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One of my first jobs involved covering hundreds of miles for on-site tech support. Pre smartphone.
The best thing about printed turn by turn directions is that if you miss a turn, you’re pretty much screwed. They were occasionally wrong as well, listing streets that didn’t exist etc.
I’d generally have a backup map as well just in case.
What I find kind of amusing in a “no, I’m not actually a Luddite” kind of way is that I make plenty of use of mapping, but very little of GPS. Oh, I definitely use it to pinpoint me on the maps I’ve downloaded, but I’ve only used turn by turn navigation a couple of times just to see what it’s like. My normal procedure hasn’t changed since I was a kid playing “turn by turn navigator” on family trips: pull out the appropriate map, figure out where we are, figure out where we want to go, eyeball a route while noting general direction and guesstimated travel time, pick out a few things that will signal we’ve gone off track somewhere, and go.
I spend enough time in places where there is no cell signal that I always have downloaded maps available and refresh them before I might have to depend on them, the same way I used to stop at gas stations and tourist information booths to pick up current maps.
My primary use for GPS is to track my routes on the water and my fishing spots and, to a lesser extent my hiking, neither of which actually requires actual charts or maps. Although I do find the charts and maps useful.
Having asked for directions in the UK in the early 90s: Drive down yer a bit, turn right at the stone and hammer inn, then a left at the second roundabout, drive till you cross the cow tressle, then take the third laneway on the right…etc. Like they really have a skill remembering lengthy directions.
People used to remember phone numbers as well. Now you’d only really know your own and maybe some important ones like yer ma’s
I stopped at a convenience store in Boston to ask for directions once. Not sure if the guy I asked was trolling or not, but he responded in the heaviest most unintelligible Boston accent of all time and I ended up still being lost lol.
Didn’t Google Maps use to be able to print directions?
Yep! Last I checked, you could still see all the upcoming directions in a list ahead of time. I prefer to have some idea of what’s coming beforehand, so I’m glad that’s a feature. I don’t know if printing them is still an easily accessible and intended feature, though. Although I guess you could always print a screenshot of the list of upcoming directions either way.
It still can, but it used to be able to too
I remember the first time driving somewhere new on my own with a sheet of mapquest directions and getting lost. When I finally got home, My parents scolded me for relying on mapquest instead of studying a map.
Fuck, am I old now?