Comment by mlloyd
8 hours ago
I'll be honest, I'm not sure why I should feel nostalgic about inconvenience. Getting lost is a major inconvenience, it creates anxiety, wastes time, and all around just sucks.
GPS greatly reduces all of those things at the expense of... I'm not sure what honestly. The article was short on that part - or at least, to me, the benefits felt like inconveniences reframed as excitement and entertainment. I'll pass on this and most of the 'I miss the good ol days when life was harder ' genre.
I don't miss the days of stopping at a gas station for directions. I don't miss taking the slower route because I didn't have traffic updates redirecting me. I don't miss inconvenience for its own sake.
To each their own, but I really don't get this inconvenience nostalgia period we find ourselves in.
> GPS greatly reduces all of those things at the expense of... I'm not sure what honestly.
Setting aside the nostalgia for moments of getting lost that ended well (not all do!): Arguably at the expense of spatial awareness, of how different parts of a city or region fit together in space etc.
In a way, the problem is very similar to that of constant availability to others, and the constant availability of distractions to oneself: Sure, "do not disturb" mode is right there, but it takes a lot more willpower (at least once, to establish a routine) to actively seek out moments of being disconnected from people and data not physically present than it used to when this was just the default mode of existence.
I also dont miss the days without GPS bike computers, having to navigate route with printed out google maps sheets just to realize the resolution was not high enough for my route and I had to stop at every 3rd intersection to confirm I'm still on the right track.
Back in 2014, I returned to San Diego for a high school reunion. I did not yet have any mobile device, but my parents loaned me a car and their feature phone for my use while I was home.
Now a few of my friends arranged an informal meetup which I jokingly called “The Honors Reunion” and they chose a brew pub on Coronado Island. I know many San Diego neighborhoods like the back of my hand, but Coronado was a place where I only drove to the beach, not needing any map or navigation, because it is hard to miss the Pacific Ocean segment between a Naval Air Station and the Hotel Del.
Anyways, I asked Mapquest how to find this brew pub, and I made a printout. This should have sufficed: Coronado is really, really small.
But the pin on the map led me to a darkened, mostly residential side street. I parked, walked around, scratched my head, and concluded that the map was wrong.
So rather than try asking for directions or calling my parents, I am a man after all: I drove up and down every street, crisscrossing the business district, basically brute-forcing the map until I finally stumbled on the location itself.
My friends were all there, happy to see me again, and we had a great chat before the big reunion activities began.
Arriving back home, I managed to piece together what happened, and apparently I had just made an extra misclick on the map surface just as I printed it out, sending the pin into no-man's-land.
That is probably the last time I got thoroughly and accidentally lost.
If we are in a period of nostalgia for inconvenience, it may be because convenience, when taken to its contemporary priority, can lead to a swath of negative side effects. Loneliness, boredom, lack of motivation.
There's often not a direct causation, but the correlation is compelling to me. We used to have to talk to people, and/or struggle and learn to meet our objectives. When we can skip those steps and immediately arrive at our destinations, we can sometimes miss the journey.
You're losing out on the "inconvenient" getting lost experiences, which it appears you are focusing on, as well as the "serendipitous" getting lost experiences.
Sounds like you had a bunch of bad times getting lost in the past. Maybe you're just not particularly open to new experiences.
> as well as the "serendipitous" getting lost experiences
I'm glad other people have had such lovely "getting lost" experiences but I never have so I don't have any kind of good feelings for it. Getting lost has always been inconvenient for me
OP asked why anyone would feel nostalgic for an inconvenience and the answer is getting lost isn't always an inconvenience for everyone.