Has technology made map knowledge obsolete?

One tool Dora used to explore was the character Map. The show uses anthropomorphism to portray Map as an interactive character. She appears in every episode, as Dora must read her to reach her destination. Note that Dora must read her as a paper scroll. She is not portrayed as a GPS device. She memorizes the landmarks on the map, puts Map in her backpack, and expects her viewers to remember the milestones. At no point is there a device to guide her step by step to her destination.

This method of map memorization that Dora uses has been a standard for travelers since the early days of mapmaking. I remember on long family car trips, I would read the paper map for landmarks to make sure we were traveling in the right direction. As a child, I was also curious about when we would enter a new state. The map showed me to look for an upcoming river, a ridge, or some other notable landscape feature that would indicate the point of crossing. This habit even encouraged me to keep track of the states I had visited, in hopes of visiting all 50 states.

I recently decided to do an exercise with my close friends. I gave them a blank map of the United States and asked them to fill in the abbreviations of the states. There was no prize. It was simply an activity to show what everyone knew about the location of the states. The teenage girl in the group had about 15 correct labels. One lady in the group had 20 correct. I did well with about 35 correct labels. As the cover photo shows, I have difficulty identifying the western U.S. states and the small eastern states. I attribute this missing information to not doing enough research to set a goal to visit Vermont, Montana, or the Dakotas.

I do, however, know where the states I have visited are on the map. This knowledge helped me on a recent visit to Massachusetts. While in Boston for the 2023 NAACP National Convention, I stopped off at a city in the region to see Plymouth Rock, an iconic piece of American history. Without this knowledge of the USA, I may never have crossed something off my bucket list that I had put on my bucket list by watching “Schoolhouse Rock.”

The change in learning and retaining the ability to read maps is largely due to the proliferation of Global Positioning System (GPS) devices. This innovation has made it easier to find your way around. People no longer need to use landmarks or know their surroundings to keep track of their location. GPS technology guides travelers from start to finish, and errors due to neighborhood construction rarely occur.

Convenience is wonderful until the power goes out. Systems can fail even with redundant fail-safes. Devices have a much lower threshold for failure. There’s a risk of getting lost. Despite the popular belief that memorizing the states of the country you live in is a useless waste of brain cells, improving your map-reading skills can be invaluable.

This article originally appeared on Medium and is edited and republished with permission of the author. Read more of Joel A. Johnson’s work on Medium.