Day 29- Lost in the 21st Century

Everybody has a mobile phone.

Even the man in Mongolia who lives in a tent has a mobile phone. So did the Scottish guy I met this morning at the border to Malaysia (it was comforting to hear a familiar accent after so long).

This Scottish guy wasn't the first person to express confusion at the fact that I was travelling without a smartphone. He said "but I think without my phone I'd be totally lost". 

At the time, I laughed and said that I enjoyed the feeling of being lost. Later, however, when I replayed the conversation in my head, I stood on the table and gave the following speech:

"What then, are your senses for, if not to tell you where you are in the world? Do you tell me that a blue dot on a screen, is a more comforting confirmation of your place, than the images that your eyes convey to you- that light which, untouched by human knowledge, is born in the sun and is reflected honestly by the features of the Earth around you? Do you claim that you are lost when you cannot give names to the streets, despite those around you who grow, and live, and work, and die in those streets? Can you not find your way without directions, despite the signposts that nature has given us: the sun that turns in the sky, the same way every day; the rivers that never fail to flow towards the oceans; the mountains that stand unchanged for a thousand years? Are you afraid to face an obstacle, without first consulting your device on every detail, when our great minds have evolved to learn by trial and error? Do you say, even, that you are unable to communicate without a translating machine, as if you have forgotten how to work the features of your face, that can reveal your innermost thoughts before you even make a sound or gesture? 

If so, how can we call this progress? I cannot believe that it is to our advantage to rely on a virtual world, and to become numb to those senses which were given to us to appreciate the beauty of the real world. I cannot agree, that instant but fleeting information will ever be superior, to the understanding that we gain by venturing into the unknown, by accepting uncertainty, by taking wrong turns and getting- as you would call it - lost."

Let's cut my imaginary soliloquy there before it gets out of hand, and relate it to a real example from the same day. I might not have a smart phone, but I do now have an iPad, so I can still look at a map on a screen even if it doesn't come with the blue dot. Here's what happened when I trusted it instead of looking where I was going.

I arrived at a train station in Kuala Lumpur. I didn't ask anyone which station I was at, which exit to go out, or where to find a hostel, because I had my map. Next thing I knew I was walking along the edge of a motorway, then I went through a subway that led to a barbed wire fence, then I got stuck in a shopping mall, then I was in a building site, then I discovered I was surrounded by five star hotels and the hostel marked on my map didn't exist. How I'd love to replay the whole evening, minus the iPad, and see how it went.

So there's my thought for the day- let's be careful about what we mean by 'lost'. Is it about latitude and longitude, or is it a feeling?