Yes, they actually made use of the math they learned in school, because adding machines, at least in the early years, were rare and expensive (the first one, released in 1886, sold for $475, which would be $10,831 in 2007 dollars). Consequently, people practiced and practiced their addition and subtraction, their times tables, and even mastered long division, and then carried that knowledge and applied it in daily life.
Yet today, most people hunt around for a calculator or a computer if they have to add up a column of figures, or figure out the tip in a restaurant. It’s not that they can’t do that by writing out the problem on a sheet of paper—most people have still retained the knowledge, however rusty—but that we seem to trust our electronic math crutches more so than our brains in solving a problem. It’s the same thing with spelling: rather than memorize the correct spelling, people put their faith in their spell-checker, instead.
Now some people are speculating that our sense of direction may be the next thing to go, spurred on by the widespread adoption of yet another technology designed to addict our brains: the satellite-navigation GPS device. Although sales of portable GPS devices and built-in car navigation systems have steadily grown over the past few years, analysts are predicting that the new nav-friendly Apple iPhone 3G and forthcoming BlackBerry smartphones could usher in a whole new crop of handheld devices with GPS. Because the price on some of these units has dropped dramatically compared with just a few years ago, they expect the number of people using GPS to grow exponentially. But at what price?
“When we develop a crutch for technology, we lose the ability to do that which we did previously," Ian White, the founder of Urban Mapping, a company that licenses geographic data, observed. "It couldn't be more true. People become more and more reliant, and their expectations get bigger and bigger, and if technology doesn't deliver, they get frustrated."
Kevin Slavin, a co-founder of area/code (a geography-gaming company) has noted that getting lost helps develop our sense of place, and contributes to a functioning society. "There is a social function of being lost," Slavin said. "And that social function of being lost will itself be lost. Think about how many times in the last month or so you have asked somebody for directions, or somebody has asked you for directions. That bit of social communication, in which a stranger and native meet at some point, will slowly ebb away. The question is: Will we feel ourselves to be natives everywhere, or to be strangers everywhere?"
Our take? So long as your GPS device knows the way to San Jose, everything should be fine. But it’s important that the mapmakers have the latest data available, so that your navigation system doesn’t tell you to turn the wrong way on that one-way street. Of course, you could just look at the one-way sign and overrule your GPS device, and defuse a potential accident by turning the car around and finding another route the old-fashioned way—by looking at a paper map, or asking someone else who knows the area. Sometimes the old way works best.