Does it matter if you don't know where you are? Obviously yes, to me, but I am sometimes a bit out of step with the rest of the world, and there is the faintest of possibilities that what I think actually doesn't matter very much...
Thing is, sometimes I go away places with my band for a fun weekend or for intensive workshop practice away from the distractions of home. These outings tend to take place in remotish and often spectacularly lovely places; we have recently been to Lundy, an Island in the Bristol Channel. Now, as a sweeping generalistion, the people who come on thes jaunts are fairly intelligent, knowledgeable types who can do crosswords and read broadsheet newspapers and would consider themselves to be adequately educated.
Yet some of them have a limited to say the least concept of geography. Taking the Lundy trip as an example, one couple were suprised to find that they could not take thier car to the island, and a bit disconcerted to find that there was no way of leaving earlier than the usual boat on the last day, which neccessitated them re-arranging a plan for that evening when they thought they would be home. Another person thought we were going to Caldy Ialand, despite the journey to Ilfracombe in North Devon to access the place. There seemed to be, for some, a bit of a blank not only about where Lundy is but about what it is.
I found this genuinely shocking-Lundy is not much more than 60 miles in a straight line from where we live, although that is in a sense an academic consideration unless one has one's own helicopter! I think I could probably tell you how to get to anywhere but the tiniest of hamlets in a 60 mile radius of where I live. On another trip recently, we spent a weekend at Stackpole, in South Pembrokeshire and famous for it's lily ponds. 'What lily ponds', quoth one of our number, who had been there several times before!
Of course, these people would no doubt argue (if I had taken the point up with them, something I do not consider I have any right to do) that in an age of satnav it does not matter that no one knows where anywhere is-you just tell the little box in your car where you want to go and it gives you step by step instructions until you are there. But I get a huge buzz out of knowing this sort of stuff, and I wonder if the way one experiences life is diminished by not knowing it. I am certain that my life would be so diminished, but of course I can only speak for myself. But I am a little more worried by their apparent blindness as to what sorts of places these and no doubt others that they visit are. And I get a bit cross with folk who cannot grasp that they will be lucky to find a cafe open in a small Mid-Wales market town on a winter Sunday evening-it happens!
This awareness of where I am, and where I am going and have been, is an integral part of how I relate to the world and attempt to live within my society and culture. I'm not talking about being Captain Cook here, just an awareness that in order to get to, say, Bristol, then you head for Newport, and then in order to avoid going via Gloucester one is going to have to use a bridge, tunnel, or boat, and luckily 2 of those alternatives are available to me. I am genuinely concerned for the quality of life of these "lost' souls, although they are more than happy with thier satnavs.
This is part of a much larger issue about the impact that technology has on ordinary peoples' lives. In the same way that people below a certain age cannot read the time unless it is presented to them digitally, satnav may be eroding the ability to read maps and plan routes, at once a positive thing as the need to do that is removed, and a negative thing as people unlearn the skill to map read and route plan. I'm not a Luddite; I think satnavs, digital clocks, and all the rest of the technowonders everyone takes for granted are brilliant ideas and I cannot for the life of me imagine how people (myself included) managed before they were invented. No one needs to perform simple arithmetic in a world full of calculators, which in my case only means I can get sums wrong to 8 decimal places. Despite calculators having been in normal use for nigh on 40 years now, I still have to use old fashioned HTU columns in order to work things out on paper, with a pencil so I can rub out my cock ups, a fact of which I am not proud.
Will someone please invent a microwave bed so I can get 12 hours sleep in 20 minutes...
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