Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
commodate readers who need a specific piece of information
now,
as well as those just
browsing for pleasure. And it will have to be a broader canvas than just a set of driving
directions—not just how to get from A to B but a whole alphabet through Z of nearby
suggestions and digressions. Maybe a few old-timers like me will always be annoying our
grandkids with tales of how awesome maps used to be when they smelled like ink and
crinkled like wood pulp, but, more likely than not, these will be stories of the walking-
uphill-in-the-snow-to-school variety. “You kids today don't know how good you have it
with your holographic globes that rotate by scanning your retinas! I had to do my home-
work with maps on paper—no, really, paper!—and they were unwieldy and hard to find
stuffonandtheywereobsoletethemomenttheywereprinted.I'mtellingyou,ittook
char-
acter
to be a map nerd back then!”
And—who knows?—maybe paper maps will be sticking around longer than we think. I
rode in a cab twice during my visit to Chicago: once from the airport out to Rand McNally
headquarters in Skokie and then from Skokie to my hotel. Both cabdrivers were enslaved
to a dashboard GPS that told them exactly where to turn at every moment. Yet somehow
we still managed to get lost along the way. Both times.
