#1164 Not O-Que

So one of my friends got a new car recently. And it’s pretty cool what some of the new ones have. Like the navigation systems.
There’s some talk around that perhaps having navigation systems is robbing us of our sense of place. Our skills at establishing orientation. Our ability to find our way back from whence we’ve been.
The research indicates that by paying attention to the thing on the dashboard instead of environmental clues we lose all those landmark cues which our hunter-gatherer brain spent eons evolving to recognize.
Take a left at the big nut-bush and head forty steps to the beaver dam then right two skips and a jump to the snake hole. Those kinds of things.
I suppose it’s possible. But the sad truth is, so many of us were already directionally impaired it’s probably a good idea to have some computerized help. Certainly cut down of the inherent stereotypical male/female friction over asking directions.
One of the other bad things though, is there are far fewer trips to the gas station to ask for directions than in the old days. Nothing more fun back then than to interrupt some guy lubing something under the lift with a query about the closest telegraph office.
Then again, most of today’s gas stations don’t have hydraulic lifts and the convenient store clerk ensconced inside has no idea where anything is in his store, much less in the neighborhood.
But according to my friend, the navigation system does have limitations. His has voice recognition so he can actually talk to it. Pretty cool, except it’s voice recognition system only has a vocabulary of 300 words. Which sounds great until one of the words you say it doesn’t know. Can you say, lost in the desert, cause you took a wrong turn at Arapahoe Arroyo?
Which brings up its other drawback—it doesn’t recognize Spanish. Which raises all sorts of interesting dilemmas.
What if you ask it, do you know the way to San Jose?
America, ya gotta love it.