The growing problem of spatial ignorance is the philosophical issue discussed in today’s blog. It is my contention that society’s lack of attention to what I will call “spatial detail” has increased with the transcendence of mobile networking technology, including mobile phones, portable computers and various forms of navigation devices.
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The more important observation is that some members of Generation Y (Millennials) and Generation Z (the Boomlets) are or will likely in the future be living a lifestyle that, for practical purposes, is aspatial – i.e. generally lacking an active spatial context. Remember, these are the generations that are not interested in driving a vehicle, nor are they entranced by a car’s features and design. Instead, they want to be driven to their destination so they can optimize their time communicating with others. Cars, drivers’ licenses, automobile insurance, finding parking spaces and wasting time in traffic jams, or focused on driving are inconveniences that are quite reasonably not attractive to anyone, but are especially repulsive to younger generations. The need to optimize time has contributed to the success of Uber, Lyft, ride-sharing applications and other innovations that allow people to get into the back seat of a vehicle and productively, or at least pleasantly, use their time. Unfortunately, riding in the back seat produces tunnel vision in regard to understanding geography and how places are networked together.
Excellent points made here. Road maps used to give people a mental route list where they are aware of their location in the world and aware of the next 2-3 turns. Maps were designed so that you could read them, understand them and navigate them with thicker roads being a higher class, certain naming of roads would indicate if they were North or Southbound and I-x95 generally indicated a highway that goes around a major city and so on. That understanding of our map and our spatial relation to it is nearly gone.
As Uber and Self-Driving cars become more prevalent, the future appears even more dire.
This isn’t necessarily scientific but of the 4 women I’ve dated since age 16, none of them knew what direction they were facing, what the last road we were on was called or how far away from their house they were. “How far away from home would you estimate we are?” <blank stare>. These were all smart, educated women but their position relative to the world around them was very weak. I don’t think this is an outlier data-point. Most people born after the year 2000 have no reason to know these things.