GPS has almost killed street maps. That won’t be the end of it!

Slate asks about the future of street signs “Does the advent of GPS mean we’ll no longer need them?”

I say: who’s we?

At least the article quotes an academic expert saying what I figured out running a map store all these years:

… the technology gets us where we need to go without teaching us anything: It’s not very good at “making us smarter about places.”

Skeptical nods like that, and a mention of bad GPS advice episodes, (which are, of course, being swiftly mopped up) do not begin to balance out the article’s Nothing-Can-Stop-Progress technophilia. If you read it, make sure to read the comments for perspective.

No one is looking at a big cost-benefit picture, some kind of greatest-good-for-the-greatest-number assessment of all this assumed progress. In the article, a booster of technology-for-all predicts

…Years from now, when a state can see that most of its population relies on satellite navigation, will it want to spent as much money maintaining signs that serve the minority of users—likely poor and elderly ones—who don’t?

The poor and elderly are only part of it. By the time the taxpayers can enjoy that big street-sign dividend, the heedless rush to get the latest gizmos (remember, these are no more of a one time purchase than paper maps) into everyone’s hands will have, collectively, cost a lot more than paper maps and decent street signs would have. What will we really have gained?

A dumber populace.

Google’s (or someone’s) ability to sell geotagged eyeballs to advertisers lucratively enhanced.

Totally invasive, all encompassing police state surveillance technology in place, just waiting to be abused.

Plus, I guarantee: In a city where emergency responders no longer know their way around because they depend on electronic navigation, things will go wrong (hoocouldanode?) and there will be preventable deaths.