Without GPS, hikers just walk in circles
I know there are many in the tech world who believe people just shouldn't be trusted. Or listened to. Or even believed.
So it may be heartening to these defenders of our cyberfuture that there is yet another piece of evidence suggesting people aren't quite as clever as they think they are.
The Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics decided to test a very simple form of human judgment: the ability to know where you're going when you're hiking.
You see, many intrepid humans believe it is enough for them to follow the sun, the moon, or the howling of wolves to reach their destinations and find their way home.
However, as the Institute's Jan L. Souman so elegantly put it to The New York Times: "People really do walk in circles."
As in life, as on a hike, you might conclude. And so it seems.
Souman's fearless objectifiers followed a number of hikers as they made their way around the dense forests of Bavaria and the rather more sandy parts of Tunisia.
They discovered that without some celestial object to guide them, people fail to recognize a straight line and double back on themselves like drunken drivers being questioned by the police.
Apparently, if one just walks along and trusts either the images one sees at ground level or even the inner sense provided by the inner ear, the brain gets more than a little confused.
Perhaps it might seem obvious, but even clutching a compass doesn't provide one with the surest of answers. A small dissonance between the arrow and your brain and you could be off at tangent that soon describes a circle.
It's a little like golf caddies. While many still believe they can judge distance by trusting their eyes, there is an increasing prevalence of technological devices because they simply measure distance more accurately.
Similarly, most experienced hiking guides suggest GPS because, well, it doesn't see the sun or the moon and it doesn't hear ululations.
And it does tell you if you were in this very place just half an hour ago.
Chris Matyszczyk is an award-winning creative director who advises major corporations on content creation and marketing. He brings an irreverent, sarcastic, and sometimes ironic voice to the tech world. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. 
Unless you remember moss tends to grow on the North side of the trees.
*takes point*
First, he didn't circle backward.
Second, he thought he was in the outer islands of Asia, but very soon figured out he wasn't. His goal was to sail to India, but he didn't think he had found India once he hit land. He knew it was someplace much more astounding.
Not to get too inflammatory, but Columbus was, well, not an idiot, but certainly not a genius...
This isn't true. if you are heading North, but your reading on the compass is off by 1 degree, you are now walking 1 degree off of north, but it's still a straight line.
For it to be a large circle, you would have to keep changing the direction you are walking to 2 degrees off of north, then 3 then 4. I would imaging by the time you got off by 45 degrees, you would notice.
I personally barely ever rely solely on GPS, even when far away from trails and hiking many miles from camp. In such a situation, if a friend has a GPS, we will mark the tent, just to be safe.
The first time I relied heavily on a GPS, the batteries died and we had to go off dead reckoning. At night. In a place we had never ever been to before. But guess what: we made it back just fine. With some sort of guide, whether it be moon, stars, sun, or landmarks (which is the only realistic situation. not relying on any of these at all is outlandish), a person is plenty capable of going straight enough.
Even when they do make it "outside", they're still just walking between high rises from 43rd street to 51st.
Very easy to lose perspective.
Otherwise, technology goes from being an aide to a crutch.
- by boy444 September 8, 2009 6:32 PM PDT
- Learn how to use a compass.
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