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Sat Nav – the end of hope?

Lars Stenberg, Sensory Trust

We recently put instructions on our web site on how to find our office after an increasing number of visitors found that their sat nav deposited them in a farmyard with no mobile phone reception a half mile up the road. This got us to wondering about the effects of satellite navigation on our relationship with the world.

Back in the days of paper maps we never lost a visitor, but now it happens repeatedly. Even to folks who have visited us before (that is, before they bought a sat nav). How has the sat nav changed our perception of the places we travel through? What is the difference between following instructions and reading a map?

Where we used to move mindfully through a wide landscape of choices and decisions we now hurtle through a tunnel of digitally voiced instructions. There is no room for the side-track and no need for the spontaneous. Indeed, a spur of the moment detour leads to the science-fiction scenario of the computer squawking at you to “turn around as soon as it is safe”.

Open the pod bay doors, Hal.

I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.

Those of us who live in urban areas have little chance to experience the natural world at the best of times. Everything from double-glazing and air-conditioning to television documentaries serves to keep our experiences twice-removed. Now, even when we're in it, the wider countryside is defined as a set of destinations that we're locked in to arriving at, “guided” by a tinny voice from the dashboard. Anything on the way is in the way.

Take a look at an OS map of the area around Stonehenge for example. A glance shows that we’re knee deep in prehistoric earthworks for miles around. This incredible richness was distilled for me recently by my (rented car) sat nav as “in 200 yards turn right onto the A344”.

A whole world of experience: history, geography, geology, the environment and landscape reduced to a list of left and right turns. Discovery is written out of the plan; no one gets happily lost.

Robert Louis Stevenson wrote that “to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive”. With the sat nav, the only point of the journey is arrival. Can we still travel hopefully?

"I'm late for a disappointment," said the White Rabbit.

"I'm late, I'm late," said the rabbit, "I'm late for a disappointment."

"Don't you mean an appointment?" asked Alice, pedantically, "I've never heard of anyone being late for a disappointment before."

The White Rabbit pulled his satnav from his waistcoat pocket and peered at it. "No, it's definitely a disappointment. And I'm late!"

And with that he disappeared down a rabbit hole.

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