I'm not dating anyone. I don't even know where I am half of the time.
In a very basic way, a prominent landmark such as Mt. Holyoke tells you where you are. They let you know that you're not the first person in a place.
I think there are two aspects to smart environments. One is information embedded in places and things. The other is location awareness, so that devices we carry around know where we are. When you combine those two, you get a lot of possibilities.
Mr. Breton didn't know about location, location, location.
I literally can't get anywhere now without the map on my phone. I used to use an A-Z when I first came to London, and now I really struggle because there's no dot to show where I am. And I think that part of my brain doesn't work any more.
Asking what I'd do without Loopt is almost like asking what I would do if I didn't have a smartphone because the feature set has become the norm for me.
It wasn't the ghetto here or anything like that. But it got rough. I'll put it this way. I always knew where I lived. I always knew I was in Seaside. That wasn't plush. I wasn't in Monterey. I wasn't in Carmel. I was in Seaside. I knew what that meant.
I use maps in my phone a great deal because I can't tell left from right. Having easy access to maps has given me a completely different life. When I first moved to London, I couldn't get anywhere and spent so much money on cabs because I couldn't figure it out.
If you took a child in London and took their iPhone and took them somewhere else in the country, they'd probably not be able to find their way back. That's a shame.
As I pointed out in The Art of the Motor and elsewhere, from now on we need two watches: a wristwatch to tell us what time it is and a GPS watch to tell us what space it is!
I don't like cartoons that take place in Nowhereville. I like cartoons where I know where they're happening.
I once knew a girl who didn't know where anywhere was in the world. Not a clue. I asked her if she knew where Africa was and she answered, 'Is it the orange one on a map?'
I have condemned my kids to a lifetime of geographic illiteracy.
