It would be interesting to move beyond rats and into humans binned via navigating their local area through understanding of the street networks independent of any tooling, and those that can't get down the street without mapping software telling them what to do.
Anecdotally it is striking to see the contrast as a member of the former group talking to people of the latter. They have truly no idea where places are or how close they are to other places. It is like these network connections aren't being made by them at all. No sense of scale either of how large a place is or how far away another place might be. I imagine this dependency on turn by turn navigation with no spatial awareness leads to quite different outcomes in terms of modes of thinking.
I mean, when I think about going to a place I am constructing a mental map of the actual city map. I am considering geography, cardinal directions, major corridors and their connectivity along the route, rough estimates of distance, etc. My CPUs are being used no doubt. Others though it is like a blankness in that wake. CPUs idle. Follow the arrows. Who knows where north is? What is a mile?
Anecdotally it is striking to see the contrast as a member of the former group talking to people of the latter. They have truly no idea where places are or how close they are to other places. It is like these network connections aren't being made by them at all. No sense of scale either of how large a place is or how far away another place might be. I imagine this dependency on turn by turn navigation with no spatial awareness leads to quite different outcomes in terms of modes of thinking.
I mean, when I think about going to a place I am constructing a mental map of the actual city map. I am considering geography, cardinal directions, major corridors and their connectivity along the route, rough estimates of distance, etc. My CPUs are being used no doubt. Others though it is like a blankness in that wake. CPUs idle. Follow the arrows. Who knows where north is? What is a mile?