Google Maps and the brain

Interesting story on those who use Google Maps rather than other means of navigating...
Is this making a case for using paper maps and road atlases, and doing some thinking for ourselves?

Map-reading on the decline ?

A report in today's Daily Telegraph has been getting a little bit of attention...

I spent quite a bit of time earlier in the year putting together a teaching package for Digimap for Schools, and I suppose the message of that was the need for mapskills is still strong, and there are still times when a proper OS paper map is the best thing to have with you... like most of the time to be honest.

Interesting quote:

Ordnance Survey says sales of its paper maps have dropped by 25 per cent since 2005, to 2.1 million last year. Over the same period, mountain rescue incidents in England and Wales have increased by 52 per cent, to 1,054 in 2011.

Never Eat Shredded Wheat

A small feature on Radio 4 yesterday on a book by Chris Somerville which, on the sound of it, was another spot of "remember what geography used to be like..." - but that might just be how it was portrayed...

On a related note, there is the campaign to get Brian Blessed as the voice of Tom Tom Sat Nav, which appears to have been successful...

TURN RIGHT !!!!

GORDON'S ALIVE !!!!

Update:

A good review of the book in the Economist which talks about the respect that the author has for Geography and the past informing the present "living landscape"...

Physical geography is treated just as respectfully as its human counterpart. For Mr Somerville the flatlands of Cambridgeshire are just as beautiful, in their own way, as the looming, mist-cloaked isles that dot the western seas off Scotland or the moody moors of northern Yorkshire. That he can conjure such delights from the decidedly non-epic scale of the British landscape is a welcome reminder that there is a great deal of beauty and fascination in small things, providing one takes the time to look, instead of hurrying past on the way to a distant destination.

The Atlas of the Real World: Mapping the Way we Live

Had the privilege of looking at an advance copy of the book in the previous post this morning. I will blog more about this once the book has been published, but it's a print-based version of the very useful WORLDMAPPER site, plus additional material.

For more STRANGE MAPS (and wonderful ones too), check this blog, which had a wonderful device on a recent post:
It's a very early 'sat nav', which the user presumably scrolled through as they made their journey. Not so good if there was a detour though...
I bought a Garmin SatNav for my new job, to which some people said "you're a geographer - what do you need one of those for ?", but actually, when you're trying to find Manchester University in the rush hour you can't be unfolding streetmaps at the wheel...