It is simply inconceivable! For a child of the 1930s, navigation technology today boggles my mind. A small instrument ball looks down from the heavens and can identify you, me, and everyone else. The celestial ball locates us on the earth’s surface, understands where we’re going, and maps our destination route. It then transmits my data to a screen in my car. With that download, my car screen sends the instructions to the car’s Full Auto Pilot app, and the car drives me to my destination (requiring only the slightest supervision on my part).
If supervision is too much effort, you can skip all those responsibilities in California, Arizona, Texas, and Florida by hiring a Waymo Robo Taxi by Google. It picks you up and deposits you with no live driver at all. Think about that: From when humans first walked around in the jungle to camel caravanning to bicycles, we’ve never seen anything like this. We navigated or stayed home in the cave. This is more than progress: It’s magic.
Or is it?
As an elder who may have my car keys taken away or get canceled by the RMV, satellite navigation is better than good. This is euphoria, or so it first seemed to me.
But now I have read about Professor Eleanor Maguire, a University College London neuroscientist and navigation scholar. The professor’s research suggests that memorizing and navigating the 25 to 50,000 streets of London offers your brain (hippocampus) exercise you do not want to miss. London cabbies grow their superior hippocampi as they learn to drive the city, giving them the least Alzheimer’s deaths compared to all other professions. Since there’s no Alzheimer’s medical cure, this cabbie news is BIG! If you lose all your marbles, personality traits, and mobility, that is one ugly ailment.
You may choose to join the British taxi profession or ambulance drivers who enjoy the same protection and thus lowering your death rate. At a minimum, disconnect your Waze nav device app, and just get lost.
Figuring out where you are could pump up your hippocampus and save your life as well as your marbles.
Categories: Humor
I don’t need a devise that tells me how to get from the house to the garage, but I sure could use one that tells me why I was going there in the first place.
In 1958, at the age of 7, I got lost for over 10 hours in the city of Boston while visiting my grandmother. She was devastated. Every cop in Suffolk county called out. These days, with GPS tracking devices, think of the pain and suffering i can save my loved ones as i continue to space out and wander aimlessly.