I have a Navman. It's an ingenious invention for the directionally challenged (i.e. me) as it helps me find where I'm going to. Or it least it should.
Travelling to Warwick from York yesterday I noticed that, rather than driving along the road as my primary senses were telling me I was, according to the Navman console, drifting eerily across fields and rivers, lakes and woodland near to, but not on, my supposed route. A strangely liberating but wholly inaccurate reflection of the true sequence of events unfurling on the M1. Puzzled, I let the matter pass once it seemed to right itself.
I was trying to get to IBM which is, allegedly, on Warwick’s Birmingham Road. Except Navman questions the existence of a Birmingham Road in Warwick. It doesn't even accept there could be one (the German word 'Unbestimmtheit' or 'Uncertainty' in quantum physics terms would have been reasonable and I would have reluctantly nodded in compromise). But no. Point blank, categorical refusal. I eventually ended up in an industrial estate nearby and found my way to my true destination by good old fashioned aimless driving.
And then on my return journey human error came into play. I was exorcising troubling memories of the morning’s Navman weirdness by listening to the radio turned up very high and I couldn't hear the lilting, ethereal commands emanating from my computerised navigator. So I missed a turning. Ok- my fault. But that soon set Schrödinger’s Cat amongst the pigeons. I had, according to Navman, ceased to be. I was an ex-car. My Citroen was drifting, like so many dark matter particles, amongst the vastness of space. Well, I wasn't on an M40 tributary at any rate, or anywhere else according to Navman’s understanding of the UK road network.
I solved this existential crisis through the expedience of turning the thing off and on again, which saw me abruptly de-cloak, apparently driving towards some form of sports complex near Leamington Spa. Soon, my newly conscious Navman was able to calculate my route again pretending coyly the whole incident had never happened.
This brush with the space-time continuum has not destroyed my faith in my Navman. Without it I would never have even got there at all and would be still driving forlornly around Coventry, screaming my frustration hoarsely though several days of beard growth, given up for lost by kith and kin. Rather, this Damascene experience has highlighted that one should never entirely place one's metaphorical John Thomas in the hands of a gadget as it could be periodically and utterly deranged.
Travelling to Warwick from York yesterday I noticed that, rather than driving along the road as my primary senses were telling me I was, according to the Navman console, drifting eerily across fields and rivers, lakes and woodland near to, but not on, my supposed route. A strangely liberating but wholly inaccurate reflection of the true sequence of events unfurling on the M1. Puzzled, I let the matter pass once it seemed to right itself.
I was trying to get to IBM which is, allegedly, on Warwick’s Birmingham Road. Except Navman questions the existence of a Birmingham Road in Warwick. It doesn't even accept there could be one (the German word 'Unbestimmtheit' or 'Uncertainty' in quantum physics terms would have been reasonable and I would have reluctantly nodded in compromise). But no. Point blank, categorical refusal. I eventually ended up in an industrial estate nearby and found my way to my true destination by good old fashioned aimless driving.
And then on my return journey human error came into play. I was exorcising troubling memories of the morning’s Navman weirdness by listening to the radio turned up very high and I couldn't hear the lilting, ethereal commands emanating from my computerised navigator. So I missed a turning. Ok- my fault. But that soon set Schrödinger’s Cat amongst the pigeons. I had, according to Navman, ceased to be. I was an ex-car. My Citroen was drifting, like so many dark matter particles, amongst the vastness of space. Well, I wasn't on an M40 tributary at any rate, or anywhere else according to Navman’s understanding of the UK road network.
I solved this existential crisis through the expedience of turning the thing off and on again, which saw me abruptly de-cloak, apparently driving towards some form of sports complex near Leamington Spa. Soon, my newly conscious Navman was able to calculate my route again pretending coyly the whole incident had never happened.
This brush with the space-time continuum has not destroyed my faith in my Navman. Without it I would never have even got there at all and would be still driving forlornly around Coventry, screaming my frustration hoarsely though several days of beard growth, given up for lost by kith and kin. Rather, this Damascene experience has highlighted that one should never entirely place one's metaphorical John Thomas in the hands of a gadget as it could be periodically and utterly deranged.
4 comments:
My TomTom had a similar foible, when driving along Embankment it would inevitably place me somewhere in the Thames. I put it down to the tree cover confusing it.
It would get increasingly shrill in it's demands that i exit the river, until I reached a bridge, when it would cheer up and recover itself.
Maybe it's some (extremely subtle long term and patient) attempt by machines to drive us into extinction...?
"screaming my frustration hoarsely through several days of beard growth"
:)
My father wants an in-car satnav that speaks to him patronisingly, like a frosty estranged spouse who hasn't given him any for years. The one he has is rather polite and sugar-coated, and he enjoys telling it to fuck off.
:-)
Claire actually feels compelled to obey our NavMan and blindly follows its commands, no matter how crazed.
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