Are Google Maps and GPS bad for our brains?
6th June 2010
Only if we crash-land on a deserted island full of replicated dinosaurs (memorandum: If you see herbivores running, you ought to run too, because herbivores don’t run for exercise – there’s something nasty chasing them). Those of us who plan to remain in technological society are probably safe.
Just before dawn on the morning of Jan. 19, 2009, a Los Angeles woman named Lauren Rosenberg was hit by a car while crossing a four-lane highway in Park City, Utah. Last month, more than a year after the accident, she filed a lawsuit against Google, claiming that the route for her walk had been suggested by Google Maps. She’s asking for more than $100,000 in damages, in part to cover the hefty medical bills she says she incurred.
How much of that is to cover the brain transplant? She obviously lacks one.
But her experience should nevertheless give us pause.
Indeed – it suggests that Natural Selection is no longer choosing for intelligence.
More ominously still, there are signs that our growing reliance on automated GPS directions could end up altering the circuitry in our brains.
Although, of course, there has to be a brain there in the first place. Some people, alas, appear to be in no danger.