Plan GPS: highly efficient ways to waste time
Some things, you come late to. Trends, fads and new technologies fly by at an increasingly frequent pace, as if rushing by you like a gust of leaves in a fall storm. We simply stand by and grab on to the bits we can, hoping that what we miss doesn’t condemn us to irrelevancy. ( Are you someone who doesn’t send text messages on your phone? Don’t fret. You are not the only one.)
It’s possible, but only possible, that you are not missing very much. For one truth remains: no matter how many time- saving devices are hustled your way, there will never be more than 24 hours in a day ( unless you move to Jupiter, or really believe all the stuff Einstein went on about). So take some solace in knowing that nothing ‘ will make more time’, except your own imagination.
One supposed, and much- ballyhooed, expander of waking hours is the GPS, which purportedly allows you to drive places faster and safer than simply using a map or blowing more than $24 million on a highly circumspect highway rerouting. Amazingly, at least to some of my condescending triumphant techie friends, I had never used a GPS before last month, nor had the intention to. I have eyes, I always thought, and I can read a map. Case closed.
But then a family road trip to Quebec beckoned, and with it a van we rented for this purpose. It had a lot of essential items, such as cruise control, two DVD players, three doors that opened all by their very own motorized selves, and a very controlling talking lady in a small dash- mounted box, or GPS. ( The controlling- lady- in- a- box apparently speaks little French, judging by her pronunciation of Chemin Champigny, in Lennoxville, Que., as ‘ Jemm Inn Jam Pig Knee’.)
There was a time, say 20 years ago and less ( 20 days ago, in our case), when none of these things mattered a wit. We used our feet to control speed, we talked, or read books to pass the time and even used our hands and arms to open doors. And for finding directions, we used various technologies like looking at road signs.
But now the lady- in- the- box runs the show, sweetly, even it seems intimately, guiding your every tiny move in life. “In two hundred metres, turn left ... Prepare to turn left ... turn left at Route 2 ... Make a U- turn if you can ...” And on- and- on in what seems like an increasingly hypnotic patter, even frankly distracting. For the ladyinthe- box interrupts a lot, occasionally causing you to miss important landmarks.
What else can explain how our entire family missed the peril of the Trans- Canada Highway, which Plan B hopes to reroute? It must have been the controlling lady- in- the- box, for as we sailed through the zone, we struck no- one, didn’t see any piles of car wrecks, or even mass graves by the side of the road. We didn’t even notice the Stop Plan B’ers perched in treetops, despite incoming Green Party leader Peter Bevan- Baker’s Facebook proclamation that soaring above us were “Hemlock Heroes” ( which is not the same as what Juliet thought of Romeo, but I digress.)
We missed all this because we were deeply enthralled by the sultry, slightly southern tones of the ladyinthe- box, and her charming mispronunciations, “Veer left in Crap Odd ...”
The real world ( like, say, Crapaud, and old- growth forests) became irrelevant, confirming what we all should have learned long ago: who needs the natural world? What we really need is more screen time, fewer forests and straighter highways. Man versus nature: Towards the final victory!