being bad at directions has been a thing since the dawn of man. Don't stress over it.

a reply to: JAGStorm

It's always a joy to use cardinal directions when explaining to people how to get somewhere.

You can witness the anxiety well up in their eyes.

a reply to: JAGStorm

Well we all know that anybody over the age of 30 never gets lost, turned around, bewildered, or reads the map wrong. It's those damn millennials again!

a reply to: TheRedneck

That's exactly what we do here. When we know that friends are coming for the first time we have them call us when the get off the interstate so that we can go out and stand at the entrance to our place and wave them in. When people first started getting dependent on GPS there were a couple of times that people would pass us by, turn around and pass us by again only to turn around and pass us by again before calling us.

I lament the lost art of map reading and back seat navigating

originally posted by: grey580
a reply to: JAGStorm

Most of the population have no clue how to figure out North South East or West.

I love it when someone asks me where I live and I say "20 minutes east of here" and then they look at me like I'm crazy. Damn city people.

One thing I miss a ton is how easy it is to get around living out in the country. There was no trouble or confusion about where you needed to go. Make a left at the cows, make a right up the hill, make another right at the red barn, take a left by the pond onto the only road you can take a left on, etc. And the roads had 2 lanes, one in each direction, instead of *ing ten. You just drive until you get to where you're going.
Navigating through cities/urban/heavily populated areas is hell. Just the other day I almost crashed because of how chaotic it was. I was on a road that had 3 lanes on just my side. I needed to make a right turn onto this one road coming up, so I was in the rightmost lane. Those 3 lanes, however, suddenly turned into 2 lanes without warning, leaving me in a turning-only lane coming up on a wrong turn. I had to quick dart over into the lane to my left in the middle of a ton of traffic going like 50 mph. I only had a couple seconds in between realizing I was now in a turning-only lane and hitting a curb.

originally posted by: Shamrock6
a reply to: JAGStorm

Well we all know that anybody over the age of 30 never gets lost, turned around, bewildered, or reads the map wrong. It's those damn millennials again!

Old people get lost of course, but we know how to go by things like landmarks, where the sun is setting and other directional clues. Young people solely rely on GPS / google maps etc, and then do a mind dump. They pay absolutely no attention to things like landmarks.

originally posted by: TheRedneck
He did... and the first thing he did was miss his exit because it was under construction and no one had told his GPS!

GPSs tend to make people do that a lot; its happened to me a few times, especially when GPS first came out and I wasn't yet aware of the fact that it can so easly put you into a state of conplacentse.

Since it's doing the work you stop paying attention to things like road closures cause you think it must know what it's doing. Finding out to late you went the wrong way. Sometimes that can cost you a lot of time.

What happens to me now is at least once a trip (while using GPS) I'll second guess the GPS and wind up making a mistake because I didnt follow where it told me to go.

It's much better to have someone else work the GPS while your driving, that way they can keep looking a few steps head to keep on top of things. Harder to do when your driving alone. If I'm driving alone I'll try and look over the rout before hand and try to anticipate where things might go wrong or where it will be difficult to recover if I make a mistake; than using the map try and remember key things like processing road names and such before a turn so that when I get to those points I have more than just the GPS to go on.

originally posted by: JAGStorm

originally posted by: Shamrock6
a reply to: JAGStorm

Well we all know that anybody over the age of 30 never gets lost, turned around, bewildered, or reads the map wrong. It's those damn millennials again!

Old people get lost of course, but we know how to go by things like landmarks, where the sun is setting and other directional clues. Young people solely rely on GPS / google maps etc, and then do a mind dump. They pay absolutely no attention to things like landmarks.

And old people have to rely on making broad, sweeping generalizations because it keeps things neat and tidy and easy to keep track of in their feeble minds.

Yay! Now we're all doing it

Yes, everybody who's young enough to understand how to actually use technology to their advantage relies on said technology more than old people do. That being said, I'm entirely willing to bet if you were to come to my metro area and ask for directions downtown, you'd find plenty of hipster millenials who used street names, numbers of blocks, and building names to give you directions where you needed to go. Just like every generation of under-30 year olds has before them.

a reply to: trollz

Make a left at the cows, make a right up the hill, make another right at the red barn, take a left by the pond onto the only road you can take a left on,

I love love love this. Out where I live, if some said go by the blue house and then to the buffalo and longhorn house I'd totally know where to go. We also use the local pubs as landmarks, they seem to be evenly spaced around here.

Young people are as smart and educated as the generation before them taught them to be.
If you want to "blame" someone, blame their parents.

The ability to find your way around and have pattern recognition to do so is a sign of intelligence, or IQ. If you stick a bunch of information into your brain or use the neurons available to learn how to use and understand eletronic gadgets, you cannot find your way without the electronics. We have a limited amount of brain cells to evaluate and compare with, if you use them to program your oven by using a sequence of steps, then you may run short elsewhere. what is wrong with just turning a knob to three fifty?

Is it the intent of our education system and the people making electronics to fill our minds with garbage we do not need? It can make us dependent on technology to survive after a while. I would rather be dependent on gardening or being able to think about things so I did not have to accept another person's incorrect interpretation of things. I want to be able to think on my own and avoid foods and chemistry that interferes with that ability.

On top of technology, lots of foods and meds block our ability to reason, a little if properly timed is good for us, it allows us to relax but when we use this chemistry when we need to think, it blocks our reasoning.

And old people have to rely on making broad, sweeping generalizations because it keeps things neat and tidy and easy to keep track of in their feeble minds.

I can say personally, I never knew anyone, and I mean anyone of driving age when I was younger that was unable to find their OWN house while in their own town.
Just curious if anyone else here of older age experience that before?

I'm not talking about being in an unfamiliar place, that is totally a different scenario. You also can't compare people that walk around in a city to people that are driving, different scenario.


We may have feeble minds but at least we can find our way home!

originally posted by: JAGStorm

originally posted by: Shamrock6
a reply to: JAGStorm

Well we all know that anybody over the age of 30 never gets lost, turned around, bewildered, or reads the map wrong. It's those damn millennials again!

Old people get lost of course, but we know how to go by things like landmarks, where the sun is setting and other directional clues. Young people solely rely on GPS / google maps etc, and then do a mind dump. They pay absolutely no attention to things like landmarks.

Hey, I never get lost , I know exactly where I am all the time. I am in the car when driving, I may not know where the car exactly is though, my car is what is lost, not me.

a reply to: rickymouse

I dont agree; I'm an engineer ... I have never used a slide rule to make a calculation, I hear they where great back in their day allowing humans to make complex calculations on the fly and I've had my older colleagues tell me how my generation and younger aren't as good at engineering work because we dont know the mathematics as well as they do because we have new technology to do that work for us.

In some ways they are correct; if the new technology were to disappear we would be at a disadvantage. However with the new technology our work product is orders of managatude more efficient, safe, reliable and accurate. Sure we couldn't easly go back to a time before the new technology.... but why would any one want to?