Open Road

Great article in recent New Yorker
about the evolution of mapping. With GPS and various internet sites more and more people can get somewhere and still not know where they are. I have noticed this long ago when I set out to write my London Theatre Walks book. If you take the tube in London (or any Metro or Subway) you get to your destination, but you have no idea what was inbetween your entrance and your exit from the earth. The sense of contiguity and movement has been replaced by a picture of isolated pockets with nothing at all around them. This is made even more ironic by the internet generation's potential to reach any place instantaneously and yet not know how to locate it. The Chicago Tribune the other day had another survey of young people and noted that in spite of the constant volume of information on Katrina over a third of the kids surveyed could not find New Orleans or Louisiana on a map.