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Paper map sales are booming

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Re: Paper map sales are booming

#141

Post by gnicholas »

kypro wrote: post #69
eldaisfish wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

an interesting thought experiment is to ponder just how many skills are being lost due to technology. I know how to read a map and how to find rough compass bearings but i was never in a situation where i needed either skill. Could i manage without GPS - probably but i’m not confident. If GPS died tomorrow because of a solar flare, would the younger generations manage?

My GF has been telling about how there's a lot kids at her school that don't know how to tell the time on analogue clocks anymore. She says it's because kids don't interact with analogue clocks much anymore and Covid lockdowns meant that a lot of kids never learnt it in school either. So apparently there is now a generation of kids who are around 10 - 12 who have no idea how to read the time from an analogue clock.

My parents required me to have an analog watch as my first watch. We did the same for our kids.

Where we are, analog time-telling is a required part of the (common core) curriculum. So kids would have to learn it in school, though not necessarily internalize it for long enough that it would stick in the long run.

Re: Paper map sales are booming

#142

Post by madcaptenor »

ghaff wrote: post #64
kimbernator wrote: post #45

This is a little tangential, but last year me and my girlfriend went to Greece for the first time. A few days after we purchased the tickets, a book came in the mail. She had ordered a tourism guide for Greece that had some recommendations about what to see, where to eat, where to stay, etc. My first reaction was along the lines of "why would we do this when we have the entire internet? Each section is written by onl…

When you're going to spend maybe a few thousand dollars to travel someplace (especially cities or other popular mainstream areas), not spending $15 or so on a Lonely Planet/Rough Guide/etc. seems like false economy. Is it definitive? No. But it's generally a well-curated guide to what people like.

Yes! And I'd probably pay, I don't know, fifty or a hundred bucks for a subset of Lonely Planet that's just the things I'd like.

Re: Paper map sales are booming

#143

Post by quickthrower2 »

kimbernator wrote: post #45

This is a little tangential, but last year me and my girlfriend went to Greece for the first time. A few days after we purchased the tickets, a book came in the mail. She had ordered a tourism guide for Greece that had some recommendations about what to see, where to eat, where to stay, etc. My first reaction was along the lines of "why would we do this when we have the entire internet? Each section is written by onl…

Guide books can get you excited to see something, explaining the history amor significance.

Sans guide book I would use tripadvisor I think you would get decent enough quality there.

Re: Paper map sales are booming

#144

Post by AlbertCory »

dljsjr wrote: post #49

Anybody remember Triptiks from AAA? You'd go to a AAA office or call them on the phone, tell them where you were going, and in return you'd get a printed spiral top-bound pad with your trip broken down in to multiple legs, the roads/routes pre-highlighted, gas stops and prices estimated in, a list of sites for stopping off at, etc. All human curated and human annotated (the roads on your route were literally gone ove…

There's still an AAA office that I drive past all the time. Never been in there, though. I should go and ask for a Triptik sometime.

When I told people I went to Alaska, the inevitable answer was, "Oh, did you go on a cruise?" No, I didn't go on a forking cruise. Those are for lazy people.

What I've started doing is booking a short (2-4 days) trip inside the country or state, and being independent before & after that. You still get some guidance and socializing and seeing things you wouldn't otherwise, but your whole vacation isn't locked in. I recommend this.

Re: Paper map sales are booming

#145

Post by ryanianian »

pdntspa wrote: post #75
kypro wrote: post #20

Something I find really fun when traveling in the car with kids is to give them a paper map and ask them to plan a route a for us to get to our destination. Then when you're driving ask them to follow along and give the directions. Obviously they can't be too young and they're not going to be perfect, but if you have a child around 7-13 they'll probably find this quite fun. Being able to use a map is one of those ski…

The flippant attitude that people have towards map-reading today is appalling. Maybe its the eagle scout in me but how can someone NOT want to learn to read a map? It isn't even that hard! What happens if your device fails you?

I'm also an eagle scout. Taught the orienteering merit badge for years.

But secret: I have the absolute WORST sense of direction. I have no internal sense of orientation or distance. Seriously I get lost if I turn left out of the corner store instead of right. I can read a map with a compass and straight-edge and find where I am based on triangulation. But once I actually have to make realtime decisions using little more than a map I get anxious and frustrated, I usually just give up and look for landmarks or one-way streets that I can find and follow. Or hope that my phone's terrible compass and navigation-hostile map programs work. (Can we talk about map apps not even showing street names or one-way directions without having to pan and zoom all over the map?)

Even if you know how to read a map, they're just not a very good UX for finding where you are and making minor course-corrections in realtime.

Re: Paper map sales are booming

#146

Post by wwweston »

wyre wrote: post #79
wwweston wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think GPS is best thought of as "directions as a service" (demand defaulting to JIT). What would probably happen is that people would start asking for / giving directions again; my impression is that maps have usually been secondary to this ad hoc social process of informal directions, and it would probably re-emerge.

I don’t know if this is true for older generations, but for myself and many of my zoomer and millennial friends barely know street names making giving or receiving directions much harder. Personally I rarely rely on turn-by-turn navigation but instead look at the map before hand and take a mental map of the directions to get there.

That's interesting. Are you saying many people you know don't usually check street signs against the name of the streets the GPS directs users to? I know that's my reflex when I have readable street signs, but I guess I have no idea what portion of people rely on that vs the "feel" of how close the turn is from the visual representation on-screen (which I use sometimes too, but don't like relying on since it often lags a bit) or other cues.

Re: Paper map sales are booming

#147

Post by mmcgaha »

InitialLastName wrote: post #97
kypro wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My GF has been telling about how there's a lot kids at her school that don't know how to tell the time on analogue clocks anymore. She says it's because kids don't interact with analogue clocks much anymore and Covid lockdowns meant that a lot of kids never learnt it in school either. So apparently there is now a generation of kids who are around 10 - 12 who have no idea how to read the time from an analogue clock.

On one hand, I get the concern about this because mechanical clocks still exist, familiarity informs me that they're easy to read, and nostalgia tells me they're important. On the other hand, they are unintuitive, less common with every passing year, and I'd rather my children get any recess than add "learn to use another antiquated tool" into the school curriculum. I do complicated math for a living, but nobody's of…

Ten years after the slide rule calculator came out, the physical slide rules had virtually disappeared. Clock with hands show no signs of disappearing. Sundials on the other hand are safe to ignore.

Re: Paper map sales are booming

#148

Post by ryanianian »

dudul wrote: post #108
pdntspa wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The flippant attitude that people have towards map-reading today is appalling. Maybe its the eagle scout in me but how can someone NOT want to learn to read a map? It isn't even that hard! What happens if your device fails you?

I've always been a bit surprised by the sentence "learn to read a map". What is there to learn exactly?

Looking at a map and doing basic a->b route planning is straightforward. Doing it well is a skill. Finding yourself when you don't know where you are and have limited landmark info, and using the cartographically-significant features of the map to plan a route that avoids hazards or navigates with tolls, highways, and rest-stops in mind are very much a skill that needs to be practiced even if the MO is simple at first.

Re: Paper map sales are booming

#149

Post by rr888 »

kimbernator wrote: post #45

This is a little tangential, but last year me and my girlfriend went to Greece for the first time. A few days after we purchased the tickets, a book came in the mail. She had ordered a tourism guide for Greece that had some recommendations about what to see, where to eat, where to stay, etc. My first reaction was along the lines of "why would we do this when we have the entire internet? Each section is written by onl…

Another benefit too is that the places to stay are usually available. Pre-Internet the hotels listed in the LP were usually booked out a year ahead, now you can actually reserve spaces in the recommended acommodations.

Re: Paper map sales are booming

#150

Post by mdmglr »

sowbug wrote: post #114
kzrdude wrote: post #40

Just to note, all the hiking maps I get now are made in tyvek, not really in paper. It's a newer material, it doesn't wear as much (but still some) in the folds, it is water resistant and so on. It's a more usable map as a result. It does feel slightly waxy to touch.

Do you know whether there is such a thing as laser-printable paper that you can write on with dry-erase markers and still erase? I like annotating certain documents while I'm traveling, and I wish I could wipe them clean at the start of each trip. I currently laminate the things I reuse most (checklists), or just print a new copy each time.

Laminate the paper and use Expo Vis-A-Vis Wet-Erase Markers. Use to be popular in K12 classrooms before everything became chromebooks.
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