Orienteering is a good skill to have. My wife and one of my best friends could both get lost trying to get out of a cardboard box.

With that said, in the days before GPS, I recall wandering off my planned route for a bit in a new to me city, crossed the wrong street, and ended up in the poorest neighborhood and gang controlled territory. Nothing came of it, other than a lesson learned to be a little more careful about planning potential deviations rather than impromptu ones.

Going into the donut store and having to pass money under bullet proof glass and getting the donut through a revolving bullet proof door was certainly an interesting experience, though not one I'd care to repeat.

It's fascinating to see how reliant our world is on GPS services (GNSS more precisely, not only location, but especially time) and how we still get even more reliant every day while at the same time we can see how fragile all of this is in the conflict zones of the world.

Maybe there is room for a stalker like lost art in navigation in places where it all breaks down but I doubt it.

The future I see is more one of autonomous navigation systems. Ones that pick up locations cues wherever they are and build a local map that helps you or your vehicle to find your way.

To some extent this is what "killed" geocaching too. It's still a good niche hobby but up until to 2013 or so it was more fun when not everyone had a GPS in their pocket. Of course you can still play without a GPS but there was a kind of sense of community where everyone tried to help each other. Now you just look at your phone and follow a path

It's possible to get "lost" even with modern GPS.

My wife and I went on a backpacking trip in the wilderness some years ago. We decided to take a shortcut, bushwacking down a river drainage (1.5 miles) rather than taking the trail all the way around (7 miles) hoping to extend a later part of our trip.

We got downhill through the bushwhack to the bottom of the river valley just fine, but discovered at the bottom that a fire had come through the area a year or two prior. It had completely obliterated the trail, any markers, etc, and trees were fallen everywhere making moving in a straight line very difficult.

Despite having a phone with GPS and offline maps showing exactly where the trail "should" be, the lack of the trail actually existing combined with the challenging terrain made navigating out of the area a huge challenge. It was very easy to start wandering off in the wrong direction away from where the trail used to run without realizing and having to course correct back. I think we were moving at maybe 1/3 mile per hour, for 5-6 hours, until we finally made it out of the burn to where the trail existed again.

Pre-gps, my wife and I used to head to a destination (local trips to pick up something, often a good distance from home) and on the return home pick random right and left turns. Eventually we would wind up headed back home, but not after exploring the countryside. It was always a nice way to spend an afternoon.

> “I don’t think there’s enough research yet to say G.P.S. is terrible, that it’s hurting your brain,” Hegarty said. But it’s clear that turn-by-turn directions prioritize stimulus response over cognitive mapping.

Articles like this one annoy me so much, where is clear the author started with a premise and backfilled the "evidence". The New Yorker would never publish this kind of speculative innuendo if the article was for example about vaccine hesitancy, so it's frustrating to see that stanard relaxed for other topics.

I still often check the map, albeit now on Google Maps, before I go somewhere I don't know, whether by car or on foot.

I find it provides much better and needed awareness of my surroundings. It sometimes also helps falling for sat-nav bad choices. On foot/by public transport I often don't even need to check my phone and can just walk looking around (I know, who does that?!)

I've been visiting a particular hospital while perfectly healthy, and said hospital is undergoing a lot of construction. Even in normal conditions, a large medical center is challenging to navigate, but with the construction surprises, even more so. Google Maps doesn't have sufficient internal information to help (although I noticed that Maps does seem to know where all the sections are inside the local Best Buy?) I did obtain and scan a comprehensive map of the campus, but sometimes it is not sufficiently interactive to find where I am, or how to get somewhere.

So I spend a lot of time walking and trying to follow the many directional signs, which can be helpful. Hospital navigation is a lot of walking. It is unsurprising that many will punt to a wheelchair with assistant. Anyway, it is often the case that I encounter a VIP administrator or high official (evident from their high heels, elegant dress, and lofty demeanor) and they easily notice I'm very lost, and they offer to help and give me directions. The first time, I accepted because I was just trying to get outside without encountering the E.R. again. But the second time I looked the lady in the eye and I said "no thank you! I rather enjoy getting lost in here!" and she smiled and said she feels the same way.

We were on our way to Annual Training for the National Guard on a charter bus. I was seated close to the front and could see where we were heading, and knew that we were leaving the small town where the garrison was, getting on the interstate, and heading to the post across the state. I saw the sign on the side of the road pointing straight ahead to the interstate entrance/exit. The bus driver's GPS said "Turn right," and he turned right without thought, right into a neighborhood with narrow streets and deep ditches on either side. He couldn't navigate the turns in the bus to get us back out, and eventually had to back out the way he came. Thanks, Tom Tom.