I honestly can’t remember the last time anyone’s asked me for directions. It really is awesome that every phone now comes with decent navigation as standard.
Heck, it’s much, much better than most standalone systems ever were. You now get free traffic advisory on your phone, which used to be an expensive paid feature on devices like TomTom.
I do shudder to think what’ll happen if GPS ever goes down or gets downgraded to unusable. Most people have lost their non-technology navigation skills, assuming they ever had them.
I have a friend who loves giving directions. I have begged her just to send me an address.
One of my first jobs involved covering hundreds of miles for on-site tech support. Pre smartphone.
The best thing about printed turn by turn directions is that if you miss a turn, you’re pretty much screwed. They were occasionally wrong as well, listing streets that didn’t exist etc.
I’d generally have a backup map as well just in case.
Having asked for directions in the UK in the early 90s: Drive down yer a bit, turn right at the stone and hammer inn, then a left at the second roundabout, drive till you cross the cow tressle, then take the third laneway on the right…etc. Like they really have a skill remembering lengthy directions.
I hated finding places with printed directions. I had to drive somewhere for work and the directions were crap, I ended up having to stop and ask for help multiple times
Before printed directions, I had a Mapsco book https://www.ebay.com/itm/266324662580 of Dallas and surrounding.
About half the size of a phone book, had to frantically study the map at stop lights, but damn near impossible to get lost if you had one.
Wouldn’t call it nostalgia, like missing 56k modems, a “hostage to low tech”.
Mapsco was a brilliant idea! I did a lot of driving to both old and new neighbourhoods back then. I was always buying the newest editions so I could get the updated streets for new subdivisions (I think they have had supplementals between major editions too)…kinda like a Google maps update…but with paper. I think I left a stack of those books in my truck when I traded it in as I had just been gifted a Garmin GPS