24/08/2025

ON SUNDAY August 24, 2025 VI theSunday Special

O NCE upon a time, getting lost was part of the journey. You pulled over at a petrol station, asked for directions from a stranger, got a vague answer involving landmarks and dubious turns and eventually found your way or didn’t. That chaos? It was character-building. Then came the blue dot. Google Maps (and its siblings Waze and Apple Maps) didn’t just help Malaysians ¿QG SODFHV It quietly rewired how we experience movement. No more mental maps. No more remembering street names. Today, we outsource all that to our phones. From Klang to Kapar, we follow a JORZLQJ OLQH FRQ¿GHQW ZH¶OO DUULYH %XW what have we lost along the way? Ask someone under 30 where Kanna Curry House is and they might say, “Near where the pin drops.” Ask someone older and they’ll say, “You know la, the one near the old Mobil station, opposite that big tree.” For decades, Malaysians navigated through intuition and associative mem ory. Landmarks, colours, odd buildings or infamous potholes. Direction was a communal exercise. Everyone had a say. Sometimes the whole car. Today, even five-minute drives are map-dependent. One wrong turn and we SDQLF :K\" %HFDXVH ZH¶UH QR ORQJHU VXUH how the road system connects. Maps made XV Ḣ FLHQW %XW WKH\ DOVR PDGH XV « VRIW T KH PHQWDO *36 VZLWFK R̆ There’s evidence that constant GPS use atrophies our spatial memory. In other ZRUGV ZH¶UH IRUJHWWLQJ KRZ WR ¿QG RXU way. A Japanese study found that drivers relying heavily on navigation tools showed reduced activity in the hippocampus, the brain’s map-maker.

Getting lost is a dying art

How Google Maps and Waze rewired the Malaysian sense of direction

Navigation apps gave us shortcuts, but they also shortened our attention to the world around us.”

BY SIMON VELLA

Some believe augmented reality navigation will be next.